You’re joining a critically important profession. People make lawyer jokes until they need us. Don’t let anyone diminish our profession and the limitless potential of this law license you’ll have sweated for, indeed that some of you will have risked your life for. The law is essential, the legal profession is essential, and you as future lawyers are essential.
Health care workers were and remain critical essential workers on the front lines fighting this pandemic; they’ll remain indispensable as the virus runs its course. So, too, will lawyers be essential—especially in the ensuing waves and the aftermath and rebuilding while in the volatile wakes of simultaneous crises.
Here are just a few examples of the essential work of lawyers during the pandemic:
- Lawyers will continue to help individuals obtain access to unemployment and disability benefits, prevent evictions, and obtain other government assistance.
- Legal advice will be needed to assist people and businesses with bankruptcy, business closures, liability concerns connected with business reopenings, insurance claims and disputes, civil rights, and estate planning.
- The pandemic is raising grave issues related to the criminal justice system, including prisoner health care and speedy-trial rights; lawyers are needed to address these serious concerns.
Newly licensed lawyers, in particular, play a critically important role in serving low- and moderate-income clients.
New lawyers will fill critically needed positions in public defenders’ and prosecutors’ offices.
Put as succinctly and clearly as possible, you are essential workers because you are the future of our democracy.
“Liberty and justice for all” demands dutiful, legally educated, ethical individuals to fight for justice and uphold the rule of law.
You have one job now
You must stay strong. Whatever form the exam you sit for takes, the underlying skills remain largely the same: critical reading, logical analysis, understanding rules of law, logically analyzing fact patterns and applying rules to the facts presented, and writing clearly and effectively.
Yes, you’ll need to understand rules of law and memorize them, but beyond memorization, the skills I just noted are also transferable skills. Master them.
Use this time to up your game in critical reading, analytical skills, and the art of clear expression in written word.
They’ll help you just as much in practice, if not more, than on the bar exam. And despite the chaos and uncertainty you’re facing, immerse yourself as much as possible now in your studies and skill development. You’ll need those skills for the remainder of your career.
If you haven’t read the findings in the Foundations for Practice research from the nonprofit Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, I recommend a quick look now and a longer look when you finish your bar exam.
The study considers what more than 24,000 lawyers across the 50 states believe makes a new lawyer successful and provides powerful evidence of how you should prepare for your own successful future.
One more thing if you haven’t yet taken a bar exam and will be required to: Stay as flexible as possible in case conditions change again. Among your challenges is the need to stay informed enough to know what you’ll be facing but not let yourself become dragged down into non-exam information overload.
A tip is to read anything from your jurisdiction’s bar examiners and anything from your law school’s ASP/Bar Success departments but to limit the rest of your social media and other communications, where rumors often spread and panic prevails.
Survival offers its own lessons
Know that you’ll have learned lessons and developed resiliency from just surviving this pandemic.
You’ll thus have marketable grit-related skills and an empowering “story” to tell employers. In an April blog post I co-authored with Professor Neil Hamilton, we suggested a number of questions to ask yourself to prepare for future jobs, including:
- What did I learn that would be useful to an employer?
- Did I learn to figure out solutions to myriad unanticipated changes and challenges?
- What specific changes did I make to adapt to certain struggles?
Your answers might be specific examples of grit, resiliency, and positive or growth mindset that helped you through these tough times. Your answers also provide powerful evidence—proof, if you will—to employers that you’ll demonstrate similar resilience as a legal professional, that you’ll fight for your clients as you did for yourself and your family.
I also can’t recommend highly enough Neil Hamilton’s Roadmap: The Law Student’s Guide to Meaningful Employment, Second Edition, which includes many important strategies to help pave the way toward developing rewarding future employment opportunities.
Bottom line, above all else, is that it’s critically important for law students and law grads alike to stay healthy—mentally and physically— and to surround yourselves as much as possible with positive, supportive people.
For decades, I told my own students and those reading my books: “Legal Education is a power tool for social change.”
That power tool is yours. Use it proudly, and use it well. You’re the guardians of our future democracy.