Combining research and smart networking to learn about potential career paths can create powerful momentum.
Purposeful (in person): After you know a little bit about an industry and have your four questions (Step 2) in hand, go to a professional meeting. Introduce yourself as someone who is curious about the business and interested in finding a way to harness your legal training and experience in a new and creative way. There will be a continuum to your greeting from those who are deeply suspicious of lawyers to enthusiastic embrace by formerly practicing lawyers who will welcome you onto their path.
Recall the networking skills that you have used as a student and as a lawyer. Be consistent, be persistent and keep track of who you talk with and what you learn. When you are referred to someone, be sure to thank the person who sent you.
Best opening line: I have read a lot about X and I have some questions for you.
Worst opening line: Tell me everything you know about X.
Purposeful (electronic): This is the 21st century, and myfacebookspace.com/linkedin@twitter is at your fingertips. Use (don’t abuse) these tools to connect with the people, the businesses, and the industries that are your targets.
Serendipitous: Kimm Walton and every career services professional has dozens (hundreds) of stories about serendipitous networking. Everyone knows someone who found a job through her hairdresser’s husband, from the guy at the next treadmill at the gym, and from the person who sat next to his family at Vikings games for decades. The connecting thread is that everyone who thanks serendipity for employment is really passing the buck. They got their jobs because they spoke up. They talked about their job searches. They didn’t keep secrets.
Mind-reading and telepathy are lounge acts in Las Vegas. Telling your story to friends, relatives and perfect strangers enlists Serendipity – a random but real job search tool.
Tomorrow: Patience: Not-a-ramen-noodles schedule for alternative career shift (Step 4)
Research: Step 2 in an alternative career search
There are three key research tasks: (1) define your terms; (2) learn about other jobs; and (3) explore the information you have gathered.
Research Task 1: Define traditional, non-traditional, and true alternative legal careers.
Traditional: Traditional legal careers require a JD and bar membership, and are often titled lawyer,attorney or counsel. Post-JD judicial clerks are in this category.
Non-traditional: In a non-traditional career, a JD may be desired but not required. Often careful reading of a job description appears to require legal training or years of experience in the job as a substitute.
For example, a posting for an HR Director made no mention of JD, but it included this: Specialized training in employment law, compensation, organizational planning, organization development, employee relations, safety, training, and preventive labor relations, preferred. While these requirements sound legal, candidates with degrees in human resources development, personnel, industrial relations and labor relations can have this experience.
Some typical non-traditional career paths for lawyers are:
Academic administration
Bar Association management
Board of Education staff
City Manager
CLE administrator
Compensation consulting
Contracts administration
Court TV or on-air reporter
Dependent care consultant
Development director
Environmental consultant
Financial planner
Forensic accounting
Headhunter for lawyers
Health care administration
Human resources
Jury selection consultant
Law firm marketing
Law librarian
Legal publishing
Litigation support manager
Lobbyist
Non-profit executive director
Risk management administrator
True Alternative Career: I distinguish non-traditional and true alternative careers in lectures and coaching because a true alternative career is intensely personal and tailored by chance or by design for a specific individual. Never be surprised to hear that vision, commitment, sacrifice, and luck brought a law-trained person into a job that was (a) not posted, (b) had no JD in the requirements, and (c) was a fulfillment of a life-long dream.
Research Task 2: Learn about other jobs. If the last time you thought critically about a career path was in high school and you are unsure where to begin, go back to your undergraduate career services office. One of your key questions is what do people do all day? Those professionals are used to working with candidates whose eyes are wide open and who are eager for information.
As you begin to process this information, combining your legal work experience and answers to some of the self-assessment questions (Step 1), should help you eliminate a lot of paths out of hand.
Research Task 3: What kind of research? Google is your friend. Follow relevant news. Find websites for professional organizations. Follow relevant topics on linkedin. Join linkedin groups. Every professional and business imaginable has a cadre of bloggers and twitterers. Find them. Follow them. Learn from them. Check for professionals in the news. Read carefully and critically.
STOP. Do not attempt to contact a live person until you are sure that you can ask four intelligent questions about the work.
Tomorrow: Purposeful and serendipitous networking for alternative careers (Step 3)
Research Task 1: Define traditional, non-traditional, and true alternative legal careers.
Traditional: Traditional legal careers require a JD and bar membership, and are often titled lawyer,attorney or counsel. Post-JD judicial clerks are in this category.
Non-traditional: In a non-traditional career, a JD may be desired but not required. Often careful reading of a job description appears to require legal training or years of experience in the job as a substitute.
