Elder Law Attorneys: Job Description, Education, Skills and Duties, Earnings and Outlook
Submitted by: paula
Job Overview Lawyers or attorneys are advocates and advisers who work in our legal system. They represent their clients in court trials and defend them in front of the administrative and government bodies. They advise their clients on issues such as how the legal system affects personal decisions, businesses as well as the purchase of properties and the creation of will and testaments. There are special types of lawyers who focus on the legal needs of the elderly. They are called elder law attorneys. As elder law attorneys, they specialize in providing clients who are aged or elderly, or in some cases disabled, legal services that they need. Some of the most common elder law issues include conservatorship and guardianship, health and long term care planning, elder abuse cases, insurance and public benefits issues.
Education, Knowledge and Trainings Required
If you wish to establish a career in the elderly law, prepare as early as high school by taking subjects such as English, Research, Social Studies and Speech. These subjects will hone your skills in communication and debates as well as in fact finding and data gathering. TO become a lawyer, a college degree or a pre law degree should be accomplished. Pre-law degrees may be any of the following : Bachelor of Science in Economics, Public Administration, Political Science, Social Science and the related courses. After a sucessful graduation from the pre law degree, a law degree should follow. This will consiste of a four year classroom instruction and practicum that will develop the skills and provide the soon to be lawyer the knowledge on the legal system. A bar examination has to be passed afterwards to qualify as a registered lawyer.
Skills and Abilities
It is important that lawyers have excellent reasoning and analytical skills. Communication skills both in verbal and in written form is necessary as they will be dealing with a lot of court discussion and/or defense as well as the many written trascription and reports regarding the study of the case. Problem solving skills is also needed as every case the client presents is a problem that needs a resolution.
A problem well solved is equivalent the client's satisfaction on winning the case.
Duties
Lawyers provide their clients legal advice as necessary. They represent the client's interest in the court. It is their duty to let their clients understand their legal rights as well as their responsibilities and help them assert those before the jury or any legal forum. As for the elder law attorneys, they focus on the needs of the clients who are aged, elderly or even disabled in some cases. They deal with the total legal needs of these specific set of clients. As their clients are elderlies and that they are more dependent in terms of asserting their legal rights, the lawyer's responsibilities here are many. The issues that they tackle include estate planning issues, long term care needs, proiate and public resources to finance coordination issues, to name a few.
Earnings and Job Outlook
The range of salary of an elder law attorneys startsfrom 44,000 U.S.dollars to 97,000 U.S. dollars per annum. Those who have established a certain name in the field with clients who are already in the high profile brackets may earn around 1,000,0000 U.S. dollars per year. The job outlook in this field is expected to move as fast as the average for the other professions in the other fields.
Paula Hiz is a researcher and a human resource specialist who helps newly graduates, job applicants and post graduate professionals be aware of their job opportunities and available trainings for skills and practice upgrading.
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