What Skills Do You Need to Be A Lawyer

If you want to fight justice and work in the heart of the law of the land, then being a lawyer is the great career path for you. The role of a lawyer interesting, it is varied, it will test you and it will reward you financially, professionally and personally. Becoming a lawyer is no easy feat and you will need to knuckle down and put in hours upon hours of study and work before you can even consider taking your BAR exam to be allowed to practice.

Even once you have passed the BAR, you will be at the bottom of the pecking order and will need to show strong results in order to gain a good position like Chicago’s Jon Bunge. If you want to be a lawyer like Jon then here are some of the skills which you are going to need.

Persuasiveness

One of the key roles in being a lawyer is having the ability to put across your argument in a convincing way and in order to do so, you need to be able to persuade people that you’re right. Being persuasive requires you to be smart with how you deliver your argument and being able to have the flexibility to change it based on who you are speaking with.

Computing

As a lawyer you will need to have a library-like mind, you will need to read up on so much information, be able to pick the key parts from it and most importantly, be able to remember it all. Not only is the law itself deeply complex and difficult to understand, you will need to draw on cases that have taken place throughout the years and be able to tap into this knowledge whenever a similar case comes up again. Studying to become a lawyer is an incredibly draining process but that doesn’t compare to how much information you will have to take in once you start practicing.

Team Work

Lawyers are not solo mavericks who stand alone in the courtroom preaching about justice, lawyers need to work as part of a legal team on any particular case and you should ensure that you are able to play any role within that team. It may be that you do not head up the case and that you are just given research to do, if that is the case then you need to be the best researcher there has ever been. Whatever role you play within the team, you need to excel in order for you all to win.

Communication Skills

Being a lawyer is not just about being smart enough to win cases and help clients, you also need to have excellent communication skills in order to make your arguments inside and outside the courtroom. You need to remember as well that whilst you are working on behalf of the law, you are also working for clients and you need to be sure that you have the sufficient communication skills to treat your customers well.