Who can forget the terror of a new job? Entering an unfamiliar world, with unknown expectations, is a nerve-wracking experience. In law, the new attorney is tackling not only a new job but also a very new, very different, and exceptionally stress-filled professional life...and mountains of student debt. Each year, tens of thousands of new law graduates enter an already saturated job market...yet many are ill-prepared for survival in an ever more unforgiving, fast-paced profession. As law students, you're offered a wide array of guidebooks to succeed in law school, to excel in law exams, and to pass the bar exam. Upon entering the real world of law, however, you're are pushed back into a dark, dangerous jungle. The Young Lawyer's Jungle Book will be your guide to help you find your way to safety and career success.
This book contains hundreds of tips from attorneys throughout the country with the critical advice new lawyers need to ensure their success. The book provides useful, practical advice that law schools never teach. It starts with important steps graduates can take even before they begin work. With an easily readable style, Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks continues to teach new lawyers the ropes from their first day on the job. Humorous, real-life examples illustrate the lessons along with bulleted tips that provide comprehensive advice quickly.
An Associate's First Year: A Guide to Thriving at a Law Firm provides guidance on the expectations of a first year attorney, establishing yourself as a leader within the firm, receiving and responding to performance feedback, and much more.
This book is for lawyers who are just beginning their careers, who want to do more than show up, act eagerly, and not get fired. This is for lawyers who want to know what their role is in a law firm from day one and take their careers head-on, with direction and purpose. This is for you if you don't care to be frustrated or overwhelmed by your career, but awakened. This is for you if you know that you want to become a leader in your law firm, practice area, or industry down the line. Are you in? Thrive will improve your performance, save you some very real growing pains, and accelerate your legal career.
This guide to surviving and thriving (aka "surthriving") in law school--and beyond--is filled with unique insights from a former BigLaw associate (and current in-house counsel) as well as accomplished guest contributors who offer actionable tools, candid advice, and helpful strategies that law students and all legal professionals can start using today to immediately achieve more happiness, success and well-being in law (and life).
This collection of essays written by The Curmudgeon, offers practical, honest and you need to know this advice for surviving and thriving in a law firm. The book covers the basics of law practice and law firm etiquette, from doing effective research and writing to dressing for success, dealing with staff and clients and building a law practice. Concise, humorous and full of valuable (albeit curmudgeonly) insight, this is a must-read for every newly minted law school graduate or new lawyer.
The Essential Associate is for young lawyers who aspire to grow, succeed, and advance on a partnership track at a law firm. It addresses the dual imperatives that young lawyers must grapple with: becoming an excellent lawyer and developing a book of business. Building mastery as a lawyer and building a book of business both take a long time. No longer can young lawyers sit back and wait for opportunities. But never before have more tools and resources been available that allow entrepreneurial-minded lawyers to stand out and succeed. From attorney, coach, and legal marketing expert Jay Harrington, The Essential Associate is a step-by-step guide that helps young lawyers, and law students preparing for a career in the law, not just survive, but thrive in today's competitive law firm environment. It includes insights from dozens of successful lawyers at firms across the country, general counsel at Fortune 500 companies, and top consultants to the legal industry. The Essential Associate has been praised by successful lawyers at law firms of all sizes. Foley & Lardner partner William McKenna calls it, "A must-read for every new "Biglaw" associate and, for that matter, young associates at every size firm." McKenna believes that, "If every young associate reads this book within the first six months of beginning practice, and put its lessons to work in their daily practice, their careers will benefit immeasurably." The Essential Associate is an indispensable tool for any young lawyer hoping to achieve success in today's competitive legal marketplace. PRAISE FOR THE ESSENTIAL ASSOCIATE "Jay Harrington's insights on how to become an Essential Associate are spot on. He provides practical advice on what action steps to take to succeed in becoming a valuable team member and a better lawyer." Brian McCarthy, Managing Partner L.A. Office, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom "Jay has been there, done it, and learned from it. His gift is succinctly communicating his and others' lessons learned. An enjoyable read that will help you succeed." Scott Wolfson, Partner at Wolfson Bolton "The Essential Associate is a must-read for anyone starting a legal career or hoping to take their career to the next level. It's highly practical, and brimming with concrete advice from high-performing law firm partners on the qualities they are looking for in young lawyers. The first step to a successful legal career is graduating from law school. The next is reading The Essential Associate." Felicia Perlman, Partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom "Making the transition from a legal philosopher (law school) to a legal practitioner is the hardest step every lawyer must make. The Essential Associate is a vital resource to facilitate that process." Paul H. Burton, Founder of QuietSpacing, LLC "The Essential Associate combines a wealth of practical insights into a readable story well attributed to interesting historical figures, giants of industry, and hands-on practitioners who have been in the trenches in recent years dealing with a profession that has become a business." William Gilbride, Partner at Abbott Nicholson "If you're a new associate looking for fundamental advice on how to get ahead, The Essential Associate is a great place to start." Keith Lee, Attorney, Author, and Founder of Associate's Mind and LawyerSmack "The Essential Associate is a must read for every new BigLaw associate and, for that matter, young associates at every size firm. It combines clear guidelines and action steps with real-life insights from a wide range of attorneys who have spent years navigating the shoals of legal practice. If every young associate reads this book within the first six months of beginning practice, and put its lessons to work in their daily practice, their careers will benefit immeasurably." William McKenna, Partner at Foley & Lardne
Each year, over 40,000 new students enter America's law schools. Each new crop experiences startlingly high rates of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and dissatisfaction. Kathryne M. Young was one of those disgruntled law students. After finishing law school (and a PhD), she set out to learn more about the law school experience and how to improve it for future students. Young conducted one of the most ambitious studies of law students ever undertaken, charting the experiences of over 1000 law students from over 100 different law schools, along with hundreds of alumni, dropouts, law professors, and more. How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School is smart, compelling, and highly readable. Combining her own observations and experiences with the results of her study and the latest sociological research on law schools, Young offers a very different take from previous books about law school survival. Instead of assuming her readers should all aspire to law-review-and-big-firm notions of success, Young teaches students how to approach law school on their own terms: how to tune out the drumbeat of oppressive expectations and conventional wisdom to create a new breed of law school experience altogether. Young provides readers with practical tools for finding focus, happiness, and a sense of purpose while facing the seemingly endless onslaught of problems law school presents daily. This book is an indispensable companion for today's law students, prospective law students, and anyone who cares about making law students' lives better. Bursting with warmth, realism, and a touch of firebrand wit, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School equips law students with much-needed wisdom for thriving during those three crucial years.
Indispensable Counsel: The Chief Legal Officer in the New Reality provides readers with the foundations of corporate representation followed by practical guidelines on how the multiple roles of General Counsel are, or should be, resolved, with best practices as the goal.
