When I started law school, I knew I was interested in litigation. That was about as far as my career plan went.
I had limited exposure to the legal profession itself. Recruitment cycles, articling, and judicial clerkships were all new to me, and I learned about the 1L recruit too late to participate.
What I understood much better was why advocacy appealed to me. Part of that came from the image of lawyers many of us grow up seeing from the outside: courtrooms, arguments, and someone standing up to make a case. Part of it was more personal. I had seen how deeply a legal system could affect a family when it did not work as it should.
Three years later, I am articling as a judicial law clerk at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. I did not map out the path between those two points. I learned by trying different kinds of work, paying attention to what interested me and gradually becoming more deliberate about what I wanted to learn next.
You Do Not Need the Whole Roadmap
One of the first things law school taught me was how much of the profession has to be learned outside the classroom.
Recruitment timelines, clerkships, articling structures, and the range of experiential opportunities available through law school were all things I had to learn as I went.
That is something I would tell any student who feels behind: learn the basic machinery early. Talk to upper-year students. Pay attention to recruitment timelines. Find out what clerkships, articling positions, clinics, and experiential programs actually involve.
But learning how the profession works is different from knowing exactly where you want to end up. You can become informed about the first without having a complete answer to the second.
Use Law School to Get Experience, Not Just Credits
One of the opportunities I became particularly enthusiastic about was earning academic credit through experiential placements.
Several of the experiences I pursued during law school also counted toward my JD. A credit did not always have to mean another course; it could mean spending a term learning in a legal or professional setting instead.
At a small family-law practice, I had direct contact with clients as a student. I had one-on-one conversations where I needed to gather information, understand what had happened, and work out what I still needed to know.
It was very different from a law-school hypothetical. Clients do not arrive with the relevant facts highlighted for you. A conversation can move backwards, important details can surface unexpectedly, and the question you thought you needed to ask may not be the useful one after all.
I learned a great deal simply from having those conversations myself: what to listen for, when to follow up, and how much information can emerge from asking one more question.
Other placements took me into very different settings, from hearings and written advocacy to legislative and policy work at the Senate. Seeing legal skills used in different environments helped me understand both what interested me and what I wanted more exposure to.
Students should look closely at what their faculties allow them to do for credit. Depending on the school, that might include clinics, internships, externships, research placements, or other forms of supervised experiential learning.
Before automatically registering for another seminar, it may be worth asking whether that same credit could put you somewhere you have never been before.
Make Your Interest More Informed
When I entered law school, “litigation” was a broad interest. I knew I was drawn to advocacy, but I had little sense of how the different parts of a file fit together in practice.
By the time I participated in the 2L recruit, I had some early client-facing experience. What I wanted next was deeper exposure to civil litigation.
I spent the following summer at Ontario’s Crown Law Office – Civil. There, I worked on matters at different stages of litigation and saw much more of how a civil file develops.
That summer was the first time I really saw how research, evidence, procedure and drafting fit together over the course of a file. It strengthened my interest in litigation, but more importantly, it made that interest more informed.
That distinction matters. Saying you are interested in “litigation” is only a starting point. Pay attention to which parts of the work actually draw you in: client contact, written advocacy, evidence, procedure, strategy or oral advocacy. The more specifically you understand what you enjoy, the more deliberately you can choose what to learn next.
Look at the Work Behind the Résumé
I am still early in my judicial clerkship, so I am cautious about drawing broad conclusions from it. One thing that has stood out already, though, is how approachable and welcoming judges have been. The clerkship is also giving me a perspective on litigation I had not seen before: research and writing from the decision-making side of a case.
That experience has reinforced something I had started to notice earlier. I now pay much more attention to what an opportunity will actually let me see and do.
The employer name matters, but the name alone tells you very little about your actual access to the work. Two students can hold similarly impressive positions and come away with very different experiences depending on what they were trusted to observe, contribute to, and take responsibility for.
I would now look closely at whether an opportunity offers meaningful client contact, drafting that will actually be used, exposure to proceedings, difficult records, or the strategic decisions that move a matter forward.
If I could speak to the version of myself who entered law school with an interest in advocacy but little sense of how to build a career around it, I would not give her a perfectly sequenced plan.
I would tell her to choose experiences that answer questions.
See what it is like to speak with a client. Watch how a file moves from facts to evidence to argument. Try writing something that will be used outside a classroom. Sit in a courtroom. Work somewhere that shows you a side of the profession you have not seen before. Then pay attention to what makes you want to learn more.
You do not need every step figured out at the beginning of law school. Sometimes the most useful thing one experience can give you is a better question to ask when choosing the next one.
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