What you should be doing over Easter

The Easter break may or may not be a busy time for you depending on travel, family, coursework backlog or any number of other reasons. However, it is safe to say is that there will be a reasonably protracted period during which you do not have to turn up for lectures or seminars, and therefore an opportunity to make some progress on your pursuit of a career. Be realistic though; wherever you are at, you can probably make some headway, but you’re unlikely to get everything absolutely sorted. My advice to you therefore is to set a realistic goal and achieve it. You’ll be amazed by the boost to your confidence and sense of being in control!

Here are a few of my suggestions:

Engage in some self-research

Take the three pieces of work experience/extracurricular activity that you feel most symbolise your development as a person. Break each of them down into a list of tasks or activities. For each list item think about what you learned and whether that improved your skills or abilities to become a lawyer. This is the bedrock of the evidence you will be using when making future applications. Do it properly now and every application will be far easier to write. You might like to use the MySelf function of MyLCN to record this information.

Improve your market knowledge

Do you really know who’s who in the legal world? Use the LawCareers.Net Training Contract Directory (or the directory in The Training Contract & pupillage Handbook) to get an overview of the firms out there (or chambers!). What kind of firms appeal to you? Are you clear how they work as businesses? What are they for?

Consider different practice areas

There are over 40 work areas listed on the Solicitors’ practice areas page on LawCareers.Net and another 30 in its Bar equivalent. It is absolutely worth you having a look, unless you can genuinely say, hand on heart, that you know all about life sciences law, the Chancery Bar, or every aspect of insolvency and restructuring work.

Ask yourself the crucial question, ‘Why do I want to be a lawyer?’

You need to think about the pluses and the minuses. Get a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side write down all the things that excite or interest you about legal work (and yes, that can include money and status, though neither are guaranteed). On the other side write down the bits that you think sound boring, difficult or frankly terrifying. You WILL be asked why you want to join the profession at some point, so you’d better have a well thought-out answer!

Collectively, this seems like quite a lot, but if you can do just one of the tasks above properly, you will have made material progress.