Training time

Paralegals require quite less training to enter the market of law, with as less as 3 months of training. Certain certifications indeed require two years to complete, as required by certain firms. However, these are offered as Associate degree programs or diplomas. On the other hand, a lawyer must complete atleast three years of traditional law course or a five-year full length integrated BA.LLB or BA.LLB.

Entrance Exam

In a profession of a paralegal, no entrance exam is required to be given, although high shool percentages/CGPAs may be looked at. However, in law school admission, high scores in entrance tests such as CLAT, AILET, LSAT, SET etc is required especially if one in interested in a high tier law school.

Financial requirements

A career as a paralegal does not warrant spending of a huge amount of money or depending on a debt, however, law school debts are more common and can extent to six-figures quite often; repayment of which turns out to be a headache.

Post-Education Exam

In a paralegal’s career, no further examinations are required to start practicing in the field; a certificate suffices in most cases. However, a state bar exam needs to be cleared by lawyers to start practicing on their own.

Career Growth

In case of a paralegal, career growth is limited and the graph remains in a straight line mostly. Lawyers, on the other hand, being highly trained in the particular field, have a lot of career options and thus, ample advancement opportunities.

Supervision

In their careers, paralegals are mostly supervised by lawyers and they cannot practice independently or autonomously.

Salary

In the Indian market, the salary margin for paralegals fall much below than that of a lawyers; wherein lawyers have the potential of unlimited earning.

Job Market

In India, both the professions of a lawyer and a paralegal is highly competitive and with increasing supply than demand. However, the competition in case of lawyers is marginally high as opposed to developed countries.

Job Stress

In the office, paralegals have a limited number of responsibilities, involving minimal brainwork. For lawyers, the responsibility level in intensely high and a high level of stress thus ensues.

Overtime Potential

Paralegals work on timely basis and thus, for any overtime work, they are entitled to extra payments. Wherein lawyers are not entitled to the same as such overtime work furthers their own case and career.

Further education

Once the training is complete, paralegals are not mandated to complete any other educational requirement. A lawyer is required and also has the option to have a masters degree in certain cases.

Learning Curve

Paralegals perform routine and manual tasks which require minimal or no brainwork. Thus, the learning curve is definitely shorter that lawyers, who have a large learning curve as they have to perform intellectually challenging and brain-teasing tasks.

Required Skills

Paralegals require a different set of skills than lawyers, being efficient in organizations and detailing. Whereas, lawyers are required to be extremely proficient in communications and possess legal, analytical and logical knowledge.

Administrative Support

In most cases, paralegals lack such support, wherein lawyers are provided with the same.

Both lawyers and paralegals are integral to the legal system of the country and they both play extremely crucial roles. However, they have different kind of responsibilities and perks attached. Hopefully this will help you have a headstart in choosing either. All the best!

The post Should you become a paralegal or a lawyer? appeared first on Legal Desire Media and Insights.

1.     Stress

One of the greatest challenges faced by a lawyer is having to deal with the constant amount of stress on a daily basis. Whether it is approaching deadlines, or pressure of bills or client demands or staggeringly long hours or daily changing laws- coupled with the rising business and market pressures, evolving technologies and soaring student debts; law as a career imposes a huge burden of stress on the head of a lawyer.

Such kind of a stressful life has created job dissatisfaction in the sector by metes and bounds. In a survey conducted in the American Bar Association, 44% of those surveyed has not recommended the career option to any young person.

2.     Staggeringly Long Hours

A humongous workload and scarcity of staff automatically results in more working hours for lawyers. On a Global scale, lawyers are also expected to be available to clients 24/7. Now-a-days the working hour for a lawyer is unduly high, having 50-plus hours of work in a week.

Adding to that, a hugely competitive industry has forced lawyers to work a lot into client development and activities relating to business management, in excess to normal working hours. Thus, most lawyers are unable to balance between work and personal lives.

3.     Sky-high law school debt

In today’s competitive education market, a law school costs more than the traditional courses in Universities and has outpaced inflation. Even in a mediocre law school, tuition fees soar at about INR 1.5 lakhs per annum. Thus, entering with a six-figure law school debt is quite common.

