I feel like I’m becoming the mid level associate (fourth year) who doesn’t know what they’re doing. I knew a few of these as a junior and it was always my fear. Is this normal? Or do the competent people truly feel competent?

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Relax. Everyone is faking it.

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Exactly. Just trust your instincts and ask for guidance from a senior/partner when you feel like you’re drowning. It will all be fine and thankfully, no one dies when we make mistakes.

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The feeling is very normal. Leveling up into the midlevel position is often a really rocky transition so try to give yourself some grace. There are suddenly expectations that you should be able to manage down as well as proactively manage up in running cases but firms very rarely provide any training or organized mentoring on how to do that well. At the same time, you likely have a lot of experience with many aspects of your practice but probably also still have some big gaps that need to be filled, especially if you clerked for a year or two. Do you have any associate mentors or partners you like who you could ask for advice on how to work on leveling up in your practice/group? I’ve found that more senior folks are often really receptive to these questions and happy to provide advice/constructive feedback if asked.

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The fact that you’re worried about this makes me think you are not the same as the people you knew as a junior. In my experience, the worst and least prepared mid levels were way too confident thought they knew everything.

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