In the 35 years that Jayne Conroy has been a lawyer, she’s spent the entire time in private practice doing civil litigation and has tried more than 70 cases. Conroy’s work includes leading some of the multidistrict litigation involving opiates with jury trials around the country. Through that, she’s seen juries and judges change their minds about addiction and responsibilities. Her next target is social media.

Attorneys often expect incarcerated clients to lie and vice versa, says Derrick Hamilton, who served more than 20 years of a second-degree murder sentence. Those outlooks don’t help build good attorney-client relationships, according to Hamilton, who now works with students at the Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.

While 2022 was a phenomenal year for attorneys and “anyone with a pulse” and a law license could find work, 2023 might “go back to normal,” says Valerie A. Fontaine, a founding director of the legal search company SeltzerFontaine.

As we head into the holiday season, consider what you want your celebrations to look like, rather than meeting everyone else’s expectations, says Laurie Besden, a lawyer who has been sober for almost two decades.

The overall employment outcomes for 2007 and 2021 law school graduates were both 91.9%. And while that sounds like a good thing, it could be a warning.

Ellen Freeman immigrated from Odesa, Ukraine, to Pittsburgh almost 30 years ago. And although her family always planned to leave—she grew up learning various languages so that she could communicate wherever they settled—moving to the United States as a young single mother was one of the most difficult things that she has ever done.

Aliza Shatzman didn’t realize that federal judicial employees are not protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That is until the judge she worked for in 2020 ended her clerkship early—for reasons that she thinks were due to gender discrimination.

If you are studying for the July bar exam, you’re not going to memorize every flashcard for the Multistate Bar Examination, and that’s OK. You can still pass.

A good home-school program provided a nurturing environment that was lacking in elementary education, and the experience helped build confidence for law school, says Haley Taylor Schlitz, a 2022 graduate of Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.

A recent order from Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directing the state to consider medical treatments for transgender youths as child abuse is hurtful to children and their families, as is a new Alabama law that makes providing gender-affirming care to a minor a felony, says lawyer Asaf Orr.

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