Most problematic of all, the fresh graduates are unable to earn enough and repay such debts in an extremely competitive job market. Thus, financial security as a result of a law degree is no longer ensured.

4.     Competitive Job Market

As a matter of fact, lawyers now a days face one of the most competitive job markets in the history where a record number of jobs have been cut down and salaries were drawn to a low. However, law schools aren’t cutting down on enrolment, in fact facing an increase in student intake.

An ample amount of lawyers, especially in India, are seen to have forced to settle for employment with far less remuneration or change their careers entirely. An increased demand with respect to the declining supply causes numerous professionals to rethink the value that their degree may yield.

5.     Spendthrift clients

In the contemporary era, clients are more conscious about how much to spend on legal proceedings. Experiencing decades of hiked bills of lawyers and firms, firms now demand more value for their money and thus, lawyers are forced to keep their billing rates reasonable.

The market is unwilling to pay exorbitant amount of money to expensive lawyers to perform jobs that can be performed by other professionals (such as paralegals) or by technological advancements.

6.     Changing Legal Paradigms

The law practices have changed in dramatic ways, taking away the monopoly from lawyers in the field. Legal document technicians, virtual law offices, self-help websites, mobile apps, learning apps, lawyers have to face an ample amount of competition from an array of non lawyer sources.

It is to be noted that such sources not necessarily ensure similar results as a trained and educated lawyer or can ensure justice, however, they do divert several potential clients away from ‘real’ lawyers.

7.     Technology

Technology has taken over and transformed the entire field of law and now-a-days, lawyers are required to be adept in a huge array of technological platforms, ranging from document review, management tools, spreadsheet, presentations, billing softwares etc.

Even in spite of that, the market leans towards technology to replace lawyers entirely and swallow their jobs.

8.     Legal Process Outsourcing

It is a contemporary economic reality that more and more legal work is being outsourced to workforces who work cheaply overseas or to other regional delivery centres onshore. Thus, a number of traditional lawyers are being eroded or displaces entirely.

This problem is faced mainly by developed countries wherein billing rates of lawyers are exorbitantly high and not so much in a developing country such as India, where outsourcing might result in a price-hike.

9.     Public Distrust

There is generally low public perception about lawyers and widespread distrust has continued even in recent times.  Rising billing rates, mala fide lawsuits, news scoop of lawyers behaving badly, lower the image of lawyers to a great extent, in the public eye.

10.  Non-likeable Clients

It is inevitable that lawyers cannot pick and choose which clients to work for, at least if they want to make a living despite all the aforementioned drawbacks. A very large demographical group of people require lawyers and they might as well be wealthy, sophisticated but arrogant. On the other hand, they might also be homeless and accused of heinous crimes they didn’t commit.

A lawyer may not like all his clients but they have to give their best representations to each of them and show their tolerance to people irrespective of their personal feelings.

There Are Advantages, albeit.

Top 10 Reasons to become a Lawyer

There are many advantages involved with law as a career and it certainly does offer gratifications. However, all these factors should be considered before opting for law as a career and profession.

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However, the more I decided to pursue this course, the more I realized that thinking like a lawyer might not be my forte as I was more inclined towards a creative perspective and judged mainly based on emotions. However, I recall an instance wherein a highly experienced senior lawyer during one of my internships told me that the real danger ensues when once you start thinking like a lawyer and cannot think any other way.

On our first day of law school, our Vice Chancellor told our first year class that before we even embark on our journey of becoming lawyers, we must learn how to think like them. One of the brave hearts in the batch asked him that how do we know when had we learned to think like a lawyer, in reply to which our Vice Chancellor replied that it is when we get paid to think.

The more we got involved in the intricacies of the course, the more I saw that thinking like a lawyer actually changed and modified our reasoning skills and structures. Reasoning came before memorizing and law professors were adept at filtering out students who only memorized but couldn’t reason their issues.