For example, a posting for an HR Director made no mention of JD, but it included this: Specialized training in employment law, compensation, organizational planning, organization development, employee relations, safety, training, and preventive labor relations, preferred. While these requirements sound legal, candidates with degrees in human resources development, personnel, industrial relations and labor relations can have this experience.
Some typical non-traditional career paths for lawyers are:
Academic administration
Bar Association management
Board of Education staff
City Manager
CLE administrator
Compensation consulting
Contracts administration
Court TV or on-air reporter
Dependent care consultant
Development director
Environmental consultant
Financial planner
Forensic accounting
Headhunter for lawyers
Health care administration
Human resources
Jury selection consultant
Law firm marketing
Law librarian
Legal publishing
Litigation support manager
Lobbyist
Non-profit executive director
Risk management administrator
True Alternative Career: I distinguish non-traditional and true alternative careers in lectures and coaching because a true alternative career is intensely personal and tailored by chance or by design for a specific individual. Never be surprised to hear that vision, commitment, sacrifice, and luck brought a law-trained person into a job that was (a) not posted, (b) had no JD in the requirements, and (c) was a fulfillment of a life-long dream.
Research Task 2: Learn about other jobs. If the last time you thought critically about a career path was in high school and you are unsure where to begin, go back to your undergraduate career services office. One of your key questions is what do people do all day? Those professionals are used to working with candidates whose eyes are wide open and who are eager for information.
As you begin to process this information, combining your legal work experience and answers to some of the self-assessment questions (Step 1), should help you eliminate a lot of paths out of hand.
Research Task 3: What kind of research? Google is your friend. Follow relevant news. Find websites for professional organizations. Follow relevant topics on linkedin. Join linkedin groups. Every professional and business imaginable has a cadre of bloggers and twitterers. Find them. Follow them. Learn from them. Check for professionals in the news. Read carefully and critically.
STOP. Do not attempt to contact a live person until you are sure that you can ask four intelligent questions about the work.
Tomorrow: Purposeful and serendipitous networking for alternative careers (Step 3)
Self-Assessment: Step 1 in an alternative career search
You, and only you, can decide what you want to do with your life. You have decided that you are ready for a change. You want to get going. Your question is Where are the jobs?
STOP. Self-assessment is the most important part of a search and it is the step that people want to skip. Why? Without knowing where you are going, you will put the cart before the horse. When you don’t know what you want, you can pass up what could have been a great opportunity.
Career development can be encapsulated into the three questions below. Answering them will keep you from ever skipping assessment.
1. What kind of problem solver am I?
Do I like numbers? Do I hate numbers? Do I work well in a group? Do I want to work in a room all by myself? Do I want to be the leader of the band? Would I die if I were the leader of the band? Am I a big picture person? Do I love to dwell in the details?
The Problem Solver question leads you to traditional self-assessment tools (Myers-Briggs (and its clones), Strong-Campbell) and lists of questions to ponder in some good articles, including Find Satisfaction in the Law (Mark Byers and Ron Fox), Launching your career with self-assessment tools (Kathy Brady), and Self Assessment Questions (Harvard Law School Bernard Koteen Center for Public Interest Advising).
While none of these tools or questions will tell you to be a fireman or a teacher, they force you to think about your preferences, personal style, and relationship to work
2. What kind of problem do I want to solve? This question moves you closer to a job search, but forces you to consider your skills and interests. What issues and problems do you want to deal with all day long? Where do you want to sit at the problem-solving table?
For example, in the Problem of Crime, the traditional seats for lawyers are as prosecutors, public defenders, and judges. If your interest is crime but you don’t care for a traditional seat, consider parole and probation, jury consulting, court reporting, court administration, legislative drafting, policy analysis, forensic accounting, arson investigation, counter-terrorism analysis, emergency management analyst, fraud investigation, loss prevention consulting, substance abuse counseling, rape crisis center management, victim-witness services, social work, family support services for incarcerated people or for crime victims, or law enforcement (local, state, federal, international).
Just as there is rarely one solution to any problem, there are multiple career paths that you can take to solve the problems that are meaningful to you. Some of those paths may require additional training which will require time, money, and sacrifice. The choice is yours.
3. Who can pay me to solve the problem? This is the money question. Where are the jobs? Knowing that there is no Job Monster Alternative Legal Careers Board gets you back to the research that will need to do on your target career. Wherever there are professional organizations, there are job postings. By noting the authors in the literature and reaching out, you can connect yourself to the Big Thinkers in the industry who are likely to have some useful insight into employment possibilities. In the 21st century, you have access to myfacebookspace.com/linkedin@twitter. Find your people and follow them.
