10 Things you must do in a Law School
There exist ferocious challenges in almost every part of your life spent in a law school. This competition commences with the exams and finds its end with the politics played by the students. Everyone focuses on an increasing number of achievements in his/ her CV. They compose blogs, articles, papers and many other things to make their CV… Read More »
There exist ferocious challenges in almost every part of your life spent in a law school. This competition commences with the exams and finds its end with the politics played by the students. Everyone focuses on an increasing number of achievements in his/ her CV. They compose blogs, articles, papers and many other things to make their CV look superior to other people.
Over the span of 5 years, promising students are completely focused on giving shape to their future. Here are 10 things that a law student must do in one’s law school to build one’s CV to get an upper edge over the other students in the race.
1. Internships
Internships help the law student to gain practical experience of whatever he had learnt in his law school during the semesters. The area and scope of the law are unbelievable; and hence, a law student has plenty of choices. Directly from litigation to corporates, NGOs, sports, land, design, media and so on – law and its specialists are required all over the place.
A more noteworthy test for a law student is to determine which is the field well suited to him. Internships help you to gain experience in various fields of law and this, in turn, helps you to determine the field best suited to your interest.
A lot of daily challenges come along with the legal profession. One needs to discover satisfactory answers to every problem that one is facing, and henceforth, maintaining the integrity attached to the profession of law. Learning and practice are some of the things internships make available to a law student.
In addition to giving a direction to a law student, an internship also encourages him/ her to practice and shape their career. In case one is clear with the field of law one wants to practice in or any law firm one desires to get into, one can persistently associate oneself as a legal intern in that sphere or at that firm and can prove one’s skills in that particular field. It encourages one to gain practical knowledge of the law.
Internships help to build one’s resume and introduces one to the professional world. In any case, getting an internship at any decent law firm or changing these internships into pre-placement offers (PPOs) has turned into one of the major problems for law students nowadays. It takes a well-planned strategy to get into any decent firm through internships and give a good performance there.
2. Networking
Every college or university hosts a lot of legal events and it’s essential that every law student participation in such events. They will regularly give a chance to make a network of connections, which forms a significant aptitude in any workplace. A number of exercises conducted at a law school focus on improving one’s abilities in specific areas such as networking. Connections help to get internships which can even turn into pre-placement offers.
3. Publish Research Papers
Research papers help the students in shaping their future. When law school starts, all the students are introduced to the assignments for the semesters and are expected to submit research papers to the professors of respective subjects. Typically, it is difficult for students in the initial stages to write anything.
For instance, a first-year student was asked to describe his experience regarding the assignments in his law school. He explained that he was all of a sudden asked to make a submission of 4 research papers with a maximum word limit of 4000 each by his professors. When he began composing, he could scarcely figure out how to present those articles.
He tried a lot but for most of the time, he sat with a screen containing a word document on which nothing was written. However, in his third year, he was able to compose a whole paper within a couple of hours. He started composing the research papers a night prior to the due date and effectively figured out how to compose them. When he achieved his last year, he was prepared to take various different types of tasks of different fields and was able to work continuously at a stretch for twelve hours without any distraction or feeling exhausted.
That is how a research paper affects an individual. One gets acquainted with extreme research work and draft it accordingly, which is an incredible skill to learn. Any lawful, may it be judiciary or litigation, demands research and inking it down on a piece of paper.
While an individual is involved in researching a specific sphere of law, he/ she will undoubtedly gain a lot of knowledge on that particular topic. That knowledge can be used by an individual for various other things except writing research papers.
One of the key strategies to sharpen the skills of researching and writing is to write a research paper. They are capable to represent a law student’s skills of reading law, analysing them and then, interpreting them. It is an activity that helps one to find the important data and citing it to substantiate one’s arguments.
For a law student, composing research papers amounts to learning art, which he/ she will be requiring for the remaining life.
4. Visits to Courts of Law
The Courts of Law mostly run for the whole year and it is always recommended to attend the court proceedings as they give exposure to the live courts, helps to learn the court mannerisms, gives an insight of the life at Bar and so on. This gives a fair idea of how a Court runs and how the trial is conducted.
