Imagine as a lawyer you held a skill that has the ability to get you employed instantly.
Sounds like a magic wand to me.
A skill that can get you paid internships in law school.
You become eligible for 80% of the legal jobs out there
Law firms are looking to hire you.
Lawyers say that they spend anywhere between 40-70% of their time drafting contracts.
If you can offer to do it for them, you instantly become a desirable resource.
Law firm lawyers, in-house counsels, independent business lawyers, business leaders spend most of their time either drafting, reviewing or negotiating a contract.
We see that more and more businesses are setting up across the world, transactions are increasing and contracts are required to secure those deals.
The world is becoming digital and after the pandemic, businesses have realised that you don’t have to be physically present to get the job done.
If you are delivering the outcome to the business, you may very well be sipping a drink on a Maldivian beach and negotiating contracts for your clients as long as you seal the deal.
So what are the earning opportunities for you if you know the skills of drafting and negotiating contracts:
Independent Practice and Freelance Work for Lawyers
- There are multiple freelancing platforms such as Freelancer.com, Guru.com, SEOClerks.com, Fiverr, People per Hour and UpWork where lawyers charge anywhere between $10-$30/hr depending upon their experience.
- If you work at least 50hrs/week while charging $10/hr at the beginning even then you’ll be able to earn around $2000 which is approximately ₹1,50,000/month
Working for startups
- Start-ups require legal advice at every stage of their business.
- They have to enter into multiple contracts on a daily basis.
- Start-ups focus on spending their revenue in growing their business and hence can’t afford to pay the fees to the top and middle level law firms.
- If you can offer top-level legal advice at a nominal rate you will be in high demand with such businesses.
- There are 55k registered start-ups in India, several more are unregistered.
- There is tremendous opportunity for a lawyer to tap into this and have a lucrative income.
Additional income alongside litigation
- The best way to meet the clients for litigating lawyers was to physically go to the court.
- Pandemic has made court hearings virtual making it harder to find new clients.
- Litigating lawyers are struggling to stay financially sound.
- Contract drafting can become a supplementary income for such lawyers.
- If a lawyer charges ₹10,000/contract and takes at least 1 contract/week.
- He will easily earn ₹40,000/ month only by drafting contracts.
- You can take more contracts if time permits.
Working with companies as an in-house counsel
- A start-up or a medium size company enters into 20-30 contracts every month in different jurisdictions that require vetting and negotiation.
- It costs too much to pay outside lawyers.
- Hiring an in-house counsel bodes well for such businesses because a lawyer does not merely negotiate a few contracts, but also looks into his compliance which apparently needs urgent attention.
- Also in-house counsels take a wholesome view of the legal needs of a company. Long term planning and risk management is managed better with an in-house lawyer.
- In house counsel earn anywhere around ₹10.2 lacs to 34.4 lacs annually depending upon your experience.
Opportunities in law firm
- The first task that is generally given to an intern or a fresh law graduate in a law firm is to proof-read contracts.
- If you do a great job at proofreading, plus while turning over the contract can suggest a clause or two of your own, or point out any problem that may arise while negotiating it, then you will impress the lawyer so much that they will keep an eye out for you.
- A corporate lawyer in a tier- firm would earn anything between 12–15 lakhs per year.
- Boutique firms may pay somewhere ₹5–12 lakhs per year for a fresh law graduate.
Research and writing work in internships
- Learning contract drafting also sharpens your writing skills and it makes it easier to perform research and writing work.
- Several LawSikho students have been earning at least ₹5,000/assignments for writing work for big corporates. These are the rates for the beginners.
- As you become seasoned at this job you can charge even higher.
Basically, opportunities are plenty all you need to know now is this one skill of contract drafting and negotiation.
But how do you start?
How do you reach out to freelancing clients to secure contract drafting assignments?
Is it possible to do this kind of work while you’re still in law school?
We will teach you all this and more in a 3-days, 9 hours live bootcamp which is free of cost.
https://lawsikho.com/contractdraftingbootcamp
What will you learn:
- How to read a contract?
- What do you need to know in order to draft a commercial contract?
- What are the important clauses of a commercial contract?
- How to draft to avoid ambiguity?
- How to prepare for a high-value contract negotiation?
- How to perform a risk analysis of any contract?
- Learn to calculate damages for contractual breach.
- Learn how to create a standard format of contracts and use them successfully in any organization.
- Learn how to find out the stamp duty payable on a contract and its registration requirements.
Bootcamp will be conducted by Ramanuj Mukherjee (CEO & Co-founder, LawSikho) and Abhyuday Agarwal (COO & Co-founder, LawSikho).
In 2018, they started with an ambitious project to teach young lawyers how to draft 100 contracts.
Their methodology and techniques work so smoothly that even professionals who don’t have a law degree can learn drafting.
They are coming with all these lessons to provide you a roadmap to perform contract drafting work to obtain financial freedom and secure your career.
Who must attend this bootcamp:
- Law students who are looking to excel in their internships.
- Law students who are unclear about the area of law they want to specialise in.
- Law students who are interested in becoming financially independent by securing freelance contract drafting work.
- Lawyers who want to earn additional money by doing freelance work.
- In-house counsels or lawyers working in legal departments of companies who are interested in understanding the impact of the contracts entered into by their employer companies.
- Lawyers / CAs / CSs advising startups and are looking to extend their domain of work to include drafting in addition to compliance.
- Litigators who are looking to earn additional funds by generating clients for contract drafting work.
Registration link for the Bootcamp: https://lawsikho.com/contractdraftingbootcamp
If you want to be notified about other workshops and webinars conducted by LawSikho on Corporate Law, please join the Telegram or WhatsApp group below:
Telegram Group: https://t.me/joinchat/RoPKARepwkxwCQSN
WhatsApp Group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DXD4zCXeOnnJMmrTldZOLT
See you there!
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