Students who study law are mostly inspired by the ambition of being a lawyer after they graduate.
Here’s a question to ponder on: Do law students only have one career choice, i.e. to be a lawyer?

The answer is ‘no’.

Let me share a scenario which involves students who study Syariah law.

Lack of Exposure to Opportunities

Often, there are students and fresh graduates who approach me and ask if they can work for me as a lawyer. Indeed, they are Syariah-qualified and many even have knowledge in Islamic banking.

During the discussions, I realised almost all of them have the same direction when they told me that they wanted to be a Syariah lawyer and/or wanted to deal with cases which involves Syariah law.

Immediately, I knew they did not have the right exposure to the career options that they were qualified for. In other words, they narrowed down their option to only one, i.e. to be a Syariah lawyer.

Many More Options Other Than Syariah Lawyer

In fact, graduates who studied Syariah law have more options other than just being a Syariah lawyer.
For example, these graduates can aim for job positions in the security commission of Bank Negara which require them to deal with Syariah compliant products and/or services.

In many countries including Malaysia, Islamic banking is a very common subject for all financial institutions and these institutions often come up with products and/or services which aim to be Syariah compliant. Hence, this is where these graduates can apply their knowledge of Islamic banking and Syariah to determine if these product and/or service are fully Syariah compliant. Other than Bank Negara, they can literally work in any banks which offer Islamic banking.

With that being said, these graduates actually have a lot of job opportunities but they are just lack of exposure to these opportunities.

An important thing every law graduates should know is that, being a lawyer is just one of the options. They should deploy self-awareness to find out if being a lawyer really gives them job satisfaction they seek for.

Zalina Hashim
Z. Hashim & Co.