We’ve pretty much seen it all.
If you’re looking a lawyer coach and résumé writer who truly knows the legal market and has experience working with clients like you, then you’ve come to the right place.
At Bryce Legal, we specialize in working with lawyers who want to practice law, leverage their law degrees, or re-evaluate the trajectory of their legal careers. We work with attorneys across their career lifecycles, from launching a successful legal career through career fulfillment and advancement, to rebalancing or exploring alternative options, to downshifting in preparation for retirement.
Our clients have backgrounds in just about every practice area, have worked in just about every environment, and have faced myriad challenges and opportunities.
“I needed someone objective looking at these problems through a different prism.”
Legal Career Coaching for Both Immediate and Long-Term Needs
We give lawyers the tools they need to move forward. Taking an accountability approach to lawyer career coaching, we work with attorneys to develop step-by-step action plans that address their individual needs. Our clients are committed to the understanding that:
- They must choose to be their greatest asset
- Success is the result of habits, behaviors, and attitudes that can be learned
- Short, mid, and long-term strategies are best pursued simultaneously
Julie Cromer Young with the Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg at “Her Honor: Women in the Judiciary,” a 2013 conference Julie organized as conference director.
Shauna C. Bryce talks legal careers to senior-level lawyers at Harvard Law School. She was selected by her classmates to be the 1996 Class Symposium speaker, addressing mid-career options and decision-making in “Improving with Age: Making the Most of Your Legal Vintage." Introduced by Dave Aronberg, State Attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida.
Some lawyers don’t want (and often don’t need) to hire a professional career coach for long-term coaching. They have an acute need, like preparing for a job interview, that requires immediate preparation and action. Or they just have a burning or nagging something, and they need an impartial expert with whom to discuss it. It’s an opportunity to talk through issues with someone who has been around the block, as well as to formulate an action plan.
Our legal career advising is available in sessions as short as 30 minutes. You can use it for one-off questions, short-term coaching, or to road-test a long-term partnership.
Through one-on-one career coaching, lawyers partner with us to develop and implement strategies to achieve their goals. Their individual situations can be quite varied...
Success in the Workplace
- Creating a business plan
- Building 30-60-90 day success plans to get off on the right foot
- Transitioning from law student to practicing lawyer
- Facing time-tracking and billing pressures
- Addressing criticism or constructive feedback on performance evaluations
- Straddling conflicting philosophies and demands of multiple supervisors
- Learning to say no and build boundaries
- Building a case for a raise, promotion, or increased role
Career Planning, Decision-Making, and Development
- Positioning for next stage opportunities and mid-career pivots
- Making your mark in law school to increase your post-graduation opportunities
- Transitioning from law school to law firm, from law firm to in-house, or between other environments
- Parlaying e-discovery or contract attorney work into a full-time career in growing areas of law and legal services
- Finding mentors within your geographical area, practice area, or industry
- Increasing technical skills to stay in-demand in changing times
- Leveling up
- Changing practice areas, sectors, and geography
- Giving back through non-profit board work, mentoring individuals or organizations, and more
- Moving to corporate boards
- Downshifting
- Leaving the law
- Career decision-making
Getting Unstuck, Finding Your Path, and Reclaiming Happiness
- Redefining what success means to you
- Finding a more fulfilling work / life balance
- Bringing wellness, mindfulness, and well-being into your day
- Rediscovering what brings you joy
- Decision-making centered around what you value most
Professional Branding and Reputation Management
- Creating a consistent brand to attract potential employers, recruiters, clients, and other contacts
- Distinguishing yourself from other qualified candidates
- Finding and dealing with “digital dirt” impeding your job search and career development
- Disseminating your brand across platforms to create a positive online presence
- Building, protecting, and repairing your professional reputation
- Leveraging skills from a prior career
- Creating marketing materials
Networking for Results Now and the Future
- Understanding the value of a personal and professional network
- Building and strengthening your network online and in-person
- Putting your network to use
- Increasing the value and ROI of your LinkedIn profile
- Learning to network in a way that’s natural, comfortable and authentic
- Meeting new people critical to getting where you want to go
Job Search Strategies in a Competitive Market
- Finding hidden opportunities before they turn into public job listings
- Getting inside intel on jobs, employers, and industries
- Working with legal recruiters
- Increasing your skill set during the job search
- Re-entering the legal profession after a personal or professional break
- Identifying transferable skills and pivoting mid-career
- Minimizing the impact of underemployment, unemployment, layoffs, RIFs, corporate bankruptcies and reorganizations, short-term positions, and more
- Entering the U.S. market for foreign-trained lawyers
- Exploring other roles or career options
Interview Principles, Practicalities, and Preparation
- Learning what interviewers are looking for and how to give it to them
- Applying principles of interviewing to specific situations
- Preparing answers for questions you don’t want to—or don’t know how to—answer
- Identifying and addressing real or perceived weaknesses
- Critiquing your mock interview
Non-Traditional Lawyers
- JD/MBA, JD/MPA, JD/MA, LLM, and multiple degrees or licenses
- Second-career lawyers
- Lawyers returning to the workforce or to the practice of law
- Lawyers transitioning practice areas
- Lawyers leaving the law
- Military lawyers / JAG Officers transitioning to civilian practice
- Military spouses
- Non-linear career paths
- Foreign-educated and foreign-trained lawyers
- Other highly individualized situations
Lawyer Coaches
Team Bios
