Richard Meirowitz | Essential Skills for Aspiring Lawyers

It doesn’t matter how far you are into your studies or your decision-making process; many of the abilities you need to be a good lawyer apply as much to work as a solicitor as a barrister, even if used in different ways, so it makes sense to start thinking about improving them as early as you can. This guide is intended to get you thinking about the kinds of things you’ll need to be able to do as a lawyer. It also provides you with some ideas of the things you can do to bring your talents up to scratch – even if you’re still at school.

1. Taking in lots of information and distilling the key points

This will be relevant whether you’re in a corporate firm reading all the documentation sent over as part of the disclosure process for a sale, or a criminal barrister reading through papers for a court case at short notice. Not only do you have to work out what’s relevant; you also need to be able to clearly explain it to your client or superior so that they understand where they stand. This is especially important if they need to make a decision on it.

 

Doing a law (or indeed any text-based) degree will improve your ability to do this immensely; you will have plenty of reading to do in short spaces of time! For additional practice or before you apply to university, try similar exercises with everyday information. Take a long news article and create a five-bullet summary, or explain something difficult you learnt at school to your parents in twenty seconds.

2. People skills

It cannot be overstated that legal work is client-centric, and that no matter how good you may be at the work you also need to be good at working with people! First seat trainees may not be meeting clients often but they will be expected to work well with the team they are sat with, and barristers rely on their reputation for work, which will inevitably be enhanced by being easy to work with. This isn’t an invitation to be over-personal with people but you do need to be polite, interested and interesting!

 

This is so early up the list because it’s easy to forget about when you think of qualities needed for legal practice, but it should also be the easiest to meet. Be polite to everyone, including staff, and show a genuine interest in everyone you meet. The little touches can really help to make a good impression; if you’ve been talking to somebody about their current work, wish them the best of luck with it when you say goodbye.
On a more professional level, lawyers need to be able to listen carefully to any instructions they are given and work with others to come up with suggestions. Team activities at school or group projects at universities will show you the importance of agreeing on what needs to be done, and making sure that everybody knows what their individual tasks are. Take any opportunities to meet new people so that you are not too nervous when you reach university and are invited to dinners or events put on by firms or chambers. This can just be family friends or getting a job in a shop; the idea is just to get you comfortable speaking to new people.

3. Working to a deadline/ planning ahead
 

The first point to note here is that this sometimes just isn’t possible! This however makes it even more crucial that practising lawyers are as ahead on everything as possible so that it is possible to clear the desk for that one thing which is going to take over for the next twenty four hours. As in any walk of life, you need to make sure you are clear on the deadlines for any work you have to do, and prioritise according to those deadlines and how long each task will take. It’s an easy mentality to get into so start now! 

 

There’s no need to remember absolutely everything which needs to be done; keeping a diary is much more reliable. When you reach university especially, an important/urgent matrix is amazingly helpful – make a table with two columns (important/not important) and two rows (urgent/not urgent) and enter your current tasks into the four boxes which are made. It helps prioritise work and especially makes sure you don’t forget about those important tasks which don’t need to be done immediately but do have a future deadline and will take a while to complete. You don’t want to remember about it the day before! Read More........