Career Advice for Job Seekers

How Can Law School Graduates Obtain Law Work Experience?

William Frierson AvatarWilliam Frierson
July 8, 2014


Smiling female law school graduate in university library, holding degree, diploma, or certificate

Smiling female law school graduate in university library, holding degree, diploma, or certificate. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

It is a fact that in most of the jurisdictions, the license is a must to give legal opinions and represent clients in court of law. As the legal industry is frequently firmly regulated, acquiring particular experience of lawyer work can be quite tricky. There are some jurisdictions that still allow legal apprenticeships, where an individual can work with the guidance of a lawyer who has a license, performing different duties that a legal representative would perform. In its place, there are many jurisdictions that require future attorneys to attend a law school and get knowledge about the actual lawyer’s work through internship programs, supervised clinics, and other means like work positions made available to graduate students while they are looking for license.

How to Obtain Law Work Experience?

There are two varieties of the lawyer work experience, which include (1) general law experience and (2) certain position experience. The first one is comparatively easy to come by. The support personnel are in need of a majority of the law offices. If you acquire a support position, it will certainly expose you to the major duties of a legal representative, comprising research and writing, management of a case and client as well, and in the last the adept legal analysis.

In order to acquire work experience of a general lawyer, you will have to work as an intern in a public law office or agency during your high school period. Moreover, you can study in the law domain to be a paralegal (a person with specialized training who assists lawyers). Many certificate programs are offered by the proprietary schools as well as community colleges in both positions that will obviously assist you contend for a position. Many other sorts of legal support positions also are there that will facilitate you with thoughts of what it would be like to be a legal representative, like a stenographer in the court (someone skilled in the transcription of speech, especially dictation).

As a lawyer, particular work experience can only be acquired by the law programs offered by law colleges or schools. These institutions offer positions to graduates of law school while they are waiting for licensing. Most of the jurisdictions permit working as an apprentice through which you can obtain lawyer work experience. This experience you can avail through applying to work directly with a legal representative to learn the ropes. Usually, you will be permitted to do work just like a lawyer, provided you are administered properly.

Similarly, in most of the law schools, special law programs facilitate you with lawyer work experience. Usually, you as a student work during your semesters in legal positions that equip you to be a professional lawyer. It has been also seen that some law schools also run their own legal clinics through which they offer apprenticeship programs. In such programs, students can do the actual legal work in the supervision of a licensed lawyer to obtain precious, realistic work experience.

However, there is a most specific means to acquire work experience of a lawyer; you will have to work as one in between your graduation while you are in a law school and the timeframe that you acquire a license. Remember, more or less two years are required for the licensing process. The law in most of the jurisdictions, during this period, permits graduates to work as a provisional lawyer.

Author Bio:

John Kelly is a proficient writer connected with Buy Essays Online from last three years. His duties is to provide maximum knowledge and guidance to the students in writing academic papers.

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