My name is Laura Wolf. I am a civil rights attorney who stumbled into my dream practice despite being trained to approach my job search from a place of fear. My goal is to help others looking to enter the field of civil rights law by providing tailored coaching based on a model of self-awareness and confidence.
I come from a family of non-lawyers, with no lawyers in my extended family or even the outer-orbit of family friends. I went to law school knowing I wanted to help people, though having very little sense of what that meant or how to get there.
While my law school had a great public interest career office, there were just too many students and too few counselors to receive tailored advice. Although the resume editing and cover letter reviews were incredibly helpful, I left law school knowing little about what I wanted or how to achieve those goals.
My only real focus was on applying for every civil rights job I could find and hoping one would “pick me.”
I have a term for this approach: fear-based. Even though I had graduated from Harvard Law School – with honors and a federal district court clerkship to boot – I was terrified about not having a job after my clerkship ended.
I wanted to have everything lined up as soon as possible, just like all of my friends who were going into BigLaw and who had received job offers a year before graduating from law school. Offers that would remain open even while they clerked.
What no one told me was that civil rights jobs do not hire in advance. They hire based on need and in short windows of time. And that patience is a virtue when it comes to a career in civil rights.
There’s a good reason your career office isn’t sharing that advice with you: your school cares deeply about the percentage of graduates with jobs lined up before they graduate.
And while that does not impact the students who pursue a career in BigLaw, it pushes civil-rights-minded students into fear-based job searches which often lead them to either abandon their pursuits for the corporate jobs that hire in advance or accept a not-so-dream civil rights job because it is the first one to make an offer.
Over the last five years, I have found myself regularly meeting with law students, recent graduates, and lawyers looking to transition into civil rights who have sought me out for career advice. I have even sat down with recent college graduates considering a legal career to discuss whether that is the best path to achieve the civil justice they wish to create in the world.
What I have found is that I have a knack for coaching. I think it is because I genuinely care about helping people. It makes sense: that’s why I went into civil rights law in the first place. I love working with people, figuring out their needs, and helping them find the path to achieve their goals.
I will not sit here and tell you that I’m a “branding” expert. In fact, I find the entire concept of “branding” to buy into the fear-based approach, hoping that you can convince someone to “pick you.” Instead, I work one-on-one with individuals to discover their genuine interests alongside what seems to be holding them back.
For some, it’s a lack of confidence. For others, a lack of clear direction. For others, difficulty marketing themselves in a niche field. The list goes on and on.
Whatever the root of the problem, I work with you to resolve the impasse so that you can achieve your career goals from a place of self-awareness and confidence, and never from a place of fear.
I have worked with dozens of students, recent graduates, and practicing attorneys. You can read testimonials about my coaching style here. You can also email me at laura@sparkjusticecareers.com to schedule a free 20-minute consultation.