Once you begin to address these three questions, you will have taken some serious steps toward your alternative career.
Tomorrow: Smart research for alternative careers (Step 2)
STOP. Self-assessment is the most important part of a search and it is the step that people want to skip. Why? Without knowing where you are going, you will put the cart before the horse. When you don’t know what you want, you can pass up what could have been a great opportunity.
Career development can be encapsulated into the three questions below. Answering them will keep you from ever skipping assessment.
1. What kind of problem solver am I?
Do I like numbers? Do I hate numbers? Do I work well in a group? Do I want to work in a room all by myself? Do I want to be the leader of the band? Would I die if I were the leader of the band? Am I a big picture person? Do I love to dwell in the details?
The Problem Solver question leads you to traditional self-assessment tools (Myers-Briggs (and its clones), Strong-Campbell) and lists of questions to ponder in some good articles, including Find Satisfaction in the Law (Mark Byers and Ron Fox), Launching your career with self-assessment tools (Kathy Brady), and Self Assessment Questions (Harvard Law School Bernard Koteen Center for Public Interest Advising).
While none of these tools or questions will tell you to be a fireman or a teacher, they force you to think about your preferences, personal style, and relationship to work
2. What kind of problem do I want to solve? This question moves you closer to a job search, but forces you to consider your skills and interests. What issues and problems do you want to deal with all day long? Where do you want to sit at the problem-solving table?
For example, in the Problem of Crime, the traditional seats for lawyers are as prosecutors, public defenders, and judges. If your interest is crime but you don’t care for a traditional seat, consider parole and probation, jury consulting, court reporting, court administration, legislative drafting, policy analysis, forensic accounting, arson investigation, counter-terrorism analysis, emergency management analyst, fraud investigation, loss prevention consulting, substance abuse counseling, rape crisis center management, victim-witness services, social work, family support services for incarcerated people or for crime victims, or law enforcement (local, state, federal, international).
Just as there is rarely one solution to any problem, there are multiple career paths that you can take to solve the problems that are meaningful to you. Some of those paths may require additional training which will require time, money, and sacrifice. The choice is yours.
3. Who can pay me to solve the problem? This is the money question. Where are the jobs? Knowing that there is no Job Monster Alternative Legal Careers Board gets you back to the research that will need to do on your target career. Wherever there are professional organizations, there are job postings. By noting the authors in the literature and reaching out, you can connect yourself to the Big Thinkers in the industry who are likely to have some useful insight into employment possibilities. In the 21st century, you have access to myfacebookspace.com/linkedin@twitter. Find your people and follow them.
Once you begin to address these three questions, you will have taken some serious steps toward your alternative career.
Tomorrow: Smart research for alternative careers (Step 2)
Feeling trapped? 5 steps toward an alternative career
Happy New Year? Is an alternative career in the cards for you in 2010? If just one of the following is buzzing in your brain, you may be ready begin the 5 Steps Toward an Alternative Career:
I knew when I came to law school that I did not want to practice law.
I am a 1L/2L/3L/4L.
I have never worked and now I want an alternative career.
I am graduating and I want an alternative career.
There are no jobs, and I want an alternative career.
I have been practicing for (1 week to 20 years) and I want an alternative career.
I hate (private/corporate/public interest/government) practice.
I hate my job.
Writing makes me crazy.
Deadlines drive me nuts.
I hate being around lawyers.
I hated moot court and do not want to litigate.
Law practice is not fun (anymore).
I hate arguing over nothing.
I hate my life.
Beginning an alternative career search is easy: announce it to your friends, family, and trusted co-workers. Trusted is the key word. Outward signs of unhappiness can give your employer the chance to let you conduct a full-time alternative career search.
Making a search work is complicated. It is deeply individual and personal to you. There is no magic bullet or on campus interview. What is alternative for a lawyer is someone traditional for someone else, so there is no Job Monster Board for Alternative Legal Careers.
You are not alone, and there are resources for you. Among them are Deborah Aaron’s What Can You Do With A Law Degree?, George Cain’s Turning Points – New Paths and Second Careers for Lawyers, (especially good for very experienced lawyers), and the alternative career materials on the NALP website. Your undergrad and law school career offices, alumni office, professional associations, and the connections you build through social networking sites will be important resources throughout your search.
