Foreword: In some law school, do you watch Boston Legal, or Justice, or the hot "Legal Sniper" some time ago, and start to imagine that you will either be a personable lawyer or a judge in the courtroom who makes the gavel dance thump? Then one day, you are poured a basin of cold water, and you want to know how the cold water is splashed, you can look at this: the application for the law major is hot and the employment is cold. After all, whether it is an undergraduate or a graduate student, employment is a choice that must be faced, so your understanding of the legal profession cannot remain in the TV series, you need to understand what industries are in the legal workplace. Now, let's distinguish between lawyers and in-house counsel, after all, as non-civil servant professions, they are the most popular professions for law students.
1. What kind of work do lawyers and in-house counsel do?
Lawyers in China are practitioners who have obtained a lawyer's practice certificate and are engaged in legal services, and this sentence is a provision of the law, a simple sentence, which essentially contains the threshold for lawyers to enter the industry. First of all, to be a lawyer, you must have a bachelor's degree or above in law from a college or university, or a bachelor's degree or above in other majors, and have legal knowledgeSecondly, it is necessary to pass the National Bar Examination;Third, it is necessary to obtain the approval of the national judicial administrative department, that is, to obtain a lawyer's professional qualification certificate;Fourth, it is necessary to engage in the legal profession. As an exam that has been labeled as strangely difficult, the judicial examination has been on the altar of "the first exam in the world" for ten years since the examination was opened in 2002, so the annual pass rate has been relatively low), which also makes the entry threshold for the lawyer industry relatively high. Regarding the general introduction of the practice of lawyers in China, understanding the general environment of the workplace is a compulsory course for entering the workplace.
So, what kind of work do lawyers do every day?Do you dress formally every day and sit at the negotiating table or in the courtroom and talk eloquently?In fact, because the legal system is becoming more and more perfect, the fields that need legal services are becoming wider and wider, and there are more and more types of lawyers, not only limited to traditional litigation lawyers who appear in court to participate in litigation, but also many lawyers engaged in non-litigation business. Of course, not every lawyer specializes in one subject, and now in China, the specialization of lawyers is not very fine, and many lawyers are both litigation and non-litigation, or engaged in multiple fields of business in litigation or non-litigation. Litigation lawyers participating in litigation can generally be divided into administrative litigation, civil litigation, and criminal litigation, and may participate in litigation activities as the first person of the plaintiff or defendant in administrative or civil litigation or the defender of the defendant in criminal litigation. The work of a non-litigation lawyer is more complex, depending on the specific affairs of the non-litigation lawyer.
In addition, lawyers can also be divided into full-time lawyers, part-time lawyers, public lawyers, corporate lawyers, military lawyers, etc. See also: Several classifications of lawyers.
The in-house counsel profession was initially more common in foreign companies, which had more legal matters in China that needed specialized staff to handle. Nowadays, domestic enterprises, especially large and medium-sized enterprises, have become a common demand for in-house counsel, and in-house counsel is becoming an employment choice for more and more law graduates. In contrast, there is no clear minimum threshold for legal work, and the law does not have special provisions for legal personnel, but the company formulates employment standards according to its own needs, and some companies also require candidates to pass the judicial examination or have academic requirements or relevant practical experience.
Many people think that the work of legal affairs is basically to draft or review contracts, but in fact, the work of the legal department is very complex, and the main job responsibilities of the legal department can be seen in detail. Of course, depending on the company's arrangement, the legal staff may be responsible for different tasks.
2. What is the difference between a lawyer and a legal counsel?
1. Different legal status. Lawyers are legal service personnel clearly stipulated in China's law, and they, like judges and prosecutors, are an indispensable part of the country's judicial system. For example, some in-house counsel have the authority to participate in the company's decision-making and have the right to vote on some major decisions of the company, while some in-house counsel do not have such power, and the law does not require it. It can be said that in law, lawyers are indispensable, and legal affairs are dispensable.
2. The service objects are different. Most of the lawyers are social lawyers, they generally work for a law firm, this is their work unit, their work itself is not to serve the law firm, its service objects may be very diverse, including a variety of subjects in the society, enterprises, individuals, etc. Of course, there are also public lawyers, military lawyers, corporate lawyers, and other lawyers who serve specific targets and cannot serve entities outside their work units. The object of corporate legal services is the enterprise where it works, and its service content is to meet the needs of enterprises in legal affairs.
