It’s a time-honored tradition: going to law school to “keep your options open.” But as many law students come to know all too soon, identifying what those options are and how to pursue them successfully can prove to be a challenge both in law school as well as after several years of practice.
In my role as a law school career services adviser and as a personal career consultant, I have met with many students and lawyers who started law school without a clear sense of what they want to do with their degree. As one graduate described her entry into the profession, “When I applied and started law school, I had absolutely no idea what it meant to be a lawyer. There are no lawyers in my family, and I did not talk to any law students or lawyers beforehand. Looking back, it was a completely uninformed decision.”