Essentially, thinking like a lawyer means thinking within the confines of inductive and deductive forms of reasoning. We had readily entered into a world full of rigorous dialogues, when we started off as law students. In this particular world, abstracts were first formulated and then described and thus, a general principle or rule was discovered, then distinguished from another general rule. Narrowing down the focus along with intensifying the same became our strong points in the initial years of law school itself. Law school gave us retreats and surprises; rewarded us when we performed well and ridiculed the same when performed poorly.

The entire process of law-like thinking teaches us to be defensive, to protect the interests of our clients and how to go about that. The process involves slow moving, finding potential risks, taking adequate measures to overcome those risks and most importantly, never letting the clients see that you are stressed.

Realistically speaking, more work could be accomplished if pursuing legal knowledge wasn’t the only goal. The driving force behind this was the entire competitive nature of the profession. It reinforced certain views and diminished others. In any case, our very nature of thinking was altered. The final goal was to become more rational, logical, categorical and linear thinkers, who were trained to separate the reasonable from the unreasonable and truth from the lie.

Henceforth, ambiguities were less tolerated by us as we learnt to think in a new way and we viewed human affairs through new glasses. The entire process was a quantum leap and intellectually transcendent. We did believe that we would be paid enough to think in the future.

During the advanced course of our internships towards the end of third year and in fourth year, I realized the importance of such mental gymnastics are attributed to the plasticity of human mind and that, in the due course of time, the values learnt in a law schools begins to overflow into our personal lives. We do unconsciously relate and analyse other human beings with our new mindset and it begins to tint our views and judgments.

Honestly speaking, such a journey has its own downsides and I did lose out some friends and acquired new ones who thought in a similar way as me and saw the world in the same light as I did. The senior lawyer I met during my old internship was indeed right. We could not think in the emotional manner anymore and could not make creative choices or manage or inspire people. However, we became self dependent in due course of time and were not dictated by anyone or their opinions, thus the price paid was worth it. Although, now-a-days, several lawyers want to get their creative and emotive mind back and for that reason, they’re switching careers to a more innovative and different field.

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Before going ahead to know about this bill, let us look at the issues & challenges of Indian Higher Education.

Issues and challenges before higher educational sector in India

The Standing Committee on Human Resource Development (Chair: Dr. Satyanarayan Jatiya) submitted its report on ‘Issues and challenges before higher educational sector in India’ on February 8, 2017.  The report examined the challenges of higher education in India after studying the higher education institutions in Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Patiala, Thiruvananthapuram, Udaipur, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Bhopal and Indore.  The Committee also interacted with public sector banks regarding the education loan facilities being provided to students for higher education. The key observations and recommendations of the Committee are as follows:

• Shortage of resources:  Bulk of the enrolment in higher education is handled by state universities and their affiliated colleges.  However, these state universities receive very small amounts of grants in comparison.  Nearly 65% of the University Grants Commission (UGC) budget is utilised by the central universities and their colleges while state universities and their affiliated colleges get only the remaining 35%.   The Committee recommends that the mobilisation of funds in state universities should be explored through other means such as endowments, contributions from industry, alumni, etc.

• Teacher vacancies:  According to UGC, the total number of sanctioned teaching posts in various Central Universities are 16,699 for professors, 4,731 for associate professors, and 9,585 for assistant professors.  Out of the total sanctioned teaching posts, 5,925 (35%) professor posts, 2,183 (46%) associate professor posts and 2,459 (26%) assistant professor posts are vacant.

• The Committee reasoned that this could be due to two reasons: (i) young students don’t find the teaching profession attractive; or (ii) the recruitment process is long and involves too many procedural formalities.  The recruitment process should start well before a post is vacated.  In addition, to make the profession of teaching more lucrative, faculty should be encouraged to undertake consultancy projects and be provided financial support for start-ups.

• Accountability and performance of teachers:  At present, there is no mechanism for ensuring the accountability and performance of professors in universities and colleges.  This is unlike foreign universities where the performance of college faculty is evaluated by their peers and students.  In this context, a system of performance audit of professors based on the feedback given by their students and colleagues should be set up.  Other inputs like research papers, publications by teachers should be added in the performance audit in due course of time.

