A Law Graduate’s Guide: Navigating Law School’s Hidden Career and Professional-Development Curriculum

Written to help the transition from graduate to lawyer, the Law Graduate’s Guide reveals that law school has a hidden curriculum. While studying, completing course requirements, and making progress toward a law degree, students should also be deliberately planning their career and professional development. This guide helps law students identify, organize, and make the best use of career and professional-development advice and resources in order to link their education with a meaningful career. The Law Graduate’s Guide has three parts organized around knowledge, skills, and ethics. Each of these has three parts of its own on: (1) school (the law school curriculum); (2) tools (professional-development resources); and (3) transitions (career paths and opportunities). The guide includes graduate success stories illustrating each practice; career and professional-development advice from dozens of judges, lawyers, and law school deans and professors; and exercises for each recommended activity. Appendix A lists the activities that each section of the guide describes, making for an index. Appendix B lists the same activities in roughly chronological order, recognizing that many of the activities are continuous and overlapping.