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    After the Bar

    Professional Development

    How New Lawyers Can Use the ABA to Further Their Career Goals

    Erin Rhinehart, Tamara Patricia Nash, Gage Zobell, Stacie Damazo, Alexander Cyr, Frank Laporte-Jenner, Sheila M Willis, and Nicholas C Smith

    Aug 19, 2024

    7 min read

    ABA Initiatives Career Advancement Career Resources Leadership Networking Oral Communication Professional Development Public Service

    Summary

    • As a new lawyer, you’re being pulled in all directions—learning the law, managing clients' and partners’ expectations, figuring out how to practice, and trying to navigate the integration of your personal and professional lives. While the American Bar Association offers tools that can alleviate the uncertainty, stress, and frustration these new challenges bring, perhaps the most useful is knowing you’re not alone.
    • You can cultivate a national network of peers, mentors, and allies through the American Bar Association.
    • The American Bar Association provides a platform that allows you to lead and make a tangible impact within the legal profession and your community.
    • Getting out of your comfort zone will help you see your cases in a new light and think about your practice in fresh ways. This is the value of the American Bar Association; it allows attorneys from across the country to get together, collaborate, and improve.
    • Lawyers with a passion for public service should explore the opportunities offered by the American Bar Association. Fellowships and programs offered by the ABA, like the Janet D. Steiger Fellowship, can be transformative and provide the guidance, skills, and network needed to build a rewarding legal career.
    How New Lawyers Can Use the ABA to Further Their Career Goals
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    The American Bar Association can offer valuable resources to attorneys as they develop their practice. That value can come in various forms—from helpful practice materials like articles, podcasts, and on-demand programming to networking opportunities and conferences—there is plenty of opportunity to further your career goals. Here are some tips from attorneys across the country on how their ABA membership has helped them achieve their career goals. 

    Resources—Especially Networking Relationships that Last

    Substantive resources, professional development resources, leadership opportunities, and community—not just networking but building long-term relationships among peers and mentors. These are among the many benefits offered by the ABA; benefits that continue to grow and evolve with you as you progress in your legal career. As a new lawyer, you’re being pulled in all directions—learning the law, managing clients' and partners’ expectations, figuring out how to practice, and trying to navigate the integration of your personal and professional lives.

    While the ABA offers tools that can alleviate the uncertainty, stress, and frustration these new challenges bring, perhaps the most useful is knowing you’re not alone. Searching the ABA for a resource on an area of law, difficult career transition, or work-life issue and finding a book, an article, a podcast, or a committee that helps is comforting. Not necessarily because you may have found the answer, but because you realize you’re not the first person to deal with something; others are struggling too, and what you’re going through is normal. The practice of law is challenging. You cannot succeed by going it alone. And, with the ABA, you don’t have to.

    –Erin Rhinehart, Ohio

    Opportunities to Lead, Learn, and Grow—and Find Your Professional Home

    I found my way to the ABA in 2016 by chance. At the time, a friend and mentor convinced me to attend the ABA Midyear Meeting. Through this chance opportunity, I found more than I could have ever hoped for personally and professionally. Over the years, I found the ABA to be a place of grounding, opportunity, and inclusion. I found a home. Within this home, I have learned lessons and found people who have helped guide me through some of life’s biggest decisions. I have been empowered to navigate career changes. Truly, the ABA has been a beacon of light in times of professional uncertainty. From my experience, the ABA can help you further your career in three primary ways.

    1. You can cultivate a national network of peers, mentors, and allies through the ABA. The ABA provides the opportunity to meet brilliant and passionate attorneys who are the best in the industry. From this network, you can build your practice, gain new insight, and influence the profession.
    2. The ABA provides access to countless resources created with you in mind. Their purpose is to aid your growth, grow your skill set, sharpen your knowledge, and empower you to be the best attorney you can be. Through toolkits, CLEs and non-CLE webinars, written content, podcasts, and much more, the ABA helps you stay at the forefront of hot topics, new legal issues, and current events.
    3. The ABA provides a platform that allows you to lead and make a tangible impact within the legal profession and your community. You receive countless opportunities to lead, learn, and grow. Through these opportunities, you gain a national platform to demonstrate your passion and expertise.

    Your ABA membership is truly an all-access pass to unlocking professional success and fulfillment. This shared home is an amazing foundation for becoming your best professional self.

    –Tamara Nash, South Dakota

    Build Your Professional Skillset, Network, and Relationships

    In my experience, the successful practice of law is about three things:

    1. developing a skill set and expertise,
    2. expanding your network of contacts, and
    3. developing relationships over time.

