Become a Legal Consultant

A legal consultant is someone who provides expert and professional legal advice on a contractual basis to businesses and/or individuals. Legal consultants can provide advice on a number of important matters depending on what their consulting focus is, and common subject matters include corporate law, real estate law, employment law, and medical law. In order to become a legal consultant, you will need to obtain the proper education, accumulate relevant professional experience, and find a job in the consulting world. In order to successfully traverse this path, follow the directions below and you will be well on your way.

Steps

Obtaining the Necessary Education and Licensure

1. Earn a bachelor's degree. To start on the path to becoming a legal consultant, you must first graduate from a four year university with a bachelor's degree. A bachelor's degree is a prerequisite to getting into law school so it is imperative you take this endeavor seriously. Law schools will look at your undergraduate education to see what type of degree you earned and what your overall GPA was.
   • If you already know you want to be a legal consultant at this early stage, consider majoring in a legally related field like criminal justice, legal studies, or political science. While you are not required to major in any specific field of study, immersing yourself in the legal field as soon as possible may help you in the future.
   • Regardless of your major, try to take courses in government, math, English, history, communications, and economics. These types of classes will help prepare you for law school and the legal consultant career.
2. Take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). Once you graduate with a bachelor's degree, you will need to take the LSAT in order to build your law school portfolio. The LSAT is a standardized test meant to examine your ability to succeed in law school. It includes five multiple-choice sections testing your reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, and logical reasoning.
   • In order to sign up to take the LSAT, you will go to the Law School Admission Council website. From there, you will click on the "register now" button at the top of the page, create an account, and follow the on screen instructions.
   • The LSAT scores range from 120 to 180. Depending on the type of law school you are interested in attending, you may need a score of between 150 and 180.
3. Complete law school. Once you receive an LSAT score you are pleased with and you have gotten into the law school of your choice, you will need to complete the required curriculum and graduate with a Juris Doctor (J.D.), which is the professional degree you earn upon law school graduation.
   • Law schools will generally look at your undergraduate GPA, your LSAT score, essays, and letters of recommendation when they consider accepting you to their program.
   • Law school is usually a three year program unless you decide to graduate early or you decide to pursue other graduate degrees (i.e., a masters in business administration).
   • While in law school, your first year will be filled with structured classes in the most common areas of the law such as constitutional law, criminal law, torts, contracts, and property. Your second and third year you will be able to take elective courses chosen based on what your career goals are. For instance, if you are interested in being a legal consultant focusing on corporate law, you may want to take classes in employment law, mergers and acquisitions, and tax law.
4. Get licensed to practice law in the state of your choice. Once you have graduated from law school and earned your J.D., if you are interested in practicing law in order to gain valuable legal experience prior to entering the legal consulting field, you will need to get licensed to practice law in the state you plan on working in. While it is not always a requirement to be licensed to practice law in order to be a legal consultant, most employers will look for attorney experience when hiring qualified legal consultants. In order to get licensed, you will usually have to:
   • Take and pass your state's bar exam. The bar exam is a two or three day test examining your understanding of basic legal concepts. It is designed to ensure you have the minimum qualifications necessary to practice law in your state. In order to sign up for your state's bar exam, visit your state's bar website. For example, to sign up in California, you would go here.
   • Pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE). The MPRE is a one day test designed to assess your knowledge of the rules of professional responsibility, which a lawyer must abide by at all times. In order to sign up for and take the MPRE, you must register with the National Conference of Bar Examiners and sign up for the MPRE here.
   • Submit a moral character application for review. Finally, you will be required to submit a moral character application, which includes personal information about yourself and is designed to ensure your state is only accepting attorney applicants who are upstanding citizens. The application will involve questions about your criminal history, housing history, schooling history, and any other questions your state deems appropriate. For example, California's moral character evaluation process is outlined here.

