Modern Growth Areas For Law Students Looking For Non-Legal Options

The restructuring of the world political and economic order is creating new opportunities for those willing to take advantage of them. Likewise, the changing world order will create problems for many who cannot come to grips with the rapid and seemingly chaotic change. Boom and bust economic cycles will continue through the millennium. The economy will experience a sequence of high growth times interspersed with flat or negative growth periods. This will, in turn, create a great deal of uncertainty for planning individual lifestyles and careers. The key to dealing with the uncertainty is to accept it as a given. Once you have accepted it, then take advantage of it.

Take advantage of the chaos by getting yourself into a career in a field with a company that thrives in the chaos. I refer to these growth fields as high-value fields. Similarly, I refer to the companies leading the pack as leading edge companies. It is this high-value field/high-value career/leading edge company combination that helps you take advantage of the changing world while the rest of the people are wringing their hands. Let us see how all this works.


If you are just beginning to think about a career choice outside of the traditional practice of law, you may be uncertain as to just where to start. Your uncertainty is understandable. However, judging from the experience of those who have chosen this career path before you, only your imagination and your goals will limit your choices.

At least twenty-five percent of law school graduates do not practice law. They work at careers like: Being President of the United States, CEOs of major corporations, entrepreneurs, investment executives, marketing executives, and general managers, to name a few.

These are certainly not second rate jobs! Now, again, most of you will not be able to step into the upper echelon of these careers. However, you will be able to get a good start down the career path. This chapter sets out some high-value careers available to the legally trained. These careers will increase in value as the economy accelerates its transforming process. You advance relative to your peers in the sector; however, because you are in a high-value career, you are still accelerating past the rest of the work force that are in slow-growth fields.

Identifying High-Value Fields:

If you are a law student, you have already started employing the strategy by selecting law school elective courses that fit with high-value careers that interested you. As a practicing attorney, you will see how to relate your training and your experience to these high-value fields. Let us back up and examine some high-value fields. Department of Labor studies, as well as some private sector studies, indicate the following areas of the economy will grow rapidly over the next five to fifteen years. These sectors will be booming through the millennium.

• Information technology
• Telecommunications
• Packaging Science
• Energy/Environmental
• Real Estate
• Biotechnology
• Import/Export
• Private Sector Education

These are the fields were the future lies. Read through these outlines on the high-value fields with an eye toward your particular skills and interests.

Information Technology:

Today we live in the Information Age, the general population is using computers for practically everything. Everyone is on the net, for information, to send messages, to connect with friends, to book travel tickets and hotel rooms, to read newspapers and books - Information technology is no more a crawling infant. Most individuals own a home computer and even small businesses are beginning to computerize. But this is just the beginning, even as more and more individuals and small businesses embrace computers, this field will explode even more. Obviously, this sector needs technical and analytical support. However, this is only part of the demand equation. Marketing and servicing customers will be critical to their adopting the technology. Skills in analyzing and communicating combined with knowing the business and the technical aspect of the systems, add value. Success results from convincing the general populace that this new technology will improve their lives, and at a cost they can afford. Or better yet, they cannot afford to be without it.

Information technology connects closely with the high-profile field I will discuss next, telecommunications. Those entities that control and know how to distribute information will thrive. Companies will demand workers that can help them do this. Information is an integral part of every business. Be open to where this field can take you.

Telecommunications:

As I stated above, information and telecommunications depend on and support one another. Success in the global economy depends upon communicating information quickly and cost-effectively. Large businesses will do what it takes in this area if they want to compete. As with the information technology held, small businesses and individuals have still not fully embraced the newest telecommunication technologies. As they do, this industry will grow geometrically. As the entire world joins in, the growth will be staggering. Again, technical support and scientific innovation are only part of the equation. This field will need people that can communicate with customers. They will have to analyze the customers' needs to be able to bring this new technology into the home and businesses of not only people of this country, but the entire world.

Telecommunications is a field that feeds itself. People realize the importance of telecommunications in their lives and how it affects their livelihood. However, many are not quite sure how to integrate this developing technology into their lives. The field is actually innovating faster than people are absorbing the products. Companies in this field realize the key to their success is making people and businesses comfortable with the new technology. They need educated people with interpersonal skills to turn the innovation into income. Advances in telecommunications affect every business.

This is an area most people do not think about. You do not notice it because it is so pervasive. It is high tech. It is low tech. No matter how you look at it, it is a rapidly growing, value-added business sector. As the population of this country and the world grows, pre-serving the environment must remain a high priority. We are increasingly burdening our economy with the cost of disposing, sorting, and recycling. We need innovative processes in this area to service both economic growth and environmental protection requirements.