The Five Steps in an Alternative Career Search are below, and I will address them more completely in future postings:
Self-assessment. You, and only you, can decide what you really want to do with your life. Connect to basic assessment tools through your law school or undergraduate career office. Be prepared to look at every part of your life including your personality, skills, interests and financial position. If your family and friends are invested financially or psychologically in your legal career, be prepared to campaign for their support for a major change.
Research. What do other people do all day? As a lawyer, you read, write, talk on the phone, and go to meetings. When was the last time you considered another career? Because the only lawyers who understand what non-lawyers do are in Workers Comp practices, you may need to combine the broad perspective of an undergrad career office with the nuanced legal alternative career information in your law school career office. You will also have to use your technical research skills on this project.
Purposeful and serendipitous networking. Combining research and networking to learn about potential career paths can create powerful momentum. Best opening line: I have read a lot about X and I have some questions for you. Worst opening line: Tell me everything you know about X.
Patience. Expect a barbecue-like long and slow process, not a ramen noodles quick-fix career shift. Expecting a rapid and dramatic career shift is magical thinking.
Value transferable skills for the non-lawyer market. Having identified the job that you want, do not be discouraged when the applicant pool is full of people with the precise credentials and experience listed in the job posting. A successful alternative career candidate can connect legal skills and experience to the new job by describing his work in terms that make sense to a non-legal employer and that show legal training as a value-added bonus.
Thursday:Step 1: Self-assessment for alternative careers
Friday: Step 2: Smart research for alternative careers
Monday: Step 3: Purposeful and serendipitous networking for alternative careers
Tuesday: Step 4: Patience -- A barbecue-not-ramen-noodles schedule for alternative career shift
Wednesday:Step 5: Value your transferable skills for the non-lawyer market
I knew when I came to law school that I did not want to practice law.
I am a 1L/2L/3L/4L.
I have never worked and now I want an alternative career.
I am graduating and I want an alternative career.
There are no jobs, and I want an alternative career.
I have been practicing for (1 week to 20 years) and I want an alternative career.
I hate (private/corporate/public interest/government) practice.
I hate my job.
Writing makes me crazy.
Deadlines drive me nuts.
I hate being around lawyers.
I hated moot court and do not want to litigate.
Law practice is not fun (anymore).
I hate arguing over nothing.
I hate my life.
Beginning an alternative career search is easy: announce it to your friends, family, and trusted co-workers. Trusted is the key word. Outward signs of unhappiness can give your employer the chance to let you conduct a full-time alternative career search.
Making a search work is complicated. It is deeply individual and personal to you. There is no magic bullet or on campus interview. What is alternative for a lawyer is someone traditional for someone else, so there is no Job Monster Board for Alternative Legal Careers.
You are not alone, and there are resources for you. Among them are Deborah Aaron’s What Can You Do With A Law Degree?, George Cain’s Turning Points – New Paths and Second Careers for Lawyers, (especially good for very experienced lawyers), and the alternative career materials on the NALP website. Your undergrad and law school career offices, alumni office, professional associations, and the connections you build through social networking sites will be important resources throughout your search.
The Five Steps in an Alternative Career Search are below, and I will address them more completely in future postings:
Self-assessment. You, and only you, can decide what you really want to do with your life. Connect to basic assessment tools through your law school or undergraduate career office. Be prepared to look at every part of your life including your personality, skills, interests and financial position. If your family and friends are invested financially or psychologically in your legal career, be prepared to campaign for their support for a major change.
Research. What do other people do all day? As a lawyer, you read, write, talk on the phone, and go to meetings. When was the last time you considered another career? Because the only lawyers who understand what non-lawyers do are in Workers Comp practices, you may need to combine the broad perspective of an undergrad career office with the nuanced legal alternative career information in your law school career office. You will also have to use your technical research skills on this project.
Purposeful and serendipitous networking. Combining research and networking to learn about potential career paths can create powerful momentum. Best opening line: I have read a lot about X and I have some questions for you. Worst opening line: Tell me everything you know about X.
Patience. Expect a barbecue-like long and slow process, not a ramen noodles quick-fix career shift. Expecting a rapid and dramatic career shift is magical thinking.
Value transferable skills for the non-lawyer market. Having identified the job that you want, do not be discouraged when the applicant pool is full of people with the precise credentials and experience listed in the job posting. A successful alternative career candidate can connect legal skills and experience to the new job by describing his work in terms that make sense to a non-legal employer and that show legal training as a value-added bonus.
Thursday:Step 1: Self-assessment for alternative careers
Friday: Step 2: Smart research for alternative careers
Monday: Step 3: Purposeful and serendipitous networking for alternative careers
Tuesday: Step 4: Patience -- A barbecue-not-ramen-noodles schedule for alternative career shift
Wednesday:Step 5: Value your transferable skills for the non-lawyer market
Creativity: Nature or Nurture
An interesting question from a Linkedin thread....While it may be something of an overstatement to say that everyone is creative, the reason that some people would not believe this of themselves is that creativity is first defined to children as artistic creativity.
If you are mocked for your inability to draw beyond stick figures, it may be years before you can look back and recognize that you have a gift for creative mathematics, managing people, or mechanical activity from fixing clocks and computers to developing complex engineering projects.
Nature or nurture? I would suggest that creativity is somewhat opportunistic. If you have the chance to try something or if you are challenged to do something and you step up, you are "creative." Try it, you'll like it.
If you are mocked for your inability to draw beyond stick figures, it may be years before you can look back and recognize that you have a gift for creative mathematics, managing people, or mechanical activity from fixing clocks and computers to developing complex engineering projects.
Nature or nurture? I would suggest that creativity is somewhat opportunistic. If you have the chance to try something or if you are challenged to do something and you step up, you are "creative." Try it, you'll like it.
Managing a younger boss - how to finesse working for a someone who has never seen a functioning typewriter
While you may not be keen on having a very young supervisor, your best strategy includes:
- If you are really unhappy with the selection process and believe that you are the victim of age or other discrimination, follow the appropriate legal steps and be prepared to accept the consequences. Talk your HR department; talk to a lawyer. Don't talk about this to every single one of your co-workers.
- If #1 is not true, stop whining. Right now. Whining and back-biting were unattractive and inappropriate in junior high, and they can cost you your grown-up job in the next 90 days.
- If you want to keep your job and to be valued for what you know and what you can contribute, you have to make perfectly clear from Day #1 that you are deeelighted to be on your boss's team, that you will do everything you can to assist him in the transition, and that you are invested in his success. If this is not true, start looking for a new job. If you sit at your desk and stew for the next five years (assuming you aren't fired), you will be a seething mass of inefficient hostility.
- Scrub from your vocabulary: "In my day.." "In the old days..." "We tried that once..." "We've never done it that way..." and anything else that smacks of your knowing how everything is and always should be done. You are not the leader of the band.
- On the other hand, you do have mission-critical information, and it is your job to very professionally broach the subject of that knowledge to your new boss. Suggest that you would like help in defining your new role -- you want to be able to provide useful information, you don't want to appear to be sniping from behind your desk, and at all costs, you don't want to appear to be undermining new leadership.
- Remember that your new boss may not have supervised anyone of your generation. If this person is as smart is senior management believes her to be, she should welcome your assistance if you present it with generosity and without being an overbearing know-it-all.
Looking for the File in 2009
The ugly specter of miscoded, misnamed and otherwise misplaced files has been conspicuous by its absence from most of the enthusiastic discussions of paperless offices. Perfectly executed, the paperless office should render “Where is the file?” a forgotten question. However, while this idea’s time has certainly come, it has within it the very real possibility of making “Finding the File” an excruciating electronic misery, and not much improvement over searching for a paper file.
The Paper File When The File was in a folder or in bankers’ boxes, lawyers and staff knew that it was somewhere – on a desk, under a desk, in a pile on the floor, behind the door, in someone else’s office, alphabetically misfiled, tucked into another file… While no one tracked the millions of hours each year devoted to “finding the file,” there was, in the end, some assurance that it was somewhere.
In the Very Olden Days, lost files could be painstakingly resurrected from lawyers’ “Chron Files.” In this now-forgotten labor-intensive process, the last copy of every document was typed onto flimsy paper called “onion skin” and saved in chronological order. In addition to keeping Client Files in order, a secretary managed her lawyers’ individual Chron Files, as well.
Donna Neff and Natalie Sanna come closest to raising the specter of lost files in the September 2009 issue of Law Practice Today in their piece about well-crafted file naming systems. They note “…that search software can be used to assist in locating documents; however, in our experience that can be a time-consuming process as one tries to guess what words or phrases might appear in the document being searched for…”
The lost electronic file Will the paperless office solve the decades-old problem of finding lost files? Keyword searches for lost documents are a lot quicker than searching every physical file in the office, but the “Dreaded Delete Key” retains its power. The paperless office will only fulfill its promise with thoughtful training whose goal is to have every document named and saved correctly.
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