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What is the lateral hire process like?
My favorite office activity: canceling meetings.
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I’m at a V 25 firm but work in a small branch office that house only a couple of practices, and therefore functions more or less like a boutique. So while we honor the firm’s fairly robust and somewhat bureaucratic review process, our development discussions with second years tend to focus on skills issues. Nevertheless, we encourage fairly open discussions about what the associate wants to do in the short and longer-term, how the firm can help the associate achieve those goals, and level – appropriate skill development both on the technical skills side (for a litigator, for example, we might talk about deposition skills) and practice development skills such as networking for Junior lawyers, time management, and so forth. If your firm has, or is open to, a similar philosophy, I would think hard and self critically about where you are right now, including the skills that you have and have not yet required and what you think you need to do to become a better lawyer. I would also think as clearly as you can about what you want to be doing in the future and how your current job and specialty fits into that future. Because you are so early in your career that may be a bit of a challenge, but do the best you can. That will allow you to show up at the review meeting with a list of questions concerning things that the firm can do to help improve your abilities and to keep you on the career path you desire. You may also be asked questions like, “how are you doing?“ Have answers prepared that don’t start, “to tell you the truth, I hate my job and I’m drowning in debt.“ But don’t mask any real concerns you have. The sweet spot is figuring out how to raise any legitimate concerns you have in a constructive fashion that gives the firm some way of helping you address those concerns, rather than putting the firm in a defensive position.