3. Salary income is different. The income of a lawyer mainly comes from the lawyer's fee in the case, and each lawyer or team of lawyers directly determines how much money they can earn, which is different for in-house counsel, and the general salary of in-house counsel is determined by the enterprise according to the situation of in-house counsel. Therefore, the income of in-house counsel is generally relatively fixed, and the salary increase is planned, while the salary of lawyers is not fixed, and the amount of salary is determined according to the number and quality of cases they undertake. In terms of the income comparison between lawyers and in-house counsel, the lawyer industry is generally better than that of in-house counsel, but the income growth of lawyers is more dependent on experience and opportunities, so there are some variables in the income of lawyers at the beginning of their careers or when the opportunities are not good. The salary of in-house counsel will increase regularly with the company's efficiency and job promotion factors. When a lawyer tells you that he doesn't have a case to do, he may be the lawyer, and when a lawyer tells you that he has no case to do, you don't have to worry about him, he may be on vacation right now.
4. The lawyer deals with different people. If you compare the work rhythm of lawyers and in-house counsel to a game, lawyers are like snakes that can't stop eating everywhere, while in-house counsel is more like Tetris. Litigation lawyers will go back and forth between the parties, the courts, the procuratorate, and the public security bureau, while non-litigation lawyers will deal with the entrusting companies or individuals, and the state units related to the business. In contrast, in-house counsel deal with relatively simple people, usually colleagues within the company, but also external lawyers.
5. Different career development paths. When you first enter the law firm, college students can only assist the lawyer in auxiliary work as a paralegal, even if you get a lawyer's certificate, you may still be a paralegal within the law firm, and gradually when you have a strong ability to develop your business, you can apply to become a partner of the law firm, of course, this takes an average of 7 to 10 years for a newcomer. The in-house counsel has gone through a career path from legal assistant to legal specialist to head of the legal department. It is worth mentioning that there are many practitioners who have made a career transition between the lawyer and the legal profession, which is also a new way in the career development process.
6. The combination of lawyers and legal counsel: legal counsel. Nowadays, in-house counsel may be called legal counsel, but in fact, legal counsel is a practicing lawyer who needs to pass the corporate counsel qualification examination. Therefore, legal counsel can be said to be a combination of in-house counsel and lawyers, that is, practicing lawyers are engaged in corporate in-house counsel, and in-house counsel can also choose to obtain corporate counsel qualifications and become formal corporate legal counsel.
7. Note: Lawyers and in-house counsel may have a lot of contact in their work. At present, in some litigation business, enterprises need external lawyers to carry out litigation activities, and their internal legal personnel need to connect with external lawyers to assist lawyers in completing litigation or other non-litigation cases.
3. What kind of you do lawyers and in-house counsel need?
It can also be seen from the above that the remuneration of the lawyer industry is relatively good, but it does not mean that the best choice for every law student is a lawyer, everyone is different, and each specific job is different. Whether you are suitable for a lawyer or a legal counsel, you need to understand what kind of requirements a lawyer and legal counsel have, and some things are required for both, for example, if you pass the exam, both positions are welcome;For example, you are particularly good at English, and you are competitive in many foreign-related businesses in law firms (the best law firms now basically have extremely high English requirements) and legal work in foreign companiesFor example, if you are well-looking, well-dressed, and well-behaved, HR may like you more. We're going to talk about the different qualities that both require here.
1. Lawyer.
As a lawyer, first of all, you must have good internal skills, including a solid legal foundation, which is the foundation, because the in-house counsel can push the legal problems to the lawyer, but the lawyer must give the final answer, you must also have a mature mind, have strong written and verbal skills, have strong logical thinking and analytical judgment ability, at the same time, the lawyer needs a certain legal research ability, and there will be many legal doubts in practice that need to be analyzed, and now many law firms are called "academics" Therefore, it is definitely good for college students to train an expert fan. Nowadays, these abilities are not acquired overnight, and require a certain amount of professional training and practice.
