Hey everyone so today I was a little bored and I wound up on YouTube and of course I ended up watching like hours of videos about law school �� So I thought I'd share with y'all some of the videos that I found! For the most part, the vloggers are mostly just on YouTube for fashion/makeup or whatever and just happen to be in law school and share their experiences so that's why I'm sharing specific videos rather than their whole channels. These are all a theme of why law school/law school advice/what law school is like. Just because I'm sure y'all get tired of reading so much so here's a break from reading!
Jessica of Victoria's Closet
Mae of MaeBad
MyDailySweet
Ashley of Ashley Aloha
Kayla of CutesyGirl09
LawSchoolAdviceGuy
Krystina Christiansen
InnMyHumbleOpinion
Amber Irene
Lynnea of LoveLynnea
Lily of LilyLike
Kameron Monet
Brittany Ann
I partnered with Downy to help you put your best foot forward when starting a new job and ensuring that your wardrobe looks and smells its best! Thank you for supporting the brands that support Brazen and Brunette!
GUYS! In about a week I will be starting my first job at a lawyer's office! Real lawyering! You can imagine how nervous I am about my first day and making a great first impression. There are so many things running through my head that it's hard to sleep sometimes. What do I wear? What do I say? What do I eat? And one thing that keeps coming back is that I really really really don't want to smell bad. No one wants to be that smelly girl from grade school, right?
But overall I do feel pretty confident because I got along great with everyone in my interview and a friend-of-friend (law school is a small world y'all!) had this job last year and has nicely been answering my questions. So I wanted to share some tips I've learned that may help you with YOUR new job!
1. Show up early
There's nothing worse than showing up 10 minutes late to your first day. I also start getting ready a full hour earlier than I normally do! I've come to realize that I always wake up excited for starting my new job and end up taking extra time trying to do my hair and makeup just right. Literally the worst thing that can happen is that you've got half a head of curled hair when you look up and realize that you should've left 10 minutes ago.
I know I have a go-to first day of work and interview outfit, and I'm sure you do too! It's better to be overdressed than underdressed, and a suit jacket can do the trick! My suit jacket and blazers are staple pieces for my work wardrobe that get worn almost every day and can start to fade and stretch if I'm not careful about how I treat them. Obviously this can become a problem since I can't afford to be buying a new blazer every few months! I always want to make sure they are looking and smelling their best and to do this, I use Downy Liquid Fabric Conditioner and Fresh Protect Beads together to protect my go-to interview outfit/office staples against odor, plus fading, fit and fuzz— so they stay looking and smelling their best.
3. Show up smelling nice
Remember those guys who wore wayyy too much body spray in junior high and made you gag? Yeah, don't be like that. Instead, a more subtle way to smell fresh without being overpowering is to use Downy Fresh Protect when you wash your work clothes because it's like deodorant for your clothes with 24-hour odor protection. And that's important because you never know how your day will go! One time my interview turned into being hired right there on the spot and I felt totally unprepared and slightly self-conscious meeting my boss between the nervous sweats and the 10-mile hike around the building. I wasn't exactly smelling like a daisy if you know what I mean. That's why I now use Downy Fresh Protect Beads; it's different than detergent (which just gets out stains) because it prevents odors from sticking to your clothes. This way you never have your worry about how your clothes smell! It's just a little thing, but can really make such a huge difference in your confidence level when you're already nervous about making a good first impression.
4. Show up ready to work
It's easy to fall into a trap on your first day where you don't really get anything done because you don't know what to do or how to do it. It can be hard to ask for help because you don't want to be a bother or seem unqualified, but it's always much better to ask someone so you can learn for next time than pretend to be busy and disappoint your boss. They know you're new and expect a learning curve, so show them they made the right choice in hiring you! If you don't get an assignment right off the bat, make yourself useful and ask someone higher up what they're working on and if you can shadow them for an hour to see how things get done in that office.
Have a bag packed with everything you might need today. If you've been sent any pre-employment documents, have those filled out and ready to turn in once you get settled. Along with that, you'll probably also need your Social Security card and a voided check so that you'll be ready to fill out any tax documents and can get direct deposit set up. I bring my planner and a pen everywhere with me—even on the first day—in case I need to jot down a task, deadline, or things to remember later like the names of people you've met or your computer login information. Another good thing to have just in general is a small touch-up bag with basic makeup, medicine, and a hairbrush.
I partnered with Downy to help you put your best foot forward when starting a new job and ensuring that your wardrobe looks and smells its best! Thank you for supporting the brands that support Brazen and Brunette!
