I’ve been out of school for 8 years. Didn’t practice law for most of them. I’m Currently two years into commercial litigation and constantly feel like I have moments where my inexperience really shows, equating to little mistakes here and there. Then couple this with adhd I can’t seem to get under control. Anyways, how do I overcome this? My colleagues always comment how I’m so experienced when I’m not, and I feel like I’m held to a higher standard, and im unsure if that’s warranted or not.

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I'm confused by your post because you contradict yourself. You begin by saying that you didn't practice law for 6 years and have been working as a commercial litigator for two years. Then, you go on to say that you're making mistakes, which is (somewhat) expected of someone with only two years of experience. BUT you say you shouldn't be making these mistakes and your colleagues are shocked/disappointed that you're making them.

Which is it? Are you super experienced or are you a new lawyer?

Based on the little information you've provided, I'd say that mistakes are going to happen because you're a 2nd year. You're still learning the job. Anyone who expects perfection from a 2nd year is an idiot.

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just say “relatively new to _ (whatever type of practice you’re doing) then just do the job regardless of people’s perceptions, which are cluttering your headspace. Finally maybe people think you are experienced because you present yourself well or maturely. You just want people working directly with you, reviewing your work etc knowing you’re a second year so their expectations are reasonable to your experience level. You’ll likely feel junior until you’re practicing for 4-5 years. Everyone does, whether they admit it or act like it or not, because they are junior…

You’ve probably got a few more years ahead of you before you’ll feel like you know what you’re doing some of the time. It gets better. In the meantime, find things that work for you to help catch your common mistakes. For example, read out loud feature in Word is amazing for proofing, but rarely used.

One of my favorite drafting/proofing techniques for transactional is to start off by highlighting the entire document, then in-highlight as I “approve” or rework stuff. My mid-review work product looks psychotic, but it is a very effective technique. Bottom line - do what works, ignore the rest.

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I'm a legal marketer that entered commercial litigation 6 months ago (after 20 years in BigLaw corporate marketing). Preparing the Chambers and Legal500 submissions and other award submissions with the descriptions of cases has been a learning curve since I'm not a trained attorney. I have used AI to help me understand legal concepts and to help prepare correct descriptions of litigation cases we have done (that have only a minimal amount of stylistic changes by the partners). I have used publicly accessible briefs, so they are not confidential and can upload them to AI. It has massively accelerated me over the learning curve. So could you leverage AI tools to do scenario planning without entering any confidential information to help you cross-check your thoughts and ideate back and forth on legal issues?

Director’s advice is nonsensical and irrelevant. Completely different learning curves

Also, using AI to summarize a document is much different than using AI to “ideate back and forth on legal issues”.

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