Secondly, you should be able to have strong social skills and accumulate your own interpersonal resources in the process of gradual work. If you have innate reliable social resources, of course, you can also make your lawyer's road more broad, lawyers are actually like people who sell legal services, if you can find someone to buy at the beginning, it is of course excellent, and it is more important to accumulate stable customers in the process of gradual sales.
Finally, you need to actively learn and Xi attitude, lawyers need to update their knowledge system, no lawyer can successfully establish himself in the legal profession for a long time by relying on the legal knowledge he knew when he graduated. The article on the professionalism of lawyers introduces the professionalism that lawyers should possess in more detail.
2. Legal affairs.
First of all, as a professional legal talent of the company, every department of the company may find you to solve the problem, which is actually a great challenge for the in-house counsel, and the in-house counsel may not need too strong legal research ability, because when encountering special and difficult legal problems, your job may not be to answer, but to find a suitable lawyer or legal consultant, but the in-house counsel must have rich and sophisticated legal knowledge and be able to deal with the legal problems in the company's daily affairs.
At the same time, in-house counsel must have a strong ability to deal with problems, be able to give a solution from the standpoint of the company's interests, and always put the overall interests of the company first. In this regard, legal counsel and lawyers are very similar, that is, they try to fight for the interests of their clients as much as possible under the evaluation of legalization.
In addition, in-house counsel should also have strong coordination skills, because the ideas of various departments are often inconsistent, for example, business departments ignore certain risky details in order to improve the company's efficiency, and in-house counsel should be able to coordinate these contradictions as soon as possible, which requires the ability to communicate effectively and reasonably.
This is a simple summary of the basic capabilities of in-house counsel. In fact, in order to truly elevate in-house counsel to a high-quality level, in-house counsel also needs mature business sensitivity, and an article from abroad may be able to give you more enlightenment: Is in-house counsel really suitable for you?
4. What should I do to prepare for college?
You may be concerned about what universities should do to prepare for employment, but you know the answer yourself – become a good college graduate!This is not useless, many college students may not realize how popular an excellent self is when they graduate, and the college years come to an end so quickly, it is easy for everyone to suddenly conclude that they are not good enough when it comes to the job search season. Therefore, you should know the important truth of accumulating steps and getting a little better every day. It is not enough to have a reason, but also to have a way, so let's take a look at what kind of preparation law students should prepare for during college if they want to choose a lawyer or legal affairs as a career from the perspective of resumes
a) You can practice a foreign language well. How important is a foreign language?Not to mention, take the all-English written test or even the interview when some good law firms recruit new students, you will know how much the law firm attaches importance to your English ability. Other foreign languages, such as many law firms that do business in Japan or Korea nowadays, are welcome if you can communicate directly with clients in both countries. For many enterprises engaged in foreign trade business, it is even better if its legal counsel is proficient in foreign languages, and if they want to enter foreign companies to practice business, foreign languages are simply a stepping stone.
2) Learning Xi professional knowledge is the last word, and we must unswervingly pass the exam!Law firms and enterprises need knowledge-based talents, no matter how the teacher teaches, how the textbooks are written, whether you learn well or not can always be controlled by yourself, don't always think that others don't recognize you, if you can do the level of the following classmate in the Xi, people have absolutely nothing to say!
3) Seize the time to participate in social activities and Xi!College is so short, how should you spend it?Looking back, if you have invested in several social practice activities and professional Xi, then the employer will not feel that you are idle, for example, the resume of the following student gives people a feeling of reliability:
4) In addition, there should be special training for your own weaknesses. If you lack the ability to express yourself, then it may be helpful for you to participate in various gatherings, if your thinking skills are not good, it may be good to see brainstorming or debate activities so much, if you are not good enough in legal research, listen to lectures so much, and write more ** can improve your understanding of legal research.
Whether you are a lawyer or a legal counsel, they are essentially professions that apply the law to solve problems in their work, and I hope you can find the differences between the two professions through this article, and at the same time recognize your professional strengths and weaknesses, and make a more suitable choice for yourself. Now, what you have to do is to think about it quietly, carefully write a resume for the position you aspire to, if necessary, you can ** a resume template, and then, pull the fuse, and throw it out where you need it!Autumn and Winter Check-in Challenge