Bloomberg, Law Schools, Technology

The Renaissance Law Student: 3 Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Law School

In order to seize existing and emerging opportunities, law students must educate themselves in topics—from marketing to finance to Six Sigma—that might become relevant to their pursuits.

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When I went to law school, most of my classmates and I had a single plan in mind after graduation: becoming an associate at a law firm. We weren’t thinking about leading a product team. We weren’t thinking about becoming Head of Sales, a Commercial Product Director, or a senior member of an R&D team. And we definitely weren’t thinking about becoming a Chief of Staff or Supreme Court reporter.

We didn’t think those roles were for lawyers—but in retrospect, we were wrong. I say that from first-hand experience, because my colleagues at Bloomberg BNA who fill the very positions mentioned above are in fact lawyers. These are hardly isolated cases. All told, Bloomberg’s business side employs hundreds of lawyers, enough to staff a decent-sized law firm.

The fact is, non-traditional destinations for lawyers are quickly becoming the norm. It’s a trend with many implications for the profession, but nowhere are they felt more keenly than in law schools—which, let’s be honest, haven’t been having a great time of it lately. The narrative around law schools has been decidedly negative for years, with headlines telling a depressing tale of declining enrollment, burgeoning student debt, and fudged job-placement statistics. Much of this bad news for law schools, and the students enrolled in them, is a product of large law firms contracting in the wake of the recession, leaving fewer spots available for those who aspire to the traditional law firm path. For those who can’t see outside that path—they’ve probably been smart to stay away.

But for those who can see outside the traditional path, and have their eyes open to trends and possibilities, I don’t know if there has ever been a time of greater opportunity. While the number of Biglaw jobs shrinks or remains constant, the number of jobs open to law grads, both just after graduation and in the years beyond, grows and grows. More and more law grads are being offered the chance to go directly in house. Similarly, entire job categories have sprouted up in recent years. The project management, e-discovery, and document management fields have significant management opportunities for lawyers. These are just a few of the opportunities that did not exist for law grads a generation ago, but do now.

There is a caveat to this good news, which is this: in order to seize these existing and emerging opportunities, law students should educate themselves in topics—from marketing to finance to Six Sigma—that might become relevant to their pursuits. This means venturing outside contracts and torts—and probably outside the law school entirely. Looking back on my own career, I can see how valuable training outside traditional legal courses would have proven. As VP Business & Legal Affairs at Monster.com, it would have been beneficial to walk in knowing how to analyze financial statements, which an introductory finance and accounting class would have taught me. At Pangea3, the legal process outsourcing company I co-founded, it would have been helpful to have deeper exposure to project management and sales and marketing, skills I observed at Monster.com, but in which I had no formal training. At a venture business I co-founded before coming to Bloomberg BNA, a grounding in market analysis and non-legal research techniques would have proven useful.

I couldn’t begin to list the various non-legal skills that can prove invaluable in the future to today’s law students, but a few of the competencies that my fellow lawyers-turned-businesspeople use and see every day, and which are available at campuses around the country, include Communications, Marketing, Finance, Sales, Research & Development, Engineering, Data and Quantitative Analytics, and Journalism. I’ve missed many others, but you get the point.

Many forward-thinking law academic leaders realize this, and have been integrating interdisciplinary and polytechnic learning into their teaching. Professor Daniel Martin Katz at the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, for one, is “a proponent of training law students in hard technical skills” like coding. Professor Bill Henderson at Indiana University instructs students on the use of data. Professor Roland Vogl at Stanford, who co-directs the school’s Center for E-Commerce, serves as a resource for legal start-ups.

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Finally, I recently spoke with my friend, Penn Law School Dean Ted Ruger, who offered some wonderful thoughts, which I’ll try to summarize below:

1. Identify the kinds of work, intellectual projects and human interactions that help you flourish – and seek out jobs and roles that match those. Experiment with those jobs, and the skills needed for them, while in school, and assess your choices via opportunities offered in law school and elsewhere on campus.

2. Similarly, engage in a dynamic mix of learning modalities and experiment with a variety of teaching and learning styles, such as clinics, externships, seminars, courses involving a research paper, etc. – rather than choosing classes solely on subject matter. How you learn can impact what you choose to do and what legal (or non-legal) practice atmosphere will best satisfy you.

3. Ultimately, learn the foundation of law, learn the substance of other areas of interest, and learn about yourself and what atmosphere you’ll be comfortable in.

If your school is on the forefront of this trend, take advantage of the interdisciplinary offerings. If not, make it happen for yourself—head over to the engineering school, or the communications school, or the business school, and start learning. Because some of the most valuable legal education today lies outside the law school.

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David Perla is the President of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg BNA’s Legal division. Perla plays a key leadership role in the continued growth of the company’s legal business, which includes legal, legislative, and regulatory news analysis and the flagship Bloomberg Law technology platform. You can reach David at dPerla@bna.com and follow him on Twitter at @davidperla.

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