• Lack of employable skills:  Lack of employable skills in students of technical education has been observed.  Identification of skill gaps in different sectors and offering courses for enhancing employability in them has been recommended.  Some strategies in this regard can include: (i) Industry Institute Student Training Support, (ii) Industrial Challenge Open Forum, (iii) Long Term Student Industry Placement Scheme, and (iv) Industrial Finishing Schools.

• Accreditation of institutions:  The Committee notes that accreditation of higher educational institutions needs to be at core of the regulatory arrangement in higher education.  Further, quality assurance agencies should guarantee basic minimum standards of technical education to meet the industry demand for quality manpower.  The National Board of Accreditation should act as a catalyst towards quality enhancement and quality assurance of higher technical education.

• Credit rating agencies, reputed industry associations, media houses and professional bodies should be encouraged to carry forward the process of rating of Indian universities and institutions.  A robust rating system will give rise to healthy competition amongst universities and help improve their performance.

Salient features of Bill

• The main focus of the established commission is to lie upon improvement of academic standards and quality of imparting higher education. It aims to specify certain standards to be followed for learning/teaching/research etc.
• The Commission shall have the ultimate power to enforce its decision through the legal provisions which are also laid down in the Act.
• In case an institution has failed to maintain the required threshold of academic standards, the Commission shall provide with a roadmap that would mentor such institutions.
• The Commission possesses the power to initiate academic operations by granting authorizations, based on compliance of academic quality standards. Additionally, it has the powers to revoke granting authorization to any institution failing to comply with the standards continuously or willfully.
• The Commission shall hold the power to direct the closure of higher education institutions which fail to comply to minimum standards, with due regards to students’ interests at the same time.
• Encouragement to formulate Code of Good Practices by Higher Education Institutions, including promotion of research, learning, teaching.
• The Commission is to be composed of Chairpersons of regulatory bodies such as AICTE and NCTE. Additionally, Vice-Chairpersons and members are to be scholars of eminence, having outstanding knowledge in academics, research and possess leadership skills and understanding of the issues in higher education practice.
• Penal provisions are laid down, which includes withdrawal of power to grant degrees and diplomas; or orders to cease academic operations. In case where non compliance is wilful, sanctions for prosecution may be imposed as per the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code.
• Advisory Council to provide advice to the Commission on specific matters, represented by Chairpersons/Vice-Chairpersons of State Councils for Higher Education and to be chaired by the Union HRD Minister.[3]
• Specifications are provided with respect to processes to fix the chargeable fees by higher education institutions and other such steps which shall enable education to be affordable to the masses.
• The Commission has the power to monitor all the matters which cover development of emerging spheres in higher education and promotion of the same by way of national data base.

Fundamental flaws in the UGC act

In essence, the main functions of the proposed HECI aim at autonomy of higher education institutes. Wherein even the older UGC Act aimed to maintain standards of education, the HECI specifically lays down the areas to be regulated.[4] Further, the HECI proposes to lay down minimum qualifications in order to recruit faculty members and also set up standards to judge performance of the faculty and thus, incentivise them. The UGC Act, although had similar standards, but in essence, it has practically discouraged diversity and innovativeness in teaching.[5] Moreover, the HECI Bill has specified norms and processes to fix fee structures, which is one of the striking aspects of the Bill. The UGC had similar regulations of fee structures, however the educational institutes had found their ways to surpass regulations and introduce self-financed courses.[6]

The UGC had been established as a result of the Radhakrishnan Commission Recommendations. In the purview of the same, Universities were majorly affiliated bodies and teaching only pertained to post-graduate teaching. The Colleges were isolated and controlled by UGC Rules and other professional councils. Now, in effect, the UGC Regulations managed to curb the autonomy of institutions in terms of innovativeness, program structures etc. Thus, to a great extent, it hindered interdisciplinary learnings and education quality suffered. To contextualize, it can be stated that the UGC’s main function lied in providing grants by the end of six decades of its functioning, and several of its functions, which it had aimed to fulfill, remained unfulfilled and the education sector suffered.[7]

