Are you a law student looking to build earn money while studying?
If so, you may be part of a larger group of thousands who have the same goal but are clueless on how to move forward.
In this article, Team YLCC lists out some ways in which students can build a supplementary income while pursuing a degree in law. Read on!
Participating In Various Competitions
Law is one of those fields which has a dynamic co-curricular sphere with several types of competitions where students can participate and win substantial cash prizes. It is better to start participating in competitions early on in your student life. The level of confidence and professionalism built with it, and the links made, are priceless. Some such competitions are:
- Moot courts/ Mock Trials
- Essay/ Judgement writing competitions
- Parliamentary Debates / Regular Debates
- Client Counselling Competitions
Apart from earning you a good cash reward, these competitions are also crucial for building your skillet with legal activities such as arguing, drafting and mastering other soft skills such as inter-personal communication.
You may keep a lookout for such competitions by regularly engaging on LinkedIn and by checking sites such as Lawctopus at regular intervals.
Ghostwriting Assignments
Ghostwriters are writers for hire who are paid but receive none of the credit for the work produced. There are generally two parties involved in this professional relationship:
- The “author,” who hires the freelance writer to produce content for an agreed upon fee, takes the credit for all the original work produced.
- The “ghost,” the freelance writer who is generally paid in advance of completing the job, gets the money as a “work for hire” job and assumes none of the credit for their ghostwriting work.
Needless to say, skilled ghostwriters are immensely valued for their work and are also paid handsomely depending on the nature of the assignment. If you can do the crux of the work that is bound to benefit the client while producing quality work, ghostwriting can be substantially rewarding.
Legal Content Writing
This is common avenue for law students to earn money on the side. Usually blogs publishing legal content on a regular basis are always on the lookout for quality content writers for their platform. In the long run, once your content is found to be good, these platforms are often willing to go the extra mile and pay you a stipend for your efforts.
In India, blogs like iPleaders, Lawctopus, Bar&Bench and some others are known to hire and pay writers at regular intervals. You may get in touch with their content team to know more on this. Here are some of the types of content that you may be encouraged to write as a legal content writer:
- In-depth answers to contemporary legal questions which require analysis
- How to articles: follow a step-by-step approach
- Interviews
- Case Studies Analyse/ describe legal changes: legislative and judicial
- Analysis of trends and Industry news
Becoming A Research Assistant
To make extra money while in law school, consider becoming a research assistant (RA) for one your profs. Before most semesters, law schools usually list the research projects that profs have on the go. Law students can then apply for which projects seem most interesting to them and if the prof deems you to be a good candidate, he’ll bring you on as his assistant.
These projects can be about literally any aspect of law – transnational criminal law, judicial ethics, corporate law, you name it. Profs can research pretty much whatever they want so if they ask for an RA the RA will just assist them with that research — the work itself could be anything from co-writing to copy-editing to preliminary research to editing the citations
Freelancing
Freelancing is a top choice when it comes to law students. There is a wide variety of work available under the same roof- writing, editing, proofreading or research. The freelancing websites such as LinkedIn, Upwork and Fiverr are updated with an inhuman amount of work, that does not always require a lawyer to do. It is a temporary and unforeseeable route, where the wait for work is not known. But parties here are serious about their work.
As a freelance professional, securing your first client can be very exciting. Knowing what freelance clients want to see and delivering accordingly can help you take those first steps toward building a successful business plan and freelance career. Needless to say, it is first important to learn how to become good at any of these skills; it takes practice and time. A way to handle this is taking free/paid online courses from websites like Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Khan Academy and the likes.
Representative For Companies
With an abundance of competition among research service and bar preparation companies, it is no surprise that they want to market themselves to law students early on. These companies often hire student representatives who can spread the word about events, trainings, discounts, research tools, and incentive people with food and goodies. Working for a research service, you will be paid to understand the platform and the tools, so that you can explain their benefits to other students, which helps improve your legal research skills. There are several of the companies in India such as WestLaw, SCC, Manupatra, etc.
Tutoring Other Students
Are you good in your core academics with clarity on concepts that are otherwise considered complicated? Do you have a flair for explaining things in a simple way that is easy to understand?
If so, you may try and tutor other law students in a subject of your choice. There is a strong tutoring culture in India, use that to your advantage! You may charge on a weekly/monthly basis or for every session you charge. Either way, once word gets around and you get more students to teach, this is a very steady source of income and also very fulfilling.
YLCC would like to thank the Content Team for their valuable insights in this article.
