Advance Your Legal Career: Essential Skills for Success + CD-ROM

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Torts. Check. Corporate law. Check. Real estate. Check. Law school covers all of these substantive areas of law that you need to get a job. But what about the so-called ‘soft skills', like networking, conflict resolution, business development and self-promotion? These interpersonal skills are rarely found in law school curricula, yet they are critical to building a successful practice and furthering your legal career.

Enter Advance Your Legal Career: Essential Skills for Success. Written by psychologist and lawyer, Delee Fromm, this new publication promises to fill the holes in lawyers' knowledge and experience by offering insight into interpersonal skills awareness and development – valuable information for getting, and staying, ahead.

Features of this Book
Understanding the interpersonal dynamics of practising law is a critical aspect of ensuring a successful legal career. Lawyers can rely on this guide to provide them with useful, real-world advice on how to best navigate and negotiate through this complex and sometimes challenging facet of practising law.

In particular, lawyers will benefit from:

• Career management and skill development tips for lawyers at all career levels.
• Practical worksheets, development plans and questionnaires, many of which are also available as Word documents on an attached CD-ROM.
• Stories and examples drawn from the author's clients that illustrate, elaborate and highlight specific points and are woven throughout the book.
• Figures and tables that present information in a clear manner and are interspersed throughout this resource.
• The book's format where each chapter and topic can stand alone, allowing busy lawyers to look up a single topic of interest and access the information they need quickly and easily.

The legal profession in North America remains a very masculine and competitive world, in direct contrast to other national cultures where interpersonal skills are more influenced by feminine approaches. This disconnect can result in confusion, misunderstanding, and in some cases, a distinct disadvantage. As a result, the advice in this book, which examines and discusses the impact of childhood learning on skill development and expression, is of particular importance to lawyers and legal professionals.

Practical Content
To help lawyers incorporate the skills developed through this resource into their day-to-day practice, every chapter of Advance Your Legal Career: Essential Skills for Success includes:

• Key topics listed at the beginning of each chapter, clearly outlining the content to follow
• "Try it out" exercises spread throughout the text to provide readers with the opportunity to put the suggested skills into action
• A five level skills chart for the skill discussed in that chapter, allowing for easy creation of a personal skill development plan
• Key ideas summarized in a special section at the end of each chapter
• Frequently Asked Questions to address additional issues that may be relevant to readers
• Recommended reading and resources for lawyers who want to examine certain topics in further detail

A Necessary Addition
This how-to guide provides valuable information and advice for every legal professional interested in advancing their career and will be useful to:

• Lawyers in private practice, especially associate lawyers, who can use the strategies to advance their careers through awareness and skills development and partners whose careers are not advancing as quickly as they would like.
• Government lawyers who want to leverage the interpersonal skills discussed in this publication to further their careers.
• In-house lawyers for whom interpersonal skills development is of particular importance due to their close work with corporate executives whose MBA curriculum included many of these topics.
• Articling and law school students who are just entering the world of law and need guidance in navigating legal practice and managing their legal careers.
• Paralegals and law clerks both to better understand the lawyers they work with and to hone their own interpersonal skills for career advancement.
• Senior lawyers who are currently mentoring or wish to mentor juniors. The information in this book will help them to better understand and assist junior lawyers – all of which will enhance retention of junior lawyers generally and women lawyers specifically.