After two years of extensive research that included interviewing more than 150 lawyers, my new book (with coauthors Chris Coughlin and Nancy Levit), Law Jobs: The Complete Guide, has been published by West Academic Publishing. Here’s a description:
Choosing a legal career that fits a student’s personality, skillset, and aspirations is the most important and difficult decision a law student faces, yet only a small number of law schools incorporate career-planning into their curriculums. Law Jobs: The Complete Guide seeks to help fill the gap. Law Jobs is a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide to every type of legal career. Packed with authoritative research and featuring comments from more than 150 lawyers who do the jobs, Law Jobs offers for each career general background, pros and cons, day in the life descriptions, and information about job availability, compensation, prospects for advancement, diversity, and how students can best position themselves for opportunities. Covered jobs include:
• Large and Medium-Sized Law Firms
• Small Firms and Solo Practitioners
• In-House and Other Corporate Counsel
• Government Agency Lawyers
• Non-Governmental Public Interest Law
• Prosecutors and Public Defenders
• Private Criminal Defense
• JD Advantage Jobs
• Contract (Freelance) Lawyering
• Judges, Mediators, and Arbitrators
• Judicial Law Clerks
• Legal Academic Jobs
Other chapters address lawyer happiness, the rapidly changing face of the legal profession due to technology and other forces, the division between litigation and transactional law, and the Top 50 legal specialty areas.
Together, the authors have received more than thirty awards for teaching and research, and have written extensively about law students and lawyers in books such as 1L of a Ride (McClurg), A Lawyer Writes (Coughlin), and The Happy Lawyer (Levit).
I got the idea for Law Jobs after reading too much about lawyer unhappiness and making the connection that many lawyers simply have not found their right place in the legal world. Too many law students do no serious career-planning at all, instead resigning themselves to take whatever job comes along. But it’s far too important a decision to leave to chance.
There is no single right or wrong job for everyone because we’re all different. Students need to know themselves—their skillset, personality types, and true aspirations. Only then can they find the best job fit. We think our book does a good job of providing information to help students identify the careers most likely to lead to their long-term happiness.
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