Prologue.
Everybody has thought about what they want to do as a job when they grow up sometime in their life. But have you researched it? My class and I have been researching our chosen careers for the past couple of weeks. My career is as a human rights lawyer. In this essay, I will hopefully touch base on most if not all of the things you want to know about a human rights lawyer. Some of the things that I will talk about in this inquiry are. What does the job involve, the pros and cons of it and more? I hope you enjoy this inquiry and learn something new.
What does this job involve?
Law school.
Being a human rights lawyer or even any lawyer involves lots of study and lots of time at law school/university. Law school is getting extremely hard to get into, there are however steps that you can take to increase your chances of getting into law school. Good grades in year 13 are crucial and passing level one, level two and level three are also very important. You need to show involvement in the community which could be lifeguarding, tutoring and having a part-time job. It takes approximately six to seven years to get your degree. However many countries have slightly different requirements, including shorter law schools, studying law as an undergraduate, and practical course requirements.
The primary role of a lawyer is to educate and argue for their clients. Like educating them on the laws that relate to the circumstance. It does not matter what type of circumstances your client is in. Your job is also to educate the client on their legal rights and obligations. One of the biggest responsibilities of a lawyer is to represent clients in any negotiations or disagreements, and in court.
You must have a good work ethic and can meet deadlines at any space or time. The job of any type of lawyer involves lots of reading and writing whether you like it or not. You must be able to write well and clearly at all times so you can get your point across. Most lawyers that you will meet do or use to travel a lot, some lawyers even travel around the world to appear in court. If you have bad English skills and do not want to get better then you will fail as a lawyer.
Pros and cons of being a lawyer.
Pro
A big pro of being a lawyer is the pay, they get paid significantly more than people on other jobs. Graduate lawyers usually earn forty-two thousand to forty-five thousand a year. Wich compared to lots of other people fresh out of university is very good. Lawyers with around two or four years of experience earn between forty-five thousand dollars and seventy thousand dollars per year after tax. While lawyers with more than five years of experience usually earn one hundred forty-eight thousand a year after tax. The max a normal lawyer can make is two hundred and fifty thousand a year. Getting to the two hundred thousand dollar mark as a lawyer takes time, lots of time and you must be very experienced. The average pay of a lawyer is one hundred and sixty thousand a year but you could be making anywhere from seventy thousand to, two hundred thousand dollars a year but the average salary of a lawyer is 160,000.
In the first four years of becoming a tradie, you would have earnt 200,000 compared to a lawyer who would have earned none until the tradie is fully qualified. And being a first-year lawyer you would have earnt minus fifty thousand dollars because of your student loan. What this graph shows you is that it takes time to become a lawyer and to start earning more than a builder. And that jobs are not as they seem there are a lot of steps you must take and it takes time lots of time. As you can see in this graph lawyers do not make any money for four years because they are at university but builders are making around fifty thousand a year so by the time lawyers start making money a builder would have made two hundred thousand dollars, luckily it does not take to long before lawyers start earning more. What this graph does not show is how much money they max out at so I will just tell you. Builders max their pay at one hundred and twenty thousand while lawyers max out their pay at two hundred and fifty thousand.
Con
A con about being a human rights lawyer or any is the amount of pressure you always have. You have to worry about client demands, changing laws, deadlines, and long hours and also deadlines. If you look at other jobs like working in a restaurant, web developer and even a university professor they are all nearly stress-free. Web developers and university professors sometimes spend the same amount of time studying to get fully qualified as a lawyer. Lawyers constantly have to worry about their law school debt for years which just piles onto their mountains of stress. If you are a teacher the rules are not constantly changing and you do not have to worry about studying the rules of teaching for hours when new rules come out. However, if laws change all lawyers need to spend heaps of time studying them. And learning all about them if they are important to them which most of the time will be. One last thing that makes the job of a lawyer even more stressful is all the false accusations people throw at them for many things. Most lawyers append the majority o their time behind a desk which is a big con to me.
Pro
Some of the pros of being a lawyer are flexibility, and great work enviroment. It depends on what type of way you look at it but reading and writing could be a pro for you. I know it is for me. Having a law degree means you can get a wide range of good-paying jobs with a law degree. This makes it much easier to travel because you know it won't be hard for you to find a good job. A big pro is that you can be your boss if you choose to be your own boss/self-employed attorney. If you work hard as a lawyer and keep on developing good skills then someday you might be able to open up a law firm which is a big pro.
What do I have to do to be successful?