Packaging Science:

In order to strike this balance, new technology capable of making packaging with less pollution, and yet cost-effectively, will be demanded. The public and private sector will invest in large-scale plants and distribution networks. Individuals comfortable in the investment and finance area, as well as marketing and public relations fields, will prosper as this sector emerges.

Be open-minded about this field. Many people do not know anything about this field and dismiss it as a dying business that does not need high-skill type people. Nothing could be further from the truth. All products require packaging of some type. This allows you to involve yourself in all different types of fields and businesses.

Energy/Environmental:

Growing world economies need fueling. Resources such as oil, electricity, nuclear power, and natural gas are now interchangeable energy sources. With an eye toward controlling pollution, we will spend enormous sums of money to keep the world economies running. The energy business will globalize even more in the coming years. This expansion will require large-scale capital investment and asset management. Countries, through the private sector, will build power plants all over the world along with new pipelines and electricity grid systems. Innovation and technology will transform this sector unrecognizably over the coming decade. All types of high-profile positions in finance, real estate, and marketing will emerge.

If you want to go where the money flows to, the energy field needs and absorbs tremendous amounts of capital. Countries and companies are demanding skilled people, especially those who can put the pieces of an energy project together. As with many of these high-profile fields, energy use cuts across all businesses and industries. This field allows you to take part in different sectors of business.

The energy field and the environmental field affect one another. Capital will move from one to the other as the world tries to balance growth and the environment. The skilled communicator with interpersonal skills will provide the link between these fast growing fields. The opportunities grow with every new technology.

Biotechnology:

This field will drive the burgeoning health care industry. It will bear the fastest growing companies in the economy in the next decade. Most people look at this sector as just a bunch of companies with research labs. It is true that this sector is research oriented. However, marketing, public relations, investment, and finance will play major roles as this sector ascends in prominence. You will interface with the public, business, and financial groups promoting the wonder products of these labs. You avail the public to these research breakthroughs. This availability creates revenues to fund further research.

The biotechnology stocks are now a force of their own in the stock market. Less than a decade ago, no one had even heard of them. These biotech firms have a lot of investment capital waiting in the wings for a discovery. The biotechnology industry, as with the other high technology industries, must learn to interface better with the general public if they are going to gain acceptance for their products. They need educated people to inform the public of the availability of their products. If you enjoy being on the leading edge of things, this field may be for you.

Real Estate:

Changing demographics and planned communities with commerce centers will activate the real estate sector. Skilled professionals will manage the newly created properties and attract capital for new projects. The next decade will be one of high mobility as Americans move away from taxes and crime, but also move toward jobs. High-value business sectors will be building state-of-the art complexes and the no-growth industries will be divesting themselves of costly, outdated properties. This shifting will create value on both sides of the transaction for property management and investment people. The skilled individual that can marry the real estate market with the investment community adds value to his or her company and his or her own resume. Look to this field to create a disproportionately large percentage of the new wealthy.

Import/Export:

Go into any store in this country and flip over some of the merchandise. Chances are very good that we did not make it here. Import/Export companies handle these goods. Low cost bulk transportation has opened the world to commerce. This sector, like the others mentioned thus far, is in its infancy stages. Companies ship components for more complex items, like cars and airplanes, all over the world for assembly. The assemblers ship the finished products to destination markets. This sector is marketing, contracts, public relations, and investments all rolled into one. It is a place for both entrepreneurs and giant corporations to carve out a market.

Entrepreneurs put together multimillion dollar deals in a matter of minutes just using a phone and a fax machine. They had the contacts and the ability to persuade people. On the flip side, however, many companies have unsuccessfully spent years and millions of dollars trying to attract foreign business. This field is unpredictable yet lucrative. This creates opportunity.

Private Sector-Created Educational Packages:

Education is being privatized and specialized. Unwieldy bureaucracies will no longer totally control educating students at the primary and secondary school level. Both parents and teachers will seek assistance from the innovative private sector. Packaged teaching programs, many of them designed for self-directed study on a computer, will be created to satisfy the demand for accelerated learning techniques. What is more, their very existence will create their own demand. Such self-directed study through private sector created programs will augment, and many times replace, the traditional teacher. This industry will combine computer high technology, subject matter knowledge, and innovative teaching skills. Many of the best computer software people, communications experts, and teachers will congregate to this lucrative industry.

These are the growth areas for the new millennium. Other areas will emerge that we do not even know about now. You can have a high-profile career apart from these fields and still do fabulously well. It is just that you do not get the benefit of being in a high-value career in a high-value field.