GUYS! In about a week I will be starting my first job at a lawyer's office! Real lawyering! You can imagine how nervous I am about my first day and making a great first impression. There are so many things running through my head that it's hard to sleep sometimes. What do I wear? What do I say? What do I eat? And one thing that keeps coming back is that I really really really don't want to smell bad. No one wants to be that smelly girl from grade school, right?
But overall I do feel pretty confident because I got along great with everyone in my interview and a friend-of-friend (law school is a small world y'all!) had this job last year and has nicely been answering my questions. So I wanted to share some tips I've learned that may help you with YOUR new job!
1. Show up early
There's nothing worse than showing up 10 minutes late to your first day. I also start getting ready a full hour earlier than I normally do! I've come to realize that I always wake up excited for starting my new job and end up taking extra time trying to do my hair and makeup just right. Literally the worst thing that can happen is that you've got half a head of curled hair when you look up and realize that you should've left 10 minutes ago.
I know I have a go-to first day of work and interview outfit, and I'm sure you do too! It's better to be overdressed than underdressed, and a suit jacket can do the trick! My suit jacket and blazers are staple pieces for my work wardrobe that get worn almost every day and can start to fade and stretch if I'm not careful about how I treat them. Obviously this can become a problem since I can't afford to be buying a new blazer every few months! I always want to make sure they are looking and smelling their best and to do this, I use Downy Liquid Fabric Conditioner and Fresh Protect Beads together to protect my go-to interview outfit/office staples against odor, plus fading, fit and fuzz— so they stay looking and smelling their best.
3. Show up smelling nice
Remember those guys who wore wayyy too much body spray in junior high and made you gag? Yeah, don't be like that. Instead, a more subtle way to smell fresh without being overpowering is to use Downy Fresh Protect when you wash your work clothes because it's like deodorant for your clothes with 24-hour odor protection. And that's important because you never know how your day will go! One time my interview turned into being hired right there on the spot and I felt totally unprepared and slightly self-conscious meeting my boss between the nervous sweats and the 10-mile hike around the building. I wasn't exactly smelling like a daisy if you know what I mean. That's why I now use Downy Fresh Protect Beads; it's different than detergent (which just gets out stains) because it prevents odors from sticking to your clothes. This way you never have your worry about how your clothes smell! It's just a little thing, but can really make such a huge difference in your confidence level when you're already nervous about making a good first impression.
4. Show up ready to work
It's easy to fall into a trap on your first day where you don't really get anything done because you don't know what to do or how to do it. It can be hard to ask for help because you don't want to be a bother or seem unqualified, but it's always much better to ask someone so you can learn for next time than pretend to be busy and disappoint your boss. They know you're new and expect a learning curve, so show them they made the right choice in hiring you! If you don't get an assignment right off the bat, make yourself useful and ask someone higher up what they're working on and if you can shadow them for an hour to see how things get done in that office.
Have a bag packed with everything you might need today. If you've been sent any pre-employment documents, have those filled out and ready to turn in once you get settled. Along with that, you'll probably also need your Social Security card and a voided check so that you'll be ready to fill out any tax documents and can get direct deposit set up. I bring my planner and a pen everywhere with me—even on the first day—in case I need to jot down a task, deadline, or things to remember later like the names of people you've met or your computer login information. Another good thing to have just in general is a small touch-up bag with basic makeup, medicine, and a hairbrush.
I have this friend from Study Abroad who is a year older than me and is in med school and one cool thing I've found out through her is that when you're an upper level med student, you go through these rounds of spending 2 weeks working as a family doctor, 2 weeks working as a pediatrician, 2 weeks with plastic surgery, 2 weeks with internal medicine... you get the point. And I am so jealous that they get this opportunity because it's a way for them to experience first hand all of the different areas of medicine and find out what's for sure not for them and narrow down what they want to do. Sadly law students don't get this opportunity so you never really know if there's a field of law out there that you would absolutely love if you just try. I'm a week shy of the med student 2 week experience, but I thought I'd share with y'all what I've already learned so far about being general counsel to give you a little snapshot to see what it's like!
Traditionally, businesses would hire law firms to do all of their legal work (like Harvey Spectre). Then businesses realized it'd be cheaper and more efficient to have their own attorney employed by their business just for them to handle the day-to-day legal needs and then if there's a big suit or a complicated area, then they can hire a law firm to handle that. I think of general counsel (AKA in-house) as being like the mom of the company. People come to you to complain about problems they need resolved, come to get your advice, and come to when they need to settle an argument.
