Education roles: teaching, lecturing, training, coaching and academia

Teaching, lecturing, training and coaching

There are so many different types of roles in this context, from teaching in a school or lecturing at a university, to delivering business training or working as a life coach. In general, these roles often involve helping people to understand new concepts, which requires an ability to communicate those concepts in ways that are easy to understand. Much like law students do in assignments and exams, and lawyers do for clients. It also involves meticulous organisation (lesson or session planning, finishing on time etc.), and drawing on interpersonal skills and professionalism to keep clients engaged and happy (be that a room full of school children, junior lawyers, or senior executives). Plus if you have developed an understanding of how things work in practice, you might be able to provide valuable context and anecdotes that help to bring concepts to life (for example, if you worked as a property lawyer and then decide to lecture property law).

Academia

Law degrees and legal roles often involve a great deal of technical research, plus the ability to understand and critically analyse the research and distil the findings into client notes, supervisor memos, articles and essays that others can quickly get to grips with. This can align very much with the role of academics, who often contribute to books, articles, white papers and other publications. Academics are also often responsible for lecturing and tutoring, which as mentioned, lawyers may also be particularly well-suited to. Any time spent practising law can also help an academic to take a more practical approach to their work, understanding not only how concepts are supposed to work, but how they actually work in practice.