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Try to actively search out the type of work you're interested in. If you enjoyed working on a project, don't be shy about telling the partner you'd like to do more similar projects in the future. Also don't be shy about asking around to identify partners who do the type of work you want to be doing and introducing yourself to those people. You may not get work right away but expressing interest to the right people is an underrated step, in my opinion. You may not have tons of control over your work flow but small steps now can drastically change your work flow over time.
The other thing I've heard a lot as a junior associate (3rd year) is that now is the time to practice marketing yourself by marketing yourself within the firm. Do good work for the partners you work for and develop relationships with others within the firm.
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A1 has good advice. But don’t lose focus on developing outstanding basic legal skills in your area. From my perspective, you are like a 10 year old - yes you know how to read but I can’t give you Faulkner yet and expect you to understand it. Focusing on what you will do once you can read Faulkner and not on learning how to read Faulkner is not helpful to your career. I applaud you for actively planning your career, just don’t forget you have to be an excellent technical lawyer in order to have a career at all.
What I did as a first year: anything I didn’t understand like an expert, I jotted down in an ongoing document. As I learned more, I caught areas that are not understandable because there’s a gap in process or law on that topic. For instance a particular doctrine may have some legal precedent continuously developing because there isn’t governing authority for certain issues. Once I homed in on those areas, I wrote and published law reviews and non peer reviewed articles, forcing myself to become an expert in those areas.
That helped me keep track of areas I needed to learn better because I was simply new, and I also contributed and got credit for contributing to the profession’s understanding of areas of law that everyone needs to learn better in my field.
I also immediately became active in the leadership of my field’s foremost bar association, which began developing my reputation outside the firm and tapped me into hot topics in the field. Anytime I admired someone, I began establishing a rapport with them. As a mentor once told me: collecting mentors is crucial, especially if you are female, which unfortunately requires more need of an ambassador to rise in the ranks as compared to the efforts needed when you are male.
Go forth and conquer!
Attorney 1 provided great advice ^ IMO
Hard to know without more info about what you are doing, but working on developing a niche is a good use of time.
Transactional at a regional 100-150 attorney firm. How do you recommend developing a niche? I’ve been trying to take a lot of CLEs and take on non billable projects that I think can help develop the niche I want (public agency property and facility issues). I don’t really have much say in workflow and just take any type of work offered to me. Any suggestions?
To provide a different perspective, sometimes it is just the partner you work for or your firm. Sometimes there is just too much hierarchy at the firm or the partners hoard clients. This is one of the reasons why many people look for a new job and it is nothing to be ashamed of.