No, this is not a BuzzFeed quiz.
There won’t be a personality type at the end telling you that you’re a “natural-born M&A associate” because you picked spreadsheets over courtrooms. Unfortunately, I also can’t promise that answering three questions will magically reveal your dream practice area.
I actually came into law school with a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to litigate, and I was already interested in white-collar defense. But if I’m being honest, I hadn’t really stopped to think about it on a deeper level. I knew I had experience in criminal law and liked the idea of it, but I wanted to make sure I liked the actual work too. If you took away the cool-sounding practice-area name, would I still want to do the job?
That question became especially important once I got to law school, where there are firms to research, practice areas to Google, panels to attend, and approximately 700 attorneys willing to tell you what they do for a living. Somehow, everyone expects you to have an answer when they ask, “So, what are you interested in?”
When I started talking to attorneys, I wanted to do more than hear that someone’s practice area was “really interesting” and take their word for it. I wanted to figure out what I actually wanted my day-to-day work to look like. What skills did I want to use? What kind of substantive work would I enjoy? What did I actually want to spend my time doing?
Because, let’s be honest, some practice areas just seem cool. Admittedly, securities regulation sounded sick. But I wanted to know what that actually meant on a Tuesday afternoon. (Spoiler: they’ll probably say it depends.)
The more I thought about those questions, the more I realized that figuring out my practice area wasn’t really about picking a label. It was about figuring out what kind of work fit me. And that brought me back to three questions I’d heard throughout undergrad at BC:
- What are you good at?
- What brings you joy?
- Who does the world need you to be?
If you’re lucky enough to be a Double Eagle, those questions might sound familiar. If not, let me explain where they come from. Father Michael Himes, a Jesuit priest and former Boston College theology professor, encouraged students to discern their career through these questions. Rather than asking only, “What job do I want?” he asked students to consider where their interests, abilities, and the needs of the world intersect. Basically, do you actually enjoy doing it? Are you good at it—or at least interested enough in it to become good at it? Is there a reason for you to be the person doing it?
Looking back, I think they’re pretty good questions to bring with you into law school and beyond. Because, in my opinion, figuring out what kind of lawyer you want to be requires at least as much self-reflection as it does research into firms, practice groups, and job descriptions.
What are you good at?
For me, the answer has always been communicating.
I’ve spent most of my life finding ways to put myself in front of other people. I was a lector at Mass, sang in my school choir, acted in summer camp, did mock trial for eight years, entered a public-speaking competition in college just for fun (and, humble brag, won), spent my summers waiting tables, and took Trial Practice last spring, to name a few. I also took home a few awards through mock trial, which gave me some pretty good evidence that I wasn’t completely making this up.
And if you asked my parents, they’d probably tell you I’ve always had an answer for everything (for better or for worse). With my friends, I somehow became the person to call when someone needed a reservation, wanted to talk to someone, or needed to get something done for the group. Put me in a situation where we needed to speak up, figure it out, or communicate clearly, and I was usually taking the lead.
Looking back, there was a pretty obvious pattern: I was comfortable communicating and putting myself out there. I wasn’t necessarily good at all of those things all the time (there’s a reason I’m in law school and not on Broadway), but I’d spent enough time doing them to know that talking was one of my strengths. I didn’t need to be the best speaker in the room to know that getting in front of people, thinking on my feet, and figuring out how to make something land were skills I wanted to keep using.
What brings you joy?
Luckily, I also actually enjoyed doing those things, too. I loved public speaking, making arguments, and connecting with people. I liked telling stories, whether they were mine or someone else’s, and figuring out how to phrase something so that it actually landed. I liked making eye contact, working on timing, and realizing when a lighthearted comment would make a conversation better, and when it would absolutely not.
Even in mock trial, I found myself paying attention to the reactions of the jurors and performance judges. Was something working? Were they paying attention? Did that argument land the way I thought it would? I liked the strategy behind all of it: deciding what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. I got a kick out of figuring out how to connect with an audience and adjust when something wasn’t working.
Looking back, it’s probably not surprising that litigation felt pretty natural to me. I wasn’t just comfortable communicating. I genuinely enjoyed the strategy, performance, and people side of it, too.
Who does the world need you to be?
Once I knew I was drawn to communication, persuasion, and working directly with people, litigation started to make sense.
It wasn’t because I had some lifelong dream of embodying Suits. Honestly, I’ve yet to watch it.
It was because the skills I naturally gravitated toward seemed to have somewhere to go. If I liked public speaking, crafting arguments, thinking on my feet, and connecting with people, litigation gave those interests a purpose.
That, to me, is the important part of the Himes framework.
It isn’t just, “What do I like?” Because there are plenty of things I like that probably shouldn’t become my career. The question is what you enjoy, what you are capable of doing well, and where those things can actually serve someone else. For me, that meant litigation felt like a place where my particular combination of interests could apply. And once I had narrowed myself down to litigation, I could start asking much more specific questions.
If I enjoyed communicating and had some ability to do it, where could those skills actually be useful? What kinds of problems did I want to spend my time solving? Who did I want to represent? What kind of work would make me feel like I was actually doing something meaningful?
And no, this doesn’t mean that everyone who likes talking should become a litigator. Please don’t tell your transactional friends I said that. Although, anyone who’s ever had a conversation with me could probably have predicted where this was going.
The point is to figure out your own combination of answers first.
Okay, but how do you actually use this when networking?
This is where I think the framework gets really useful.
Once you’ve got some idea of what you’re looking for, networking becomes less about collecting information and more about testing your own answers. In other words, your answers should become your rubric.
When I talked to attorneys, I tried to get past the standard “What does a day in the life look like?” question. I wanted to know what they were actually doing. What substantive issues were they working on? What skills did they use every day? How much writing was involved? How much client interaction? Were they negotiating, researching, arguing, investigating, drafting, appearing in court, or strictly on Teams?
Then I could ask myself: Could I actually see myself doing this? Would I enjoy it? Does it play to the things I’m already good at? And are those skills, habits, and work products I actually want to keep developing?
Thinking through those questions helped me apply what I thought I wanted instead of deciding that a practice area sounded interesting simply because its name sounded impressive. It also opened my eyes to areas of law I hadn’t really considered before. For example, government investigations not only sounded cool to me, but also involved strategy, teamwork, and opportunities for public speaking, all things I realized I wanted in my day-to-day work.
And that’s also why I think it’s important to leave some room for your answers to change. Maybe you meet an attorney who introduces you to a practice area you’d never considered. Maybe you take a class that changes what you thought you wanted. Or maybe you discover that something you were convinced you’d love is actually not for you. I contend to you that all of that is useful information.
You’re not trying to figure out the next thirty years of your life over one coffee chat. You’re trying to pay attention to what makes you curious, what comes naturally to you, and what kind of work you can actually picture yourself enjoying.
So if you’re sitting in the Yellow Room wondering how everyone else seems to have their career figured out, take a step back. Before you look at the firms, look at yourself.
- What are you good at?
- What brings you joy?
- Who does the world need you to be?
You might not get a perfect answer. But you may get a much better place to start.
And at the end of the day, this is your career. You came to law school for a reason. You might as well find a way to make the work something you actually enjoy doing.
Bella Calise is a second-year student at BC Law. Contact her at calisei@bc.edu.
