The Happy Lawyer by Levit Nancy Linder Douglas O

Author:Levit, Nancy, Linder, Douglas O.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2010-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

REMEMBER YOUR PASSIONS

There are ways to both pursue your passion and distinguish yourself from the other 43,500 new law graduates who will flood the market each year. There may not be “clear precedent” for the type of law you think you might like to practice.97 If you have a combination of skills that permits you to offer a distinctive set of services to clients, you may be highly marketable and also very content. Consider the experiences of Kevin Travis, a lawyer who lives in the Midwest, but whose primary client is several states away in the South.

I worked my way through both college and law school as a mechanic, and once I got my law license, I thought I’d never use my mechanical knowledge again. But that one client for whom I ended up spending all my time as a litigation associate at my first firm was a vehicle service contract administrator, and when they got sued over claims they had denied, they not only needed someone who knew how to defend a lawsuit, but also someone who could understand what had gone wrong with the car, and why, and could explain the mechanical aspects of the claim to the finder of the facts. Because I had the combination of legal and mechanical skills, I could do both, and suddenly, I’d found a specialty where I could stand out... not only in my town or my state, but in the whole country. I’m now doing the same type of work for a different client, but in the same industry, that is a thousand miles away. I get that work, rather than one of the many hungry local lawyers in the large town where my client is located, because of the unique combination of skills I can offer.

Or take Julia Belian, now teaching in Michigan, who earned a master of divinity degree and then a law degree. With this set of degrees, she entered estate planning. She says she found a “special joy” in probate work because “it really matters, whether it is rich clients or not, because we’re all mortal, and we all want to take care of our loved ones.... This isn’t just law we’re discussing, it’s life and death, quite literally.” She is also particularly trained to help clients discuss their fears and make estate plans—“because to plan, you must first accept that you will die.” Having these discussions with client, she says, is “a ministry of the highest order.”

Or perhaps you liked horses when you were growing up. When Denise Farris was little, her family “always had a horse in the back yard.” Her “horse hobby” continued after law school. When she noticed the enactment of statutes creating liability shelters for equine professionals, she created a newsletter addressing those statutes and mailed the newsletter to stables in a tristate area as a public service. She was invited to speak on the topic by the Missouri and Kansas Horse Councils as well as the University of Kentucky Law

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