Using the questions below as a guide, draft a two paragraph vision statement for your career.  In paragraph one: What kinds of jobs would best match your personality, values, and skills?  What places do you want to interview? What networking opportunities do you want to seek out?  What questions should you be asking yourself?  In paragraph two: Where do you want to be in ten years?  In twenty-five years?

                                                Questions

1. Do you have a general idea of what kind of career you want?  Do you plan to practice law or know what you want to do with your law degree? You’ve probably thought about finding a job after law school.  Have you thought about what you want to do over the longer span of a career? What do you envision yourself doing in twenty years—at the height of your career? Have you considered what your vocation is? 

2. What are your values?  For instance, do you value financial security?  Time with your  family and friends? Do you want to have children (a large family)?  Do you value independence and autonomy?  Do you like change in the sense of risks? Change in the sense of variety? Do you like excitement and pressure or life without stress?  Do you value security or stability? Creativity?  Leisure time to pursue various interests and activities?   Are the career plans you are envisioning consistent with your values?

3. Have you thought about how you want to spend your day? How much control of your day do you need?  Do you like dealing with people? Do numerous meetings make you crazy or do you welcome the time to noodle issues with colleagues? Do you like spending large blocks of time researching and writing?  Do you like detail work? Do you want to shoulder the responsibility for business development?  How do you feel about the prospects of litigation (appearing in court, engaging in what may be adversarial relations)?  Do you like travel?  On the spectrum of repetition to new challenges, do you constantly prefer new challenges or handling matters over which you have some mastery?

4. What kinds of hours do you envision yourself working as a lawyer: a mammoth number of hours, a 9-5 day, part-time? Are you someone who is able to create work/life balance for yourself—set limits on the things you agree to do; say no to projects—or do you take on too much work?

5. How many of your current decisions are motivated by economics—what you can afford to do, whether you can repay your student loans? When you are considering a job, how strongly will salary and benefits factor in your decision to pursue or accept a particular position?  Or will some other factor be paramount in your job search—for instance, whether the work is meaningful to you or can keep your interest? Or perhaps whether the line of work will allow you time for an outside life (personal or family time)?

6. What geographic location interests you?  Do climate or geography or regional values matter to you? Are you interested in entering a type of law that might dictate that you live in a particular region (such as international law or water law)?  Do you prefer cities (large or small?) or suburbs or rural areas or international travel?

7. In what size groups do you work best: all alone, with one or two other people, with a larger group?

8. Do you know what kinds of law do not interest you?

9. Do you feel that other people (perhaps family members such as parents or partners) have specific expectations for what you will do with your law degree?

10. What are your strengths as they relate to a legal career?

11. What are your weaknesses as they relate to a legal career?

12. What are your interests or hobbies?  Do they have any relation to your career plans? Can they? 

13. What research have you conducted on what lawyers in practice areas that interest you really do?  Have you asked questions regarding whether those areas of law fit with your values and lifestyle as well as your interests?

14.  If you could not be a lawyer, what would you do?  Do any of these alternate careers suggest anything to you about what you could do with your law degree other than practice law? Have you considered using your law degree as the foundation for a non-legal career?