Self-Employment As An Alternative Career Choice For Law Graduates

No one likes to admit it, but there are more unemployed law graduates today than there were in the past. Once thought of as a bastion of certain employment, graduates from law school end up finding out that writing many an essay and taking on all of those legal terms doesn’t guarantee a job anymore. Now those same graduates are looking for alternative careers to the traditional approach of joining a prodigious law firm. Here are some alternative careers for lawyers:

Legal Consultant

Of all the law graduate jobs out there that don’t require a person to become a regular lawyer is the job of being a paralegal or a legal consultant. The number of clients a person will get increases with experience, but for many people obtaining legal consultation that doesn’t involve an actual lawyer is a growing field.

The fact of the matter is that lawyers charge hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars an hour to provide their services to clients. The real problem with that is that many legal issues don’t actually require that level of professional service. Legal consultants can offer some of the advice that people need and without the hefty bills.

Start A Law Firm

The best way to be self-employed is to forgo the law firms and law partnerships and create your own top-rated practice yourself. There are benefits, of course, to going the traditional route of joining a law firm with the hopes of one day having your name written next to the other partners in the firm, but there are also some drawbacks.

One of the major drawbacks, for example, is that a big law firm requires junior members to build up a client list and a considerable amount of experience before they get the offer to have their name become part of the business. Not only that, but that day may never come. Starting up your own practice might take more work, but you are your own boss, as well.

Write Legal Papers

For anyone who’s looking for an alternative to any form of regular law practice, be it a lawyer or paralegal, then a great alternative is to help university students with a law essay through a writing service. Many students seek out law essay help for a law essay example. Essay writing services have seen a great deal of expansion in recent years, and they can always use a legal expert to lend a hand.

It might seem like essay writers wouldn’t make a lot of money, but it really depends on the paper. Yes, a basic history paper might not bring the writer much money, but when it comes to writing something of a legal nature, the amount of money a person looking for alternative jobs with a law degree can make increases substantially.

Create a Legal Website

One of the other alternative careers with a law degree that one can embark on is to offer online services through some form of a legal website. There are many different ways to offer legal help online and without needing to be part of a legal firm. The only thing that a person needs to start out with is a site address, a hosting service, and an idea.

Today, it’s easy to buy a website address, which can be renewed annually. The second step is to get a hosting service, by using which you can either build your own site or find someone to do it and buy the address for you. Finally, a good idea, like a low-cost online legal advice service, is what a person needs to get that website lots of hits. An ad campaign doesn’t hurt, either!

Start a Top Business

It might now seem like the obvious choice for those looking for an alternative career to law, but a great deal of independent start-ups and small businesses started out with a lawyer-turned-entrepreneur. It’s generally believed that the negotiation skills and more outgoing, go-get-‘em, kind of training a lawyer to learn over the course of a degree can be beneficial to running a business.

Indeed, there are many very successful entrepreneurs who were originally law students, like Nina and Tim Zagat, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and Jeffrey Chodorow.

John Pearson is a serial entrepreneur and writer who is passionate about helping small businesses launch and grow. His work has been featured in Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and Forbes.