Home
Career prospects evolve with every single technological advancement, and there are bound to be more intriguing job opportunities rising on a daily level. However, becoming a lawyer remains one of the most lucrative and challenging job prospects across the globe. The area of law is wide and it takes a lot more than dressing up in a smart suit and tie to do the practice and be proficient. Becoming a lawyer demands diligence, patience, knowledge, and a lot of effective practice to qualify as one and appropriately conduct business. If you are keen on becoming a corporate lawyer and wish to increase your salary potential, you can follow this step-by-step guide and learn how to advance your career by becoming a lawyer.
Table of Contents
Get the right qualifications
One of the very first steps entails obtaining a bachelor’s degree in a designated discipline whether it includes finance, political science, legal studies, or similar. Once you have obtained the right bachelor’s degree you will have all the vital requirements to apply to law school and work towards getting a law degree. Upon mastering all the necessities related to law school, you would need to advance your GPA, highlight comprehension skills, and in the final two years of the law school take extra courses that would aid to master the skills needed for the area of law you are interested in.
Complete an expert internship
The next thing that would help you broaden your horizons and help you become a skillful lawyer is completing a professional internship at an eligible and experienced law firm. If you were to go through an extensive and expert internship at a notable law firm and see how experts practice law first-hand, you would gain the needed knowledge to help you move forward in your decision. Not only that, but during an internship, you would directly assist an attorney and solicitor with drafting legal papers, get vital pieces of advice on numerous cases, and help prepare the legal documents for the court. For example, experts at Leyden Legal are ready to answer all the questions to help interns gain a clear understanding of what a lawyer’s job entails, guide and encourage them on their career path, and help them network with the right people.
Pass the bar exam
This is a crucial step for any future lawyers to take. Once you have completed law school successfully and have acquired your law degree, before you can practice law in real life you would need to pass the bar exam. The timing and difficulty of passing the bar exam differ from country to country, but in all cases, the procedure remains the same. All practicing lawyers ought to pass the bar exam in order to get licensed by the government. Bear in mind that the bar exam is utterly severe and challenging as it covers multiple law topics such as criminal law, contracts, evidence, intellectual property, taxation, legal advocacy, torts, and many other hard topics. No matter if you plan to practice only corporate law, you still need to go through all the topics to pass the bar.
Advance your reasoning and communication skills
Having an eligible work ethic is extremely important for the legal profession. After completing the formal schooling and gaining vital knowledge, you would need to get some extracurricular experience to obtain some tangible skills that are crucial to being a fruitful lawyer. Therefore, besides the top-notch background knowledge and education related to law, becoming a lawyer also demands having strong communication and reasoning skills that would help you stand out from the rest. All aspiring lawyers need to highlight their writing and research skills to strengthen their personal discipline and collaboration skills to make them better communicators.
Get state licensure
All legal practitioners need to have a thorough understanding of legal matters to practice law eventually, no matter the field, and to do so, you need to have regulatory state licensure. Upon finishing the formal education, and passing the bar, you need to apply for licensing in your state. This would differ from state to state, but in order to distinguish yourself from other candidates you need to have all the licenses regulated so you could practice law. Getting state licensure usually involves paying a specialized fee, getting your fingerprint taken, going through a background check, and turning in a formal application to the governmental board.
Gain tangible experience
Last but not least, after acquiring all the licenses needed to practice law, to become a lawyer you would need to have some tangible experience. Networking alongside apprenticeship and internship, a great way to gather some hands-on experience is to attend legal conferences and seminars. By listening to professionals in the field and meeting legal experts, you would manage to stay up to date with all legal trends, talk to various experts, and boost your knowledge.The ongoing desire to become a lawyer is due to the competitive and alluring salary and the thrill of the various challenging cases amongst other things. With a good educational background and expertise, you can follow this career path.
