Associate Advice, In-House Counsel

The Road Not Taken: Find Your Useful

How can you navigate your own path to being useful? Allow our new in-house columnist to explain.

By  
on

Ed. note: Please welcome new columnist Celeste Harrison Forst, who will be writing about legal career paths, including advice and thoughts based on her work as an in-house lawyer.

In this economy, just being a lawyer is no longer enough to secure employment or retain clients. You need something more. Last week I told you to be useful, but what good is that advice if you have no discernible special talents or skills beyond being a lawyer? What if your talent is a voracious work ethic? What if your skill is beer pong? Maybe you feel you aren’t useful at all. Maybe you have nothing more to recommend you than a law degree. Fortunately, usefulness is not a congenital determination. If you aren’t useful today, you can figure out how to make yourself useful tomorrow.

Last week I wrote about the need for lawyers to be useful, but I didn’t explain how to navigate your own path to being useful. Finding your useful is an introspective exercise. I’ve provided three questions to help you start your journey. If you come up empty in your investigation, I’ve provided suggestions to start your path to finding your “useful.”

  1. Why Do People Come to You?

This is the easiest way to find your useful. If you can answer this question with a few examples, you are well on your way to figuring out how you are useful to your clients or colleagues. If people come to you with questions, advice, pleas for guidance, then you are useful. If nothing comes to mind, don’t give up. Start paying attention to the requests that come your way. Keep track for at least a week, but a month is better. Any request that someone makes of you — even if it is “wanna go to lunch?” — track it.

If you are repeatedly asked for lunch, ask yourself why. Perhaps you are charming, maybe you always drive, maybe you pick the best spots, or you are an engaging companion. Even though these are not requests for substantive support, this data this tells you that your personal and social skills can be key to business development, intern management, and other non-substantive (but valuable) contributions. You have skills, you just need to know how to implement them to benefit your career.

The substantive requests are easier to analyze. If your colleagues ask you about rules, to proof a document, bounce ideas off, or review a redline together, these requests reflect your intellect and precision are of value. Identify those reasons and you have a path to your useful.

Sponsored

2.  Why Do People Go to Others?

“Oh no,” you think. “Nobody asks me for anything. I have no useful.” My first response is that you aren’t being honest with yourself and you haven’t tracked your interactions for a month. But let’s assume you are correct. In that case, eavesdrop. Nobody has all the answers to everything. Humans are social animals; we are greater in a pack. Listen to the requests you hear from your colleagues. This will help you identify a need. When you identify a need, you can use that as a map to find your useful. This is especially helpful guidance if you hear requests that don’t have a resolution. This tactic is only a map. I am not recommending you copy someone else’s skillset. I am recommending you listen for the needs in your organization and develop your own skillset based on those needs. If you have to learn something new, you may as well learn something desirable.

3. Why Do You Go to Others?

“Oh double no,” you think. “Nobody in my office speaks to each other. We sit around and criticize our colleagues behind their backs. Nobody would dare ask for help, doing so would be a sign of weakness. In my office, the weak are culled and killed.” Fair point. Look to yourself. Where are your weaknesses? Where do you find your work is helped with collaboration? Why do you (or would you, if you could) go to others? What are your needs? Answer these questions and you at least have an idea of skills that will be useful to you and may be useful to others.

Ultimately, you have to find the skills and talents you possess, but have yet to refine. The only way to do that is to practice. Practice sounds tedious and boring, but practice is what lawyers do.

Sponsored

The ideas behind finding your useful and being useful are easy. Implementation is hard. But it isn’t impossible. Go, make your list. Find your useful.

Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at C.harrisonforst@gmail.com.

Topics

, , , , , , ,