If you are a busy law student or someone with a full or part-time job, it may be difficult to find the time to hone your practical legal skills. This problem becomes even more significant if you are unable to attend in-person sessions or programmes, whether due to COVID restrictions or a lack of events near you. To help you overcome these challenges, this article details some flexible and convenient ways to hone your legal skills from the comfort of your own home.
Virtual Internships
One of the best things to come out of the pandemic was the development of virtual internships. These programmes can teach you about specific legal skills and areas of law while giving you opportunities to practice what you have learned in a legal context. Some virtual internships take place at specific times, offering a week’s worth of interactive activities, while others are self-paced and available to complete at any time. Both are very useful, but they can be used in different ways to maximise their usefulness.
Scheduled internships (such as those run by Legal Cheek and the Bright Network) usually offer live talks from lawyers and other legal practitioners. These talks are extremely useful for any aspiring lawyer, as they explore the role of a lawyer within individual practice areas. To make the most of these talks, try and note down details of any specific situations that the lawyer mentions. What skills do they mention? Who are the lawyers working with? What are the lawyers contributing to the work? This information will help you further your understanding of what lawyers do from day to day, making it easier to tackle questions about this topic during applications and interviews.
Self-paced internships (such as those offered by Forage) are primarily focused on teaching legal skills and then prompting you to apply them in fictional fact scenarios. This is an excellent opportunity to improve your legal skills and see how they can be applied in real situations. For example: if you are asked to draft a memo for a client on an area of law, this will help you learn how to identify key information and tailor it to the client’s needs. Furthermore, these programmes usually provide a ‘model answer’ and other pointers, so you can evaluate your performance and identify anything that you missed.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning is a fantastic platform to hone individual skills because you can select videos or courses that cover the exact skill that you want to learn about. Each course is divided into shorter segments so that the content is easier to digest, and you can track your progress in a course to ensure you do not accidentally skip or repeat any segments. This makes LinkedIn Learning an excellent resource for students with busy schedules, as you can fit in short segments in between other commitments to continue your learning. If you are considering using LinkedIn Learning, you may want to check whether your university has a free subscription for students, as this means you will not need to pay a subscription fee. Otherwise, you can use the platform’s one-month free trial to complete as many relevant courses as you can, taking notes as you go along.
While completing a LinkedIn Learning course, it is very useful to pay attention to any anecdotes or explanations of how skills are used in context. This will help you develop an understanding of how these skills can be used to manage difficult situations successfully and, as such, they may help you evaluate your approaches to Situational Judgement Tests and interview questions. As ever, you should also make sure that you take notes to allow you to re-visit the content covered during the courses when you need to brush up before an important interview or internship.
Virtual Events
As in-person events became unfeasible due to the pandemic, virtual events became significantly more attractive to those wishing to host useful workshops and events. Even though in-person events are now returning as restrictions lift, the advantages of hosting these events in a virtual setting mean that we are unlikely to see them vanish quite yet.
One of the most useful types of virtual events is a virtual networking event. These events may be hosted by law firms, legal skills organisations, or by trainee solicitors looking to pay it forward, and they present an excellent opportunity to make connections with people who are already in the profession. To make sure you get the most out of networking sessions, it may help to research who will be attending ahead of time. Knowing which firm they work for and what practice area(s) they work in can help you focus your questions to plug any gaps in your knowledge. Furthermore, it can help you make a good impression by showing a genuine interest in who they are and what they do.
Other useful events that can help you boost your CV are competitions. These competitions can cover topics such as commercial awareness, negotiation, mooting, and much more. They can usually be found on the websites of legal skills organisations or being circulated on LinkedIn. By taking part in competitions, you can further your understanding of these topics while also gaining evidence of your proficiency if you do well. Anything that you achieve during a competition will make an excellent addition to your CV or a good example for a competency-based interview question, so it is well worth taking part. If you do not feel comfortable competing, you may be able to get involved in an organisational capacity. This may be easier to do with smaller competitions organised by individual LinkedIn members, but it will enable you to engage with the topic from a unique angle that may be particularly impressive to employers.
In Summary
Learning and improving your legal skills takes time, but it can often be difficult to carve this time out of a busy schedule. By using the resources listed in this article, you may find it easier to balance your professional development with other commitments, helping you continue pursuing your career goals without needing to leave the house.
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