WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE
FOR YOUNG LAWYERS? AS TOLD TO JESSICA TAM
Get involved in
the community.
Making sure that you’re balancing your
work and your life by including community
or some kind of outreach activity—it could
be a bar association, it could be a trade
association in a field that you’re interested
in—[keeps you] in touch with real people.
It really enhances your practice of law over
time. It enhances your perspective and your
ability to assist your clients.
SHERRY H. FLAX / PARTNER, SAUL EWING,
BALTIMORE, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Work hard but be
inventive. Think
outside the box.
To a certain extent, the practice of law
is an art. And the best artists are the ones
with imagination. You have to be inventive;
you have to be creative.
JAMES W. BARTLETT III / PRINCIPAL
AND VICE CHAIRMAN, SEMMES, BOWEN &
SEMMES, BALTIMORE, MARITIME LAW
Find a job you love.
Make sure that the career path you
choose involves something you have
some passion and interest in. When you’re
working 90-hour weeks, through weekends
and missing out on some personal events,
it’s a lot easier to swallow when you are
doing work you enjoy. Life is too short to
spend most of your waking hours doing
something you have no passion for. The
beauty of a law degree is that it can allow
you a tremendous amount of flexibility in
finding a career path that is not just a job
but something that you care about. [It]
provides an opportunity to feel like you are
moving forward in a positive direction as
opposed to being a hamster in the wheel.
LAURA G. ZOIS / FOUNDING PARTNER,
MILLER & ZOIS, GLEN BURNIE, PERSONAL
INJURY PLAINTIFF: GENERAL