Advantages of implementation of the HECI

The HECI in its draft Bill has some interesting points of observation, which if implemented successfully, shall prove to be highly advantageous for the education sector of the nation. first point of observation is involvement of the government as less as possible, thus downsizing the role of a regulator. The Government shall have no interference in the management of educational institutions. The HECI would primarily focus on academic matters and the grant functions would be handled by the Ministry of HRD. Furthermore, any kind of regulation would be disclosed to the public, so that everything is transparent and decisions of standards and quality of higher education would be based on merit. Overall, the HECI shall mandate improvement of academic standards and focus on evaluation, performance, mentoring, training, technology etc. There shall be greater flexibility and autonomy as well. Adding to it, there shall be powers to enforce the compliance of provisions of this Act and non-compliance to attract penal sanctions.[8]

The downsides of the bill

The UGC had several shortcomings such as insufficient funds, excessive bureaucracies, delay and inability to regulate private, self-financing institutes mostly ran by powerful politicians notable among which are inadequate funding, a tendency to micromanage universities and colleges through detailed regulations, excessive bureaucratisation leading to delays and inability to regulate private, self-financing institutions, many of which are owned and run by powerful politicians. However, the HECI has also failed to address these problems; moreover, it may aggravate some of them. The purpose of the HECI can be interpreted as a tool to empower the Centre and reduce the states to being functionless. India’s area and diversity does not enable excessive centralisation to be an improvement of academic standards. Rather, it will lead to even more corruption, bureaucratisation and red tapism.

It has been vehemently stated by critics that the HECI essentially brings down the grade of Universities to that of colleges, combining them together and applying uniform rules to them. The present Universities require authorisations from the HECI for their current courses within three years, failing which, they’ll have to terminate the courses. Now, such kind of an authorisation by the course is both unnecessary and inconvenient for universities. Moreover, the HECI has neither the time nor the expertise to process such lakhs of requests. Additionally, a basic principle of good governance is being contravened by the Bill, which entails a subsidiary function to the central authority to perform tasks unable to be performed at local levels. In a federal setup, such an extreme case of centralisation is unacceptable.[9]

In the wake of speedy economic growth, India’s education system needs to produce an educated workforce who are eligible to accentuate such growth. Any new policy, thus, needs to have a progressive and revolutionary approach. The current HECI Bill, duly separates the areas of grants and quality control, however, the country’s excessively low education enrolment rate needs innovative changes to have improvements.[10] And that requires multidisciplinary institutes, not excess regulation for single disciplines and thereby an increased scope of bureaucracy. That shall prove to be detrimental.

[1] Shivakumar Jolad, “HECI Should Stand in Support of Higher Education”, <https://www.dnaindia.com/ahmedabad/report-2683036> (last accessed on 20/11/2018).

[2] Anubhuti Bishnoi, “Modi Government to dissolve UGC, set up new Higher Education Commission”, <https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/modi-government-announces-repeal-of-ugc-act-new-higher-education-commission-to-be-set-up/articleshow/64761001.cms> (last accessed on 20/11/2018).

[3] Antara Sengupta, “New higher education act: Is it really repealing UGC?”, Observer Research Foundation.

[4] UGC, “The University Grants Commission Act, 1956 And Rules & Regulations Under The Act – As modified up to the 20th December, 1985”, University Grants Commission, 1985.

[5] Sam Hill and Thomas Chalaux, “Improving Access and Quality in the Indian Education System”, OECD Economics Department Working Papers (OECD Publishing, Paris), 2011, No. 885.

[6] Sudha Rao and Mithilesh Singh, “Self-financed Courses in the Universities and Colleges” NUEPA, 2002.

[7] Shivakumar Jolad, “HECI Should Stand in Support of Higher Education”, <https://www.dnaindia.com/ahmedabad/report-2683036> (last accessed on 20/11/2018).

