My firm is really great. Mid sized regional firm. People are great, work is great. But I’m a junior and there are zero mid levels in my specific office. I’m questioning if I am getting the proper training as other juniors at other firms. The pay is good for a firm of this size with its presence, but feel like someone with my level of experience should be trying to get the proper training in order to succeed as I progress. Thoughts on what to do? I’m comfortable, but thinking about of the future

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Midlevels are not a necessary part of any training. This is not the right question.

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That’s how I learned but you’ll need to find a partner that you get along with who will take you under their wing. I’m a third year and now I had a junior partner be my guy - sounding board, give advice, answer stupid questions etc. I’ve been with him for 11 months and learned so much. In fact, I came to the epiphany this week that I might actually know what I was doing.

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It really depends on the work you're doing. I was in a similar situation and I think I ended up getting better training, because I was doing the work of a mid-level years before I otherwise would. It served me well going forward and helped me land roles I otherwise probably wouldn't have.

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Second this. I was in this situation and ended up getting to take depositions and get client face time when I likely never would have gotten to experience those things as a junior in one of my firm’s larger offices. I had to learn quickly to essentially act as the junior, mid level, and senior associate on my cases all rolled into one. But the partners knew this and were diligent about teaching me what I needed to know, and trusting me to execute.

The main downside I experienced was just not having the camaraderie and support of other associates around me, because I missed out on having anyone at or near my level that I could go to when I needed to vent or cry or just talk to socially. It was a bit isolating.

What do you even mean by “proper training”?

I get what you mean, OP, and was in the same boat last year. Started at a Midlaw firm that lost literally all of it's midlevels in less than a year. That left me working directly with partners and one senior associate. I was learning, but not in a productive manner. Everything was a fire drill, I wasted an enormous amount of time teaching myself how to do things and dealing with no one reviewing my work. Horribly inefficient, bad for the client, and just awful for my professional development and mental health. I lateraled to a firm where there are midlevels who are available to answer my questions and actually review my work and it's been SUCH a game changer. Still learning, but learning how to do things right in a far less painful manner with meaningful feedback. If you're feeling like you're being left alone with no support, I strongly encourage you to consider lateraling. You don't know what you don't know and in my experience it's much more pleasant to have a friendly internal person tell you what mistakes you're making rather than an angry, stressed partner or, even worse, opposing counsel. If you're happy, though, maybe just stick it out and try to teach yourself.

It's not about midlevels, its about someone giving you the tools to succeed and a SA can do that.

Are you managing to produce quality work? Is the SA available for questions to guide you? Are you getting better at doing what they are asking? These are the questions you should be asking yourself

I had that experience at a firm before. It went from me, a first year and then the jump was 8, 11, then partners. Didn’t care for it.

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