The Most Valuable Skill in Law
One of the most fundamental aspects of law and the study of it, is research. This I have argued with many students, is the most important aspect of your study of law because on the one hand, it broadens your understanding of the concepts and principles of law but also on the other hand, it helps you develop your own unique psyche as a legal professional. Across the globe, in different jurisdictions, you will find some spectacular legal professionals both in the context of lawyers who practice law on their feet in court as well as those who are in the corporate, entrepreneurial or in general, the societal segments of the law.
The thing that distinguishes you from everyone else is this unique personality. On my YouTube Channel, I have tried to dive deeper into how you can establish your own personality and your own traits to carve out a niche for yourself in the fraternity that is the law. But that being said, this fundamental component that I want to address, is that of the importance that research and reading has to a academic, to a student as well as a legal professional later on in their career.
What does this mean? What do I mean by research?
It’s exactly that! ‘re-search’. While that might seem pedantic and superficial in nature, what I’m trying to get at from the concepts surrounding research is the notion that you are trying to leverage on the findings and the opinions of academics and jurists that have come before you and then develop your own mindset on the matter and your own opinion on the law based on that.
So when you do a dissertation for example or for that matter learning a particular subject and trying to articulate a response in the form of an essay question or even a problem question, your personality and your conviction of response shines through not based on hearsay or simply on your opinion but the fact that you have addressed and looked at different opinions by other legal luminaries as well as academics and jurists.
The substantiation or the importance of your opinion heavily rests upon how you have (a) looked at, (b) addressed, (c) appreciated and then (d) leveraged on those of others. This is fundamentally important because on the one hand, it shows an examiner and anyone who’s reading your work that you have done the research, you’ve done the work and that you are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. You have appreciated and understood the body of knowledge that is available in your particular area of interest and then tried to carve out your own unique perspective on it.
That being said, how this improves your own thinking actually comes in not in the academic context but when you become a legal professional later on because it is this opinion and the way you articulate your arguments and ‘see things differently’ from other legal professionals that will set you apart from the rest. This will not only help you form or carve out a lucrative career for yourself but, what’s more important, at least subjectively is that, it creates a more rewarding profession for you to work in. You’ll be able to get up every morning understanding and knowing the fact that you see the law differently and that is what you’ll be sought out for!
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