[8] “Government approves draft Act for setting up of Higher Education Commission of India by repealing UGC Act”, Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, 27 June-2018.

[9] K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, “The Higher Education Commission of India Bill is a remedy worse than the disease”, <https://scroll.in/article/889220/the-higher-education-commission-of-india-bill-is-a-remedy-worse-than-the-disease> (last accessed on 20/11/2018).

[10] AISHE, 2018, “All India Survey on Higher Education 2017-18”, Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2018.

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Following are a few alternative legal career options that you may like to explore for the search of a new and better career path.

Legal Consulting

If you have a sufficient time’s experience in the industry of law and dissatisfied with  the same, you can switch your industry and explore really lucrative opportunities as a consultant in law firms and businesses related to legal issues. Consultants have a broad based knowledge and share their expertise on anything and everything ranging from legal marketing to strategic management to communication to legal strategy. Large scale increase in litigation and jury trials have brought forth the need for a growing range of consultants. If you have litigation experience, a jury consultant should be your alternate option to explore. Additionally, there are options such as trial presentation specialist, trial technology consultant, trial strategy consultant or legal investigator. Nurses with legal knowledge find a growing scope in the field of medical malpractice, personal injury and other matters that involve medical issues; in the form of legal nurse consultants whose work is reviewing medical records and advising attorneys on the medical issues pertaining to the case.

The emergence of digital society has brought in new and evolved opportunities for the tech-savvy legal professionals who have special interest in the digital field. Growing fields of litigation support, e-discovery and computer forensics are the fields for them. Knowledge of legal software and technology application skills coupled with insight in the field of legal field will make you a good fit for litigation support with a law firm, corporation or a legal vendor.

Legal Publishing

As a legal professional, the research, writing and editing skills that you possess are of top notch importance. Put those skills to good and effective use in the publishing industry as a professional legal publisher or editor or writer or even a web manager. The ever expanding legal industry has fuelled the growth of a diverse range of publications that cater to the needs of lawyers, paralegal experts, secretaries, litigation support personnel, court reporters etc. Every single legal profession has its own series of publications that look out for skilled writers with sufficient experience in the industry.

The Internet has also created an array of new and improved opportunities for the legal professional-turned-writer. You can share your long-earned knowledge of the law and showcase the writing skills that you possess by writing content for websites, blogs, contributing to e-newsletters or writing copy for law firm websites.

Education and Administration

Another interesting and comparatively worthy career alternative for the legal professional is a career in legal education or academic administration. While academically speaking, the pathway to the nation’s top elite law schools is pretty hard and steep, nevertheless, teaching opportunities exist in abundance in the less explored paralegal schools and legal education organisations. Legal education institutions that cater for the academic needs, hire individuals with ample legal experience to work in career guidance, career service, law libraries, admissions etc.

Dispute Resolution

The ever increasing crowd in the court proceedings and ever rising legal fees have fuelled a movement to settle certain disputes outside of the courtroom by means of negotiation, mediation and dispute resolutions. Neutral arbitrators are appointed who collaborate with the disputing parties to make them reach into a mutually agreeable consensus. Legal professionals who have a strong communication, negotiation and conflict resolution skill can find well paying jobs in this growing field of dispute resolution as mediators, conflict analysts, arbitrators or conciliators.

Banking and Finance

The banking and finance industry usually witnesses involvement of complicated legal, regulatory and compliance issues. Professionals in the legal field who have a background in finance, banking, securities and tax law can impart that knowledge, putting it to use into lucrative positions in the finance industry as escrow agents, compliance specialists, bank managers and other such positions. Also, lawyers can give legal and transactional advice to the financial institutions, corporations and the govt.

Human Resources Management

Talented and observant professionals are in high demand in law firms and corporations for the purpose of managing their legal staff and recruit fresh legal talent, who are worthy enough. Individuals with adequate experience of management, strong interpersonal skills and legal industrial knowledge can find an array of employment opportunities in the said field as law firm administrators, hiring coordinators, professional development scrutinizer, training managers and legal recruiters.

