Finding Your Voice in Law School: Mastering Classroom Cold Calls, Job Interviews, and Other Verbal Challenges

Drawn from interviews with students and attorneys from leading law schools and firms, Finding Your Voice in Law School delivers winning strategies for succeeding in law school and beyond.


Many college graduates aren't prepared for the new challenges they will face in law school. Intense classroom discussion, mock trials and moot courts, learning the language of law, and impressing potential employers in a range of interview situations — it sounds intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. Finding Your Voice in Law School offers a step-by-step guide to the most difficult tests you will confront as a law student, from making a speech in front of a room full of lawyers to arguing before a judge and jury. Author Molly Shadel, a former Justice Department attorney and Columbia law graduate who now teaches advocacy at the University of Virginia School of Law, also explains how to lay a strong foundation for your professional reputation.



Communicating effectively — with professors, at social gatherings, with supervisors and colleagues at summer jobs, and as a leader of a student organization — can have a lasting impact on your legal career. Building the skills (and attitude) you need to shine among a sea of qualified students has never been more important. Finding Your Voice in Law School shows what it takes to become the lawyer you want to be.