Tips for Legal Studies Success, STUDENT, and GRADUATE
Professor Tom Higgins, Illinois Central College
From the moment you apply to be accepted into the Legal Studies program and you sit down for your first advisement session as a Legal Studies student right up to the day you walk out our door as another of our accomplished and successful graduates we have one goal: To help you develop and know how to constantly improve your skills to become competent, confident and employable.
Improving on and practicing your knowledge of and skills in the law is something you will need to do for your entire career. So as a Legal Studies student, you will be expected to grow continually, to work to acquire and develop knowledge and skills that will be expected of you in the workplace, to put in the effort necessary to become competent in the law. To that end, here are three of the most important expectations for successful Legal Studies students, expectations that we promise you lead to our success in this career field:
Professionalism: The most important expectation is professionalism. Lawyers take a solemn oath to work within and to abide by professional and ethical standards required by law. If they fail to uphold that oath or violate these standards they lose the privilege of being licensed and practicing law. A Legal Studies graduate employed by a lawyer must work under and avoid violations of these standards. So understanding the importance of professional and ethical standards and making the commitment to work within these standards is key to a long and prosperous Legal career.
Experience has shown that Legal Studies students who work diligently to master and abide by the Professional Responsibility and Ethical expectations of lawyers end up in better jobs with more satisfying careers.
Organization: Most Legal jobs are document and information intensive. Legal Studies graduates classify and catalog, categorize and organize all types of clients and file information for their supervising lawyer. Organizing this information requires planning and it is time-intensive. Successful Legal Studies graduates set aside time to plan their assigned work tasks in order to make their workflow smoother and more efficient. They organize their work with detailed "to-do" lists.
As a Legal Studies student, you will be encouraged to develop your own systems and methods for staying organized, but you will also be given some tried and true methods for doing so and you would be wise to begin to adopt these methods during your time as a student. Experience has shown that students who use their calendar, create "to do" lists, update those lists, and plan their time so that they are able to meet all of their various class assignments on time have an easier and more successful transition to these expectations in the practice of law.
One of the unique aspects of being employed in the Legal field is that, as with a Lawyer, you are constantly juggling many tasks at once. You represent many clients with many diverse and different legal matters and while you may plan to sit down and complete a particular task, you are likely to be interrupted by a telephone call from a client, a request from one of your supervising lawyers or some other task that requires immediate attention.
The ability to be flexible and multitask is a must-have skill for any Legal professional. This reality makes prioritizing your assigned tasks absolutely vital. As a Legal Studies student, you will have multiple assignments from various classes. The expectations are that you complete those assignments to the best of your ability on time, with no excuses.
Experience has shown that Legal Studies students who prioritize and plan their class assignments, multitask and plan their time so that they complete all expected tasks and assignments on time, have little trouble adapting to these expectations in the practice of law.
Communication: Whether it is by talking to clients, interviewing witnesses, or working with other law office personnel or court personnel to schedule depositions, hearings, or meetings, Legal professionals are expected to have good people skills and the ability to communicate verbally. You are the lawyer’s representative in these communications so you must express your thoughts clearly and as important, you must record and convey anything you learn in those verbal communications to your supervising lawyer. You should be prepared to document the details of every such conversation on behalf of a client, your lawyer, or law firm, including the dates, times, persons you talked to, subject matter, and every detail of that conversation.
Writing skills and written communication are also essential to this career. Most of this "writing" comes by way of internal memorandums responding to requests or assignments from your supervising lawyer. But Legal professionals are also involved in drafting court documents and correspondence from themselves and for the lawyer to review and send/sign. Formal, professional communication is expected and every person on the legal team must accept that all of their work will be reviewed by others in and outside the law office. So you must be open to giving and receiving constructive comments related to their efforts.
Experience has shown that Legal Studies students who work in class to meet expectations in both areas of communication, verbal and written, find job satisfaction in this career. To that end, you will be expected to communicate with your instructors and fellow students in ways that allow you to practice in the forms and formats of verbal and written communication utilized in the practice of law.