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1. Salary

It is an undisputed fact that it is one of the biggest incentives to study law and choose it as a career option. Lawyers are among the highest paid professionals, globally. Even as you gradually start out in your career, you can reasonably expect to make a good fortune within a short span of time after your graduation. Rarely do any other career offer such high starting pay packages. Thus it can be considered to be the topmost incentive to become a lawyer.

2. Prestige

Law as a career has proved to be a seal of prestige and reputation over generations and time immemorial. Impressive and highly qualified degrees obtained at the end of the courses; a general notion of authority over the others have brought lawyers under the ‘elite’ ambit of professionals with whose names are attached the terms, “respect” and “prestige”. They epitomize the definition of success and professionalism. Today’s date sees lawyers enjoying an elite, professional and glamorous status among other careers.

3. Opportunity to Help Others.

Furtherance of public good and ensuring justice and fair treatment to all and sundry in the society by duly helping individuals, groups and organizations with their legal hurdles prove to be the best features that exist in the career prospect of a lawyer. Public lawyers aid legal causes for the greater societal good and assist those who need legal help and might not be able to find so on their own. Underprivileged people, elderly, victims of domestic abuse and children are among the beneficiaries of lawyers. Such lawyers serve an important societal and moral purpose with their existence.

4. Diverse career and practice areas

As legal profession gradually evolves with the contemporary times, increased number of streams of specializations and a broad array of sub-specialities has eliminated any scope for an individual to feel at a loss of opportunities and their areas of interests. There are uncountable areas that range from the black and white corporate and criminal world to the field of research in animal law to sport, space, marine, fashion and media law. The range is never ending. Thus an individual will definitely find his/her appropriate area of interest and thereby embark on a journey to excel in the same.

5. Global Influence

Lawyers are always in a position different from others, to affect the society in terms of great impact by being thought leaders and agents of change. They can make or break the society, bring about huge changes and hold influential positions in the ruling body of a state, i.e. the Government. Accordingly, lawyers are able to influence the top policy makers, tycoons, entrepreneurs, leaders and affect the entire world by bringing about change.

6. Networking

One of the most interesting incentives to pursue a career in law is the experience of networking since the student age for diverse range of work and research and thereby expanding horizon by leaps and bounds. Lawyers meet people from diverse backgrounds, from almost every field of life. Networking with clients not only will expand business skills, but will also lead to other perks in terms of basic amenities of life, like contractors, brokers, doctors and even foodies!

7. Knowledge of the law.

The fundamental and probably the best incentive to study law and pursue a career on the same is having the knowledge of law, having an idea about the law of the land which will come handy in every aspect of life, such as dealing with real estate, car accident, creating a will, a bond, making any kind of sale or purchase. Often you will encounter friends, family and acquaintances coming to you for legal advise, issues relating to business or any unofficial advice too. Getting through life is also easier when you know the legal norms to comply with.

8. Command over speech.

When you start studying law, you start regularly participating in activities where you need to speak out your opinions and thoughts aloud, along with the result of your researches. Regular culture of debating, mooting, presentations, group discussions, conferences in the law schools, brushes and shapes your legal jargon, builds a rich vocabulary and allows you to fascinate the laymen with your speaking skills. It becomes easier to convince the other party when you are confident in your speaking and convey your thoughts smoothly. And a good speaker portrays a brilliant image of himself in the mind of others.

9. Job fulfillment and variety

Having a student and professional life, studying law is as fascinating as it can get. There would not be a single moment when you would feel bored or monotonous of the subject or the work that you are doing. There are challenges to deal with and branstorming to do, at every step. Fulfilment of work and satisfaction of the same is something that makes law as a career starkly different and better than other career options. Additionally, variety of work experience and field to work on is another important incentive that plays an essential role. Each day is filled with something new and interesting.

10. Attires

Last but not the least, lawyers’ attires and their presentability speaks loudly about their personality and the glamorously elite professional world that they are a part of. Italian suits, white collars, black robes, each of them have the significance and the appeal that are eye-catching and head-turning.

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