Accumulating Professional Experience

1. Work during the summers between your school years. If you want to be a successful legal consultant, you will need to build your resume with meaningful professional experiences. You should start doing this as early as possible. While it may be difficult to work while you are in school, particularly law school, you should at the very least try to work during your summers.
   • In law school, there are often opportunities to participate in summer internships or clinics, which usually provide opportunities to do real world legal work while still being in school. For example, in civil practice clinics, you may get an opportunity to help low income clients with their housing disputes and public benefits problems.
2. Build legal experience. Once you are licensed to practice law, you should look for entry level legal experience in a field you are passionate about. As of 2012, most employers looking to hire legal consultants were looking for applicants to have a minimum of three years of general legal experience.
   • If you know what type of legal consultant you would like to be (i.e., corporate, medical, real estate), try to get a legal job in that specific field.
   • Entry level legal jobs are usually associate positions with law firms, law clerk positions with organizations, or law clerk positions with various courts around the United States.
3. Gain entry level consulting experience. Once you have some general legal experience under your belt, you may want to look into gaining some entry level consulting experience. A lot of employers hiring legal consultants look for their applicants to have between two and six years of experience in their specific legal consulting field. This step is separate from starting your consulting career because you will need to gain entry level experience prior to becoming a leading legal consultant with an agency or on your own.
   • In order to gain this consulting experience, start networking early and reach out to community members working in the legal consulting field.
   • Once you get a consulting interview, be prepared for a rigorous process. Consulting interviews often take place in multiple parts with the first couple of interviews being your general personality interviews. However, once you make it past the first couple of rounds you may find yourself taking part in a group interview where you may be asked to solve a problem with other candidates. In this interview, employers are often looking to see how you work as part of a team and how you handle pressure. Finally, the employer may ask you back for one more interview, often the most intimidating, where they may ask you to solve some sort of consulting problem. In this interview they are looking to see how you can handle yourself under pressure.
   • Be confident going into these interviews. If you have followed the path laid out in this article you will be well prepared for this process.

Starting Your Professional Consulting Career

1. Decide whether you want to work independently or as part of a consulting agency or group. Once you have gained between two and six years of entry level legal consulting experience, you should begin to think about breaking into your dream legal consulting job. The first step in this process will be to decide whether you want to work with a consulting agency or on your own.
   • If you are interested in being a part of a consulting team, look for legal consulting jobs online and through your network. Reach out to people you know in the field and ask if they know of any availabilities. Send resumes to agencies you find online, even if they do not currently have any openings. Try looking at indeed or SimplyHired for possible job postings.
   • If you are interested in starting your own legal consulting practice, you will need to create a business plan, market your business, and gain a valuable client pool. Follow the steps below in order to start the process.
2. Create a business plan. A business plan is a written description of a business's future, including information on your goals and how you plan to reach them. When you are creating your business plan for your legal consulting business, be sure to identify the services you want to provide and develop a plan to market those services to your ideal clients.
   • For instance, if you are planning on being a legal consultant focusing on human resources, you will want to tailor your marketing efforts and reach out to local and national organizations that attract human resources specialists. Understanding where to focus your efforts will lead to quicker and better results and will allow you to get on your feet faster.
3. Work hard and enjoy your career. Once you have gained a loyal client base and you have firmly built your legal consulting career, do not become complacent. Continue to work hard expanding your business, but make sure you are having fun doing it.

Tips

• Start gaining practical experience as early as possible. While having the required degrees and doing well in school is one piece of the puzzle, nothing can replace the value of real world experience.
• Create a professional network and do not be shy to reach out to other legal consultants in your community. They were likely in your position at one point or another and they are usually willing to help new professionals looking to break into a consulting career.
• Get involved in your community. Volunteering your time in the community is a great way to get introduced to new people and to create connections that may help you get a job you want in the future.
• When preparing for your LSAT, consider taking a test preparation course such as the one offered by Kaplan. While you may think you can handle your preparations on your own, consider the fact that most other people taking the LSAT will have taken a preparatory course.
• When preparing for your bar exam, if you choose to take one, think about using BARBRI in order to prepare. This bar preparation course has been the highest rated for a number of years, and while it is expensive, you certainly get what you pay for.

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