If you desire to be a successful corporate lawyer, it is important to focus on self-improvement. As “Harvey Specter,” a popular character from the TV show ‘Suits’, once said, “Focus on making yourself better, not on thinking that you are better.”
With India’s economy on track to become the world’s third-largest, the corporate sector is sure to experience significant growth, leading to ample opportunities for law students. Furthermore, India’s dominance in the entrepreneurship space has positively influenced the demand for corporate lawyers.
In order to excel as a corporate lawyer, it is crucial to possess these five essential skills, as explained by Kritika Padode, a Board Member at Vijaybhoomi University.
1. PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS
The difference between an average and a good corporate lawyer is the effectiveness of their problem-solving skills. Problem-solving requires lawyers to be analytical thinkers to comprehensively analyse the situation and apply the legal knowledge they have acquired to the situation for a favourable outcome for their clients. Along with legal knowledge to solve any problem, lawyers are expected to have a deep understanding of the business domain to understand the feasibility of their proposed solution.
With the world getting interconnected, the complexities of problems are increasing and hence we need new-age lawyers to think beyond the convention and come up with out-of-the-box solutions that require exposure to interdisciplinary learning and design thinking.
2. EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATOR
As a corporate lawyer on a daily basis, you face multiple situations wherein you need to mediate and negotiate between clients. Further, being a patient listener and the ability to process an overload of information is a required skill for lawyers. It is essential that students focus on developing their soft skills for them to be effective communicators and find amicable solutions to issues by effective communication.
This aspect needs not only to extend to verbal skills but also to communicate effectively over electronic mediums.
3. WRITING SKILLS
Apart from court drafts, corporate lawyers are continuously engaged in drafting contracts and documentation for their clients. Corporate contracts have to be drafted skilfully to ensure that clients have been covered by all potential risks and face the least impact if things were to turn sour. This requires precision in drafting clauses and making a seemingly balanced contract to be agreeable to both parties. The best way to pick up this skill is to do maximum internships in offices where there is excessive drafting work for maximum exposure to varied contracts.
4. BEING MULTI-TASKERS
As a corporate lawyer, you have multiple activities in a day that you must undertake, like drafting, attending court, client meetings, networking, research, negotiation, etc. With so many tasks and roles to fulfil in a day, corporate lawyers have to be effective multitaskers and juggle skilfully. They must have adept organisational skills to attend to each task to its fruition.
5. CORPORATE AWARENESS
If you are looking to truly excel in the corporate field, lawyers must be well aware of the practical nuances of corporations, which requires a deep understanding of accountancy, business risk management, business strategy, business development, etc. Overall, lawyers also specialising in this domain need to be aware of contemporary developments in the corporate space.
Courtesy : IndiaToday