being a lawyer

luber: hi everyone, marc luber here. todayon jd careers out there we�re looking at careers in real estate law. and like all ofour videos, we�re helping you find and succeed in fulfilling careers using a law degree,either practicing law or leaving law to pursue alternative careers. you�ll see in our videos that we help youeither get advice on key practical skills you�ll need for success or we go deep intoexploring a career path to help you decide if it fits you. today our guest is laura mcclellan.she�s a real estate attorney and a partner at thompson and knight in dallas, texas, whereshe made the texas super lawyers list by thompson reuters and she was listed as one of the bestlawyers in america by woodword white. laura�s

going to tell us all about being a real estateattorney, so let�s get to it. laura, welcome to jdcot. laura: thanks, it�s great to be here. luber: i�m glad you�re here, thank youfor being here. laura, i�m going to ask you to tell us what it�s like to be a realestate lawyer and then we�re going to dig into what�s a typical day like and who�sthe right fit for this type of a path and how do you break in and then how do you succeed.but before we get to that, i first want to hear from you a description of your practiceand what you do as a real estate lawyer. laura: sure. my practice as a real estatelawyer is focused on commercial real estate.

a lot of people think real estate and theythink buying a home or something like that. very few real estate lawyers, certainly atmy level, are involved in home acquisitions because the dollar amounts don�t make senseto hire a lawyer. for most people, they just work with their title company. so i work withlenders, banks and insurance companies who are lending money to build, say, an officetower or a shopping center. or i might be working with a developer that�s buildingone of those things or acquiring property that they�re going to build something on.or acquiring an already constructed retail center or an office building or an apartmentcomplex, things like that. so it�s big dollar commercial kinds of real estate transactions- and that�s how i spend my time, working

on deals like that. luber: that�s great. so laura, could youtell us what would a typical deal be so we could see what you�re working on, what atypical fact pattern is, almost like the soap opera angle of it? who are the charactersand what�s happening? laura: well there�s not very much that�ssoap operaee [sic] about what i do but a typical deal, say, is going to be, say pick an officetower - and the players are going to be the developer, the owner of the property, they�regoing to be the lender. if it�s an acquisition deal there�s a seller and a buyer - butin any event, they�re the people involved in getting an office building built - if we�retalking about raw land or changing ownership

of it and operating it. i�ve been on all sides of that table, soto speak, so i might be representing the lender that�s going to provide the funds for acquiringor building the office tower. or i might be representing the buyer of the property orthe seller - and those are the players. it doesn�t sound very exciting, they�re notgoing to make any tv shows about what i do - but it really can get pretty interesting.it�s a lot of fun to help put a deal together like that - and any kind of commercial property,but i�m using an office tower as an example. luber: alright, if you�re watching on youtube,please give us the thumbs up if this was helpful to you. and if you want to see the full interviewwith laura, come on over to jdcot dot com,

where you�ll hear from her what it�s liketo be a real estate attorney, lots more on that, what�s a typical day like, who makesthe right fit for this path, how to break in and how to succeed. if you�re alreadyat the site, you can just scroll down to the full video � and make sure you join ourmembership so that you get access to all the helpful video content. thanks again for watchingeverybody. i�m marc luber and i�ll see you soon.