Читать книгу How to Be a Lawyer - Jason Mendelson - Страница 35

Throughout this book, we refer to hard and soft skills you'll need to acquire and develop to be a great lawyer. Later, we dive into other strategies for doing well and not making common mistakes.

A short chapter on what you should get out of the law school experience is helpful to better frame the objective. Note that each of the items are discussed in other parts of this book, but here are all our thoughts in one place. Consider this your checklist that you'll use to build your future practice.

We divided these into “hard” versus “soft” skills, but let's face it, many of these are both. Please be patient with our categorizations, but realize you'll need all of these in your toolbox if you want to be your best.

And the punchline? Note that you'll need a lot more things than the skills you'll learn in law school to actually succeed.

Hard Skills Necessary to Be a Great Lawyer

 Ability to solve problems and think analytically.

 Legal knowledge in your practice area and all practice areas that touch on your specialty (if you have one at all).

 Ability to negotiate and debate.

 Strong communication skills, both oral and written.

 Strong research skills.

 Experience and ability to work in a team setting.

Soft Skills Necessary to Be a Great Lawyer

 Empathy.

 Ability to listen first and then talk.

 Ability to ask good questions.

 People management.

 Conflict resolution.

 Self-organization.

 Good health, both mental and physical.

 Ability to work under pressure.

 Enthusiasm to always be learning.

 Passion for the job.

 Creativity.

 Good judgment.

 Resiliency in the eyes of failure or other hardship.

 Knowing when to trust or distrust.

 Perseverance and an ability to grind through lots of work.

 Strong integrity (however you define that).

 Positive attitude.

 Ability to disconnect.

Other Stuff You'll Want to Be a Great Lawyer

 An evolving and strong professional and personal network.

 Mentors who want to see you succeed.

 An identity outside of being a lawyer.

At this point, we are done focusing on school. Let's talk about what happens after you graduate.