Ten Tips for Associates

This comes from Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground:

1. When you first start, no request or demand seems unreasonable to you. You take them all. This should change over time. Make your schedule. Somehow you grew up. Really, you are pretty old and people pay a lot of money for your opinion and advice. This isn’t a summer internship in undergrad where the goal is to play lackey for three months. It’s your career.

2. Along the same lines, reasonable people know when you are working 15-18 hours a day and are overburdened. They understand and they make allowances. Unreasonable people yell at you. Don’t feel bad about an unreasonable person yelling at you. After all, they are unreasonable.

3. Don’t stay up all night. Ever. You will get three times as much done if you get a little sleep.

4. Free beverages are still very, very good.

5. Paralegals are very, very good at checking cites and typos. This saves time and frustration with your job. Use them. Also, they don’t yell at you when they have to check your cites and typos. The same cannot be said for partners.

6. Sad as this may be, there are certain people in every firm who are disfavored. Everyone knows that they will be shown the door pretty soon. Don’t associate yourself too closely with them in the eyes of the partners. They will just start wondering about you.

7. It