How do you create a professional identity after graduation?  One excellent way to build a professional reputation and share your passion for an area of law is to write articles for a legal publisher.  Consider submitting articles to your local bar association.  The Wisconsin Bar Association publishes the Wisconsin Lawyer, Wisbar InsideTrack, and Section and Division newsletters.

Here are links to information and instructions from the Wisconsin Bar Association on submission guidelines.  Write Bylined Articles to Build Your Practice & How to Contribute to State Bar Publications.  Read guidelines carefully, you will be wasting your time as well as the editors if you don't follow the rules for submission.

But don't take rejection--when and if it happens--to heart.  If you believe your idea has value, try submitting an article with another publisher.  Often rejection of an article is not due to your lack of skill as a writer but because of topic choice, selection policies or space limitations.  Remember that persistence is a valuable skill in legal writing and most writers have dealt with rejection a time or two before they were published.

Also consider that online publishing has an added benefit, people outside of your local community who are interested in your expertise will be more willing to contact you for legal advise if you have a body of professional writing on a topic of law they consider vital to their professional interests.  Busy professionals often set up online alerts in their area of interest to crawl the Web for information.  One way to get your name into someone's "inbox," is to write an article in your field.   

Submitted by Jenny Zook, Reference Librarian on April 27, 2015

This article appears in the categories: Law Library