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That we’re not out here saving lives. Work hard, work fast, work diligently but remember that (i) we are very highly paid paper-pushers and adjust your attitude accordingly, (ii) mistakes happen and can usually be fixed, and (iii) the first couple of years in the industry is for learning and that not understanding concepts, lingo, or procedures is OK as long as you keep learning and growing. Law is not easy but can be a fulfilling career - I wish you the best!
I lateraled as an associate to IM at a VC firm after having worked in a VC/M&A practice group.
That you are a concierge at the Four Seasons, a waiter at Alinea.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If doing an m&a transaction, schedule regular check-ins with your senior attorney to keep up to date on the movement of the deal. Always review the edits / changes in the work product, and don’t be afraid to clarify why something was changed (I find this the best way to learn). Also - expect that your senior/ partner will make edits. So long as you didn’t miss anything big/ material, the smaller tweaks to language is just them adding to the docs.
70% of the job is just being organized, being attentive/ responsive.
Best of luck
It’s super hard to go from feeling like you knew what you were doing in your old profession to feeling like an idiot baby lawyer. Remember what it was like the first years when you were still learning, it’s a huge curve. There are days I think of going back to my former profession just because I could do it with my eyes closed but I remind myself I did this for the challenge.
This is great advice.
I wish I had known how important networking would be for my career. My first day in corporate law, I was so focused on learning the technical skills that I neglected to build relationships with my colleagues. If I had known how beneficial it would be to foster those connections, I would have put more effort into it from the beginning.
Assume that everyone senior to you is going to take themselves much more seriously than they should. The spread between how important someone thinks they are and how important they actually are decreases as lawyers get more senior, but you have to understand that it doesn’t matter if you know that what you’re doing isn’t saving lives if the people you are working for act as though they are saving lives.
So effing true!!
Your training and professional development is entirely in your hands. No one else is thinking about your training, but you are expected to keep up.
1) Bill all your time.
2) Do good work timely. No typos, no missed deadlines or asking for an extension at the 11th hour (when it was foreseeable that you’d need more time). Spend time at the onset assessing how long something will take.
3) Be responsive to emails and proactive. Plan for the incompetence of others, never assume they’ll submit good work product on time. Follow up frequently but professionally. If no response, escalate it early enough so you’ll still get what you need. That CYA email is a paper shield for blown deliverables. When things go wrong, people try to shift blame to others. It’s much simpler to make sure it doesn’t go wrong than to try to win at that game every time.
4) Ask questions, but more like office hours. Do some initial research yourself (but don’t waste a ton of time spinning your wheels) so you can ask nuanced questions instead of expecting them to just explain. Ask upfront, not after hours or the day something is due.
5) Identify problems along with your proposed solution (and be ready with rationale). Even if you’re wrong, you’re ahead of those who just flag things and say “what do I do?”
Dont be fast, be efficient. Bill your hours with a timer so you can capture everything, and dont be scared to put more time in on things in the beginning while you are learning. Partners would rather you spend more time on something at first than not enough and have to tell you to revise it, or do it themselves.
I wish I had known how to navigate the corporate hierarchy and understand the different roles and responsibilities of those above and below me. Knowing the corporate culture and the unspoken rules of the workplace would have been beneficial, understanding the different ways to interact and collaborate with colleagues. Lastly, I wish I had been better prepared to take on the challenging tasks and workload that comes with working in corporate law.
Don’t trust anyone with information you don’t want broadcast to the world.
I wish I knew that no matter how much the firm says they care about EDI, pro bono, and work-life balance, most partners only care about billables and nothing else.
That Billables will run my life.
Utilize the paralegals and practice support resources
In the end, all we are doing does not really matter.
This helps a lot to develop resilience in face of the stress that you will sure be facing.
We aren’t saving lives
Partners are usually p lousy people managers