    The ABA is an excellent organization that helps attorneys of any vintage with all three aspects. ABA-sponsored articles and presentations help hone a skillset. The ABA provides an excellent resource for meeting colleagues and fellow practitioners and expanding my network. Then, it is up to me to keep those relationships strong and develop work.

    –Gage Zobell, Utah

    Access Materials, Programming, and a Professional Network

    Involvement in the ABA opens the door to several opportunities to expand your professional network, engage in initiatives that serve our profession and communities, and access materials and programming to support members in all substantive areas and phases of practice. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. The opportunities you might seize or leverage can vary depending on your specific goals or interests and how they evolve over time.

    In my experience, and as a first-generation lawyer, the connections I have made through my ABA service have been instrumental to my growth and development. I met my firm through the ABA by connecting with my current colleagues at an ABA Annual Meeting. I also consistently benefit from the wealth of knowledge within and among the ABA and its members. I particularly enjoy hearing my ABA colleagues share their experiences in different markets, workplaces, and practice areas as their careers have evolved. The wisdom shared in these conversations has shaped how I engage in law practice and informed my short- and long-term goal-setting. I am very grateful for the camaraderie and support I have found within the ABA and its positive impact on my practice.

    –Stacie Damazo, Oregon

    Learn How to Network More Naturally

    I use the ABA to further my career goals through networking opportunities. ABA conferences bring together people from other states and practice areas and create opportunities to meet other lawyers I might not otherwise find. As I start my career, this helps me understand the various practice settings and what I want to achieve moving forward.

    Interacting with ABA member groups is also an easy way to network more naturally. If you aren’t good at cold-contacting potential professional connections, it provides a helpful context to start conversations. Choosing a committee or other body to work with can help you find people who share interests or goals, and you can go from there. The Young Lawyers Division, in particular, has a lot of positions available for people to choose from, whether appointed by local affiliates or by the ABA YLD chair. I have enjoyed being part of the YLD Assembly and its associated resolutions committee and credentials board, as well as being a liaison to one of the conferences of the ABA Judicial Division.

    –Alexander Cyr, Vermont

    Get Out of Your Comfort Zone to Improve Your Practice

    The American Bar Association has helped me further my career goals by connecting me with professionals from different backgrounds and areas of expertise. It can be easy to get into a bubble in your practice; you handle similar cases and run into familiar faces in and out of court. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself doing too much copying and pasting. To stay at the top of your game, you must continue challenging yourself throughout your career.

    Getting out of your comfort zone will help you see your cases in a new light and think about your practice in fresh ways. This is the value of the American Bar Association; it allows attorneys from across the country to get together, collaborate, and improve. The ABA has allowed me to meet attorneys and judges from all over and see how they handle the same issues I face but from a different perspective. It allows me to bring a diverse knowledge base back to my part of the world and use it to educate and improve my local bar. In this way, the American Bar Association builds bridges between attorney communities nationwide. These bridges, therefore, are what young lawyers should learn to build and strengthen in their practice.

    –Frank LaPorte-Jenner, Arkansas

    Education and Unparalleled Networking Opportunities

    You can use the ABA to further your career goals through its networking, educational, and leadership opportunities. The networking opportunities in the ABA are unparalleled. Not only do you have exposure to some of the most well-known legal minds in their respective fields, but you also can meet them in an environment anchored in service to the profession. With that foundation, you can connect on more levels than practice similarities.

    Additionally, you can get involved in various sections and committees, giving you access to substantive content on relevant practice areas. This access to educational opportunities allows you to gain an education that can help you expand your practice. Finally, the leadership opportunities in the ABA help you develop and hone the management and organizational skills necessary to run a practice, team, or yourself.

    –Sheila Abron, South Carolina

    Take Advantage of ABA Programs and Fellowships

    The ABA has been instrumental in helping me achieve my career goals in public service. Prior to law school, I was deeply committed to public service and aimed to continue this path in my legal career. However, the vast array of public service opportunities in the legal field initially left my career objectives unfocused.

    My journey took a decisive turn when I learned about the ABA Antitrust Section’s Janet D. Steiger Fellowship Project, which places law students in attorneys general offices nationwide to work on consumer protection issues. Little did I know that this opportunity was my most determinative and impactful career decision. Through the ABA’s Steiger Fellowship, I discovered a fulfilling career in consumer protection, an area I had not previously considered but quickly grew passionate about.

    I encourage every aspiring young lawyer with a passion for public service to explore the opportunities offered by the ABA. Fellowships and programs offered by the ABA, like the Steiger Fellowship, can be transformative and provide the guidance, skills, and network needed to build a rewarding legal career.

    –Nicholas Smith, Kansas

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