You must be a very hard working person and not quit no matter how hard things get. The first five or so years are extremely hard as a lawyer, because of pay, student loan and how hard you are working. You must be able to adapt to all situations that are happening around you. You will not always get what you want and won't have the ideal things to work with all the time. If you are shy or like to keep to yourself it will be very hard for you to make is a lawyer. Because lawyers need to be people person you need to ask your clients heaps of questions and being shy will not get you anywhere. You must be able to put yourself in your client's shoes and understand what they are going through, good or bad. You need to be very understanding of your client, especially in human rights. Because more often than not they will be going through very hard things like discrimination, freedom and freedom of speech. Although you do may not be going through that you still need to understand that they are.
You must know all of the laws and regulations and have a lot of empathy and patience. You must be open to everyone and anything. At all times you must provide a fair and judicious opinion are all very important if you wish to be successful. You need to have good communication, time management skills, stress management, client service, technical skills and a thorough understanding of all the laws. A lot of work lawyers do involves writing and reading it’s unavoidable. You’ll draft documents, write letters to clients and draw up contracts among many other things. You must be able to display your advice or argument to whoever it might be extremely well. So you get the point across. That is another reason why a good vocabulary and a love of reading and writing is a must to be a lawyer. You must enjoy helping others as this underpins the job as well.
Skills that this job requires.
Human rights lawyers give legal advice and appear on behalf of clients in family and criminal cases. And challenging discrimination. This involves lots of skills. They must have a law degree and know all the different types of laws. You must be able to apply a sense of justice and know the basic principles of fairness. Law school teaches you loads of skills but you must still be open to new information and be able analysis and gain a quick understanding of it. One of the biggest skills that are critical to a lawyer is being confident in your self your knowledge and your information. You must have the confidence to be able to speak in public and in court. Human rights lawyers are the voice behind people who are victims of civil, family, discrimination, freedom of speech and many more so you must be able to talk openly and well about it.
Employers look for many skills. Like good communication, cultural awareness, customer focus, and lots of teamwork. With the world and technology changing at such an alarming rate, skills like resilience and adaptability are very important for all types of lawyers. While at law school law students are taught how to think critically and like I said before to be able to analyse difficult facts and issues. Law students are taught how to persuade people in a logical argument. No doubt there will be people that already know how to do this they will just be taught to do it at a much higher ability.
You must have the ability to meet deadlines. Without the ability to meet deadlines all will go wrong. Say you have to write up a legal document and you have one week to do it, and if by the time the one week comes around and you are still not done you will be in a world of bother. You will most likely lose in court and your client could be locked away in jail for a crime they did not commit. Or be fined a huge amount and many more things could happen. You must be able to balance the amount of work and off-time you have. You do not want to be overloaded with work or else the work that you do, will not be your best work.
What are the qualities you need to have to be able to own a law firm?
One of the main things you need to be able to open up a law firm is to be known as a good and nice lawyer throughout your area And you must have a good reputation. Unfortunately, most law schools are designed to teach you how to think like a lawyer. And do not devote much time to teaching you how to run a business such as a law firm. You need to know a little bit about business if you want to open up a law firm, most lawyers do know a bit about business.
You must be able to develop a good and reliable business plan. Without that, it is highly unlikely you will open up a law firm, and if you do you will not be very successful. You need to have a good credit score so that your loan hopefully gets accepted. There are not very many lawyers that have enough money to single handily open up a law firm. Another step is you need to choose a nice and cheap location for it. You must have skills that allow you to adapt easily, work as a team and overcome hard situations
Why did I choose this job?
I choose this job because I am interested in law and equality/word peace and many more. I believe that everybody should be treated the same and everyone should have a voice and know their rights. And I want to help people who do not have a voice to be heard. I believe everybody who has done wrong needs to be bought to justice.
Epilogue.
In this inquiry, I think I have answered the fertile question. I have gone over what this job includes, the skills you need and what employers are looking for. I have answered the fertile questions about the deliberate acts you need to take to become a human rights lawyer in and out of school/uni. If I do choose to take this as my future job I now know what steps to take, what skills I need and many more.
Bibliography.
https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/careers/get-career-ready/subjects/law/CRIN849_Careers_Kit_Law.pdf https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/search?q=lawyer
https://search.canterbury.ac.nz/s/search.html?collection=university-of-canterbury%7Esp-search&query=
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/pros-and-cons-of-being-a-lawyer
https://futureofworking.com/15-biggest-pros-and-cons-of-being-a-lawyer/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcXAPcnJKV4
https://www.thelawyerportal.com/blog/law-skills-develop/
https://www.careers.govt.nz/searchresults?tab=jobs&q=human+rights+lawyer
https://inquiry.tbc.school.nz/inquiries/6-careers
https://www.thelawyerportal.com/blog/law-skills-develop/
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/lawyer-career-drawbacks-2164594