What are the skills required to a lawyer? From whatever little I have seen of the profession, I can divide the skills into 3 different types of skills-Skills that can be developed while at the law school, personality traits or office skills and court room skills.
Law School Skills
I have just spoken of the number of laws and how it is impossible to know them and how lawyers are required to know ‘where’ to find the law and ‘what to make’ of it above. This is a primary skill officially called ‘Research’ and ‘Analysis’.
Learning ‘Research’ is fairly easy. All you have to know is how to use several databases to extract information relevant to your cause. It includes books, internet, computer based databases, Law Journals and sometimes, when you are looking for a little expert information, the databases relating to such information. For example, if you are working on a case involving, let us say, surrogacy, you need to know the medical aspects of surrogacy as well.
Learning ‘Analysis’ is a life long process. Honestly, most educated minds are doing analysis at a subconscious level all the time. For example, when you decide to buy a certain model of a scooter averaging 50 kpl for 50,000 rupees over a cheaper model costing 35,000 rupees but averaging only 40kpl, you have processed the information to reach a conclusion that spending more right now makes more sense because by buying a scooter that mileages more, you are actually saving more money in the long run. Here, the prices and the mileages of the scooters are mere information. Your conclusion is your analysis.
Again, this fact situation is fairly simple involving mere facts. When you have to process facts along with several esoteric rules to reach a conclusion, the process becomes fairly difficult. Most judgments are conclusions reached after taking into consideration these facts along with the esoteric rules. That is why I strongly recommend reading real texts of judgments and the text books written using the Case Book Method.
It is needless to mention that it is this skill that will help you all your life in no matter what you decide to do after taking your law degree. You need to analyze while making every important conscious decision of your life.
Office Skills
Though I have labeled these as office skills, I do strongly think, that one may begin to develop them while at the law school itself. When you start working, you need only to sharpen them.
‘Trust’
Let us say you are suffering from a serious ailment which requires going under the scalpel. The operation is likely even to cause your death if anything goes wrong. Would you entrust your life into the hands of someone who passed out from a Medical School yesterday? Unless, you are insane, your answer will be a firm and a certain no. But you certainly will entrust it into the hands of someone who has done several such operations, won’t you?
The business of a lawyer is very similar to that of a doctor. It is serious. You’re dealing with the lives and hard earned money of other people. It is very necessary therefore to ‘win the their trust’. The way you talk to people, the way you interact with them, you should seem authoritative, yet friendly and approachable. You should look like and be someone people around you like will trust for your word.
Developing this persona is a skill. Everyone ends up finding different ways to develop it. I suggest talking to diverse groups of people on any subject under the sun. I say ‘any subject under the sun’ because it brings in a sort of humility in a person- because then you know, you don’t know much and yet while you remain confident of your ability to express your thoughts, you end up having ‘respect’ for thoughts you disagree with and subjects you know nothing of. You may also end up knowing a lot about things you know nothing of. This was the sort of exposure LST was able to give me. What you should be happy about is that most law schools are filled with diverse people from all over India and doing this is fairly easy.
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