What is the most memorable mistake you madr as a young associate?

I got nervous while talking to a client about the weather, and how rainy it had been…. so I decided to share how it’s common for dead bodies to be dredged up in the Potomac River every time there’s a really heavy rain, and how I passed bunch of police vehicles along the waterfront while walking to work that morning so I assumed they found another one.

One of the (sadly numerous) times when my unhinged attempt at small talk just hung in the air until mercifully someone changed the subject.

So I just learned today that “to assess” like “to evaluate” is not spelled “asses.”

That’s literally just 2 butts.

And a partner pointed it out to me in an email.

I am 40.

A partner asked if I had met so and so client. I wasn't thinking and said "I did! They have really soft hands" absentmindedly. I realized how awkward that was and explained to the partner I am just a big fan of skincare. note: I am not a fan of skincare.

Not the most serious, but one of the funnier mistakes I’ve made: I’m originally from the south & had recently moved to SoCal. During mediation, opposing counsel made a comment complaining about how long it was taking to finalize the settlement documents and how late it was. I remarked to the MP: “Well, I guess it is later in his time zone.” MP gave me a perplexed look & said “he’s in our time zone.” And that, my friends, is how I learned Ontario is *also* a city in California.

Accidentally sent the confidential highly sensitive information of dozens of clients to a client at 3am. Had to call the midlevel to wake them up to help me handle it. Incredibly stressful even though the client was super nice about it

I was responsible for preparing the signature pages for a huge closing with dozens of documents our client needed to sign. The client signatory had multiple titles - Chief Administrative Officer, General Counsel and Secretary. I used the CAO title because I thought it sounded the fanciest but only the General Counsel and Secretary titles were authorized to sign. So I had the right name but wrong title on dozens of signature pages that the client had already signed. 😬

Accidentally filed documents that were under a protective order as exhibits to a motion and bungled the following motion to seal 🫠

I was a first year, working from home in 2020, in the middle of sending an email to the scariest partner in my group, when my new kitten jumped on my laptop and hid send. Luckily because I'm anxious as hell I had already typed my email sign-off at the end (not just my signature) so it just looked like a very short email 🙈

In civil court we have to provide notice of our intent to subpoena records. Unbeknownst to me, in criminal court that requirement does not exist. Served notice of a subpoena to a prosecutor, partner was PISSED.

I was given the honor of working on a giant MDL, primarily to catch typos/ similar issues in our motion to dismiss. I was working across several versions with the named partner and another capital partner, working against a midnight deadline. They told me that one version was “almost” final and then they told me that another version just had new changes “highlighted in yellow”. I incorporated the changes highlighted in yellow to my working almost final doc. I never ran a compare docs and never realized they made a NEW “almost final” version with several changes to the old “almost final” version … including which jurisdiction we recommend that the matter proceed in should the MTD be denied. We filed.

Client called in the morning absolutely pissed. That was the last time I’ll ever file something with multiple versions without doing a compare doc.

I was a second year sent to court to argue a motion to compel arbitration on my third day at the firm. I had all the procedural arguments DOWN but for whatever reason, didn’t think to at least familiarize myself with our arguments regarding the underlying breach of contract claims. Well there I was frantically flipping through the 100 page contract trying to explain why our client wasn’t in breach. Lesson learned to always know the basic facts of any case before going to court, even on procedural arguments!