  $\Lambda$-coalescents model genealogies of samples of individuals from a
large population by means of a family tree whose branches have lengths. The
tree's leaves represent the individuals, and the lengths of the adjacent edges
indicate the individuals' time durations up to some common ancestor. These
edges are called external branches. We consider typical external branches under
the broad assumption that the coalescent has no dust component, and maximal
external branches under further regularity assumptions. As it transpires, the
crucial characteristic is the coalescent's rate of decrease $\mu(b)$, $b\geq
2$. The magnitude of a typical external branch is asymptotically given by
$n/\mu(n)$, where $n$ denotes the sample size. This result, in addition to the
asymptotic independence of several typical external lengths hold in full
generality, while convergence in distribution of the scaled external lengths
requires that $\mu(n)$ is regularly varying at infinity. For the maximal
lengths, we distinguish two cases. Firstly, we analyze a class of
$\Lambda$-coalescents coming down from infinity and with regularly varying
$\mu$. Here the scaled external lengths behave as the maximal values of $n$
i.i.d. random variables, and their limit is captured by a Poisson point process
on the positive real line. Secondly, we turn to the Bolthausen-Sznitman
coalescent, where the picture changes. Now the limiting behavior of the
normalized external lengths is given by a Cox point process, which can be
expressed by a randomly shifted Poisson point process.