How GC is different than just working in a law firm is that usually in a law firm you get really good in one area (say, real estate) and spend most of your time doing that for all kinds of different clients. This is just the opposite where you do a little bit of everything, but for just one client. So you are working on vendor contracts, leasing agreements, trademark licensing, employment issues (workplace safety to avoiding wrongful termination), mergers and acquisitions, anti-trust, buying and selling contracts, ensuring federal and state compliance, dealing with any countries that your company does work with, counseling officers and board members, and basically just any other problem that a business might encounter just trying to operate.
Pros of general counsel
I met a lawyer my 1L year at a networking thing and I asked him what was the worst part about being a lawyer and he said "billable hours fo sho" (okay I'm adding a little "mere puffery" here lol). But as GC you don't have to do that because you're basically billing your client (AKA your employer) with your salary. So whether a document takes you two full weeks or two hours to get done, you get paid the same.
This brings me to my next point of normal business hours. One of the lawyers I work with is married to a private practice attorney and she was explaining to me that while sometimes they both end up with 80-hour work weeks, he has them much more often then she does. And usually she ends up having a 40-hour work week. So if tbh as a woman I really like this idea because I could have kids and not feel guilty about missing their wholes lives because I'm working all the time. Plus, you're missing a lot of happy hours if you're working 80-hour weeks hahah.
One big thing that I've come to realize that I like is just having one client. When everything you do all-day, every-day is for the same client, it can be easy because you understand where they're coming from and what they want. You can be strategic and make decisions not just about what's good for this one situation, but what will be beneficial for the company as a whole in the future. Plus, your client can't be too crazy demanding because they should have a good sense of all of the work that's on your plate (although kinda not really because the finance people don't know what the property people have already given you). But I will point out that a downside of this is that your client is always there so you could be getting calls, emails, or drop-ins all day from people constantly needing help if it's one of those if-it-rains-it-pours kind of days.
Another thing that I personally like is the variety of the work. If my eyes start to bleed from reading regulation after regulation to make sure our policies are up-to-date with them, I can just switch gears and redline contracts for a bit. Detour: redlining a contract is basically we're negotiating a contract with someone else so they'll send us their contract and we mark out all the parts that are bad for us (think like "you waive all rights to sue us ever") and put in our own suggestions (think like requesting that they have a higher liability insurance policy if we're sending our employees onto their property); I personally think it's really fun (law nerd) because you get to be all bossy.
You don't "real lawyer." One of my bosses jokes that any time she's ever had to go down to court to file a pleading or motion, she's doing "real lawyering." This is pretty rare because usually something like a cease & desist letter can fix a problem or if it's a big problem (think we're going to trial), then outside counsel will hop on board. For me, I don't feel this big urge to be litigating because if you've ever researched for a brief or sat through a trial then you know how it can be really stressful. While GC obviously isn't stress-free, I know that when I show up for work I won't need to have all of the Rules of Evidence or Trial Procedure fresh on my mind to be shouting out all day. Although, if you like the thrill of litigation then I guess this point would go in the next section for you.
Although I am loving my externship, no job is perfect. For starters, these jobs are harder to come by. My company has only two lawyers that handle everything (except for the outside counsel they hire for the more complex issues) and on the other hand, some law firms have literally hundreds of lawyers. I've read both that some companies prefer to cherry pick the best (usually super experienced) person from a law firm and recruit them to their GC but also that now some companies prefer to hire fresh-faced law students so that they grow up learning only how to do things the way the company does. Ideally I'll be able to find a company like the latter (because if we're being honest here as much as I love my company and I'm sure they love me back, they just don't have the need for another lawyer so a job offer definitely isn't waiting for me), but realistically I know I might have to work at a normal firm to gain some experience before I can be qualified enough for a job.
And if we're being blunt then the money of general counsel usually isn't quite the same as a law firm. Since there's no billable hours or contingency fees, as a GC you're salaried just like a normal job. And while the sales team and everyone else at your job are actually making your company money with their job, all you're really doing is helping them not lose money so it's not like you have the opportunity to earn any bonuses. But also, you're still being a lawyer for a company so you're still making good money, just not like a quarter million a year (unless you work for Disney). You also are giving up the chance to be partner because there's really only the position of lawyer or lawyer in the legal department (although you could rise up to be like president of a branch of the company).
Okay so that's all I have so far! I'm sure I'll have lots more to say about this as time goes on, but I wanted to get this post written now while all these concepts are still new and fresh on my mind. Have a good weekend everyone and once again, enjoy studying while I do nothing because I'm basically done with school muahahahahaah
Original article and pictures take www.brazenandbrunette.com site
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