All the minute intricacies of the legal profession come to the forefront when a law student visits the Court of Law.
5. Online Courses
A number of law students long for finding a job in the best law firm in the nation or the top most MNC. In any case, the majority of them do not get the job that they have dreamt of. One of the major reasons behind this is that a large number of organizations lean toward hiring people who have certain experience or any kind of specialization in that particular sphere of law they desire for working.
This is essentially in light of the fact that there is a gigantic distinction between practical application and theoretical knowledge of the law. One of the major challenges identified by various organizations and firms is this gap When there is a pool of experienced people available in the market, no one is willing to invest in the training of the fresh graduates.
An online course is one of the effective methods for bridging the gap that is present between the two. A decent online course gives both theoretical and practical knowledge on a particular sphere you desire to work in.
The industry of law is at present experiencing a phase full of competition. Where everybody is attempting to get a decent legal job in the best organizations and firms, an online course will separate you from other competitors. It will prepare you for the more prominent difficulties in your profession.
6. Public Legal Events
Numerous law colleges have a specialized cell particularly devoted to creating legal awareness among the public in general. Such institutions tend to host public lectures, conferences, networking events etc., which are conducted with the main purpose of enhancing the legal knowledge of an individual and bringing the best out of an individual.
Such cells organize events that introduce the member students to various people of different kinds of legal fields. Society also has the option to host any occasion outside of college that might be of advantage for any law student.
7. Moot Courts
Another stimulating activity that one can learn in law school is Mooting. The national moots develop performance pressure at an extreme level. Sometimes, it leads to immense stress, anxiety and other problems while one gets the very first opportunity to present one’s arguments in the moot court.
Mooting helps one to learn how to deal with any problem in daily life. Ordinarily, it takes about a month and a half to get ready for any mooting competition.
The preparation for a moot includes reading cases, recognizing the facts which are relevant and irrelevant to the issues and then making the memorials for both the parties viz., plaintiff and defendant. The research, brainstorming and preparing contentions substantiated with evidence require a lot of effort.
This proves to be of great help that one cannot imagine. Any individual, who takes part in moot court competitions, will, in general, have a centre driven methodology while solving any problem. This is the place you figure out the technique to strategize and complete your work.
8. Nurture Creativity
As per the discussion in one of the articles in Harvard Business Review, the most significant expertise that a leader can possess is creativity. However, “80% of British and American employees find themselves being more pressurized for productivity as opposed to creativity.” This fact is valid for lawyers as well.
New thoughts and ideas find their roots in creativity and thus, making creativity one of the most important factors for finding solutions to any problem or making any logical argument. Typically, the curiosity and creativity, which a learner begins within the law school, gets killed in the law school.
Stare decisis is not of much help for sparking and inspiring creativity. Nowadays, since a lot of technology and data is readily available, the complexities of the legal system have increased. It has become very difficult for lawyers to remain nimble and agile in such situations. Creativity helps to cultivate and practice these skills, which in turn helps an individual in distinguishing from other law students.
9. Debate Society
Debates are full of fun. There exists a myth amongst various students, who are into their academics that parliamentary debates also form the part of extra-curricular activities that are not going to help much for the CV or the profession but it is the other way round.
Debaters are a class of people, who grabs everybody’s eye. Debating helps to enhance the imagination power, creativity as well as intensity of logical argumentation. This forms the bunch of key expertise a lawyer advisor ought to have.
Debating is all about the combination of being impromptu and making logical contentions, at the same time. Besides all of this, a lot of things like Mock preliminaries, MUNs, Mock Arbitration, Negotiation and Mediation Competitions, Client Counselling Competitions, even Music Fests and Sports like Virudhika, Strawberry Fields and so on, are not many activities that you ought to take an interest in.
10. Work smart, work hard and be organised
If an individual is efficiently focusing on work and is well organized, it becomes easier for them to hand in the workload. When everything is already planned and work is prioritized, all the tasks piled for the day can be completed within the stipulated time limit. While studying, one should concentrate on the end objective that is learning law in a manner that can be effectively applied in any exam or test.
Smart work will also help the individual to have an upper edge from the remaining students.