The Girl's Guide to Law School
Get In, Get Through, Stay You
What’s one of the most common clichés about lawyers? Okay, other than being rude and mean.
It’s that they’re risk-averse.
Unfortunately, in the rapidly shifting world in which we all suddenly find ourselves, that’s a serious problem! Why? Because to be successful these days, you really need to have a bias towards action. In other words, it’s time to put away the risk-aversion and get on with things.
After writing a few pieces advising young lawyers how to start off on the right foot in their new jobs, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to look at the question from the other angle: If you’re supervising a young lawyer (or a law student in a summer job), what can you do to help ensure a smooth transition?
If you’re starting, or getting ready to start, your law firm summer associate experience, it’s natural that you might be feeling a bit uncertain.
If that’s where you’re at, you probably want to take advantage of this free offer, just for readers of The Girl’s Guide. (But hurry, since it expires on May 25th!)
As some of you may have seen, I published a piece on Ms. JD recently that raised some heckles: What No One Tells You Before You Go to Law School: You’re Entering a Sexist Profession. The reactions to this piece were very interesting:
It’s that last reaction that I find most interesting. These types of reactions fall into two categories:
Today I’m very excited to have Paula Davis-Laack here, to talk about how to figure out if you’ll thrive in the legal profession.
Paula’s got a great background for this, given that she was a commercial real estate attorney for seven years (in a large law firm and as in-house counsel for a Fortune 500 company) AND she’s one of the first 200 people in the world to have completed the master’s program in applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s also the founder of The Marie Elizabeth Company, which helps companies and individuals thrive and flourish.
Exciting stuff! Without further ado, here’s Paula.
One of the great things about running a website is that occasionally you can do favors for your friends!
In this case, a nice person from Smarter Review contacted me to see if I wanted to check out their bar review course. Frankly, the last thing I wanted to do was ever think about the bar exam again, but — conveniently — my law school roommate (who you might remember from this awesome post on getting a public interest job) had just decided to take the NY bar in February.
Win, win. Smarter Review gave her a free course, and she agreed to write about the experience for you.
So, here you go!
(If you want to try the course yourself, there’s a 15% discount code at the bottom.)
Today I’m very excited to have Susan Smith Blakely, author of Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law, here to talk about the challenges women face in the legal profession, and how they can be overcome.
Susan has another book coming out soon, so keep an eye out for that! Now, without further ado…
