Talent shortage: Finding law graduates with the right skills and background

Many law firms see graduates’ volunteer work for a students’ organisation as a suboptimal investment. It is usually seen as an extracurricular activity that does not provide students with skills that could be useful in their future careers as lawyers.

The students’ experience and engagement in this respect have traditionally not been considered as very valuable. The challenges and problems that the students faced were deemed to be not similar enough to those encountered by lawyers in their professional careers.

However, times have changed. The skills that law students develop during years of working in their students’ associations are now increasingly being recognised as valuable to law firms.

New skills required

In today’s legal environment, law firms are emphasising the importance of having the skills needed to attract and keep clients. In an age when countless lawyers stand ready to provide legal assistance on an equally high level, factors beyond mere legal knowledge are becoming increasingly important and decisive in determining who obtains the contract.

Law firms are being forced to fight for their clients. In order to do so, they have to understand their clients’ needs as well as the work systems and relevant markets they operate in. That includes, among other things, becoming familiar with the particular business environment, following trends on the stock exchange or noticing significant changes from an economic point of view.

Moreover, the most important factors in winning new work are often an international approach and respect for cultural differences. The legal market is globalised to a large extent and cross-border international transactions facilitated by lawyers have become daily business. An understanding of different points of view that stem from different backgrounds is expected nowadays – especially of lawyers.

However, these types of skills are not the ones that law students typically develop during their regular course of studies at law school. Even though the global education system is slowly changing by, for example, including more practical exercises, universities are not in a position to respond comprehensively to law firms’ needs. If law firms look for recent graduates who possess such skills, they will have a hard time identifying them by evaluating only their grades or ordinary student activities.

During regular classes in the vast majority of law schools all over the globe, students have no chance to learn more about the mechanisms and systems present in the business world. Law students’ education focuses on providing all the knowledge and skills required to handle all the tasks associated with being a lawyer who provides legal support and advice. This is obviously good and correct, since that is the most important ‘end service’ delivered by lawyers. However, should there be no clients requesting such services from their firm, having the necessary skills to find new clients ?would be useful.

If a law firm identifies the required skills which are lacking and decides to fill this gap with employees who can satisfy this need, it can either decide to train existing employees or look for graduates who already possess these abilities. In the latter case, it would be sensible to look more closely at law students and young lawyers who were active in students’ associations during and even after their time at university.

A practice environment

A students’ organisation is, in a way, an assessment centre where students can practice handling many of the situations that lawyers face on a regular basis.

Volunteers in students’ associations learn how to acquire ‘clients’ from the very beginning, since they are constantly looking for sponsors who will be interested in the ‘services’ their organisation provides. They also learn a lot about positioning and building a brand and image – a crucial skill in a competitive market.

Unlike other law students, members of students’ organisations network with externals representing different sectors and professions. If the organisation is strong and enjoys a good reputation, there will often be potential partners interested in cooperating with it. In this situation, students learn how to build and maintain long-term partnerships, how to work in a business environment and how to understand the needs of their partners, some of whom function outside of the legal field.

Members of the organisation often ‘study’ the content of potential partners’ websites in order to better identify their needs and find out how to meet them. They keep track of what is going on in the business world and take note of significant changes in the market that can make one partner wealthier than another or more interested in the services that their organisation can provide.

Often, the students also need to represent their association externally. These constitute their first experience of business meetings. Interestingly, they often encounter situations similar to those of senior lawyers in negotiation discussions. While trying to obtain support for their organisations, students gain their first valuable experience in business reality. They learn how to prepare meetings and how to behave during them, as well as how to follow up on meetings and evaluate them.

While organising events, students have the opportunity to work as part of a team and to learn about group dynamics. Consequently, when they join a law firm and are placed in a team working on a specific issue or with a particular client, they have already learnt the main rules of teamwork.

International mindset

An international mindset and good cultural understanding are important factors that influence successful teamwork beyond national borders. Students’ organisations provide firsthand experience of cooperating with people from other countries on a professional level.

Law students will have worked on international projects or held positions that required cooperation and communication with colleagues from other countries. In many cases, the first time they worked with colleagues from other countries was when organising joint projects with members of different national branches of their association.

They will also be used to exchanging information with people from all over the world and feel comfortable in an international sphere. This experience is certainly an asset for law firms functioning in broad international networks, where effective cooperation between lawyers from different national offices is crucial.

An international mindset can also be connected with a willingness to study or work abroad. If you are looking for employees who, when needed, will consider working in one of your offices in another country, you will most likely find them within a group of students with experience in an international students’ association.

Bartosz Balewski is president of the European Law Students’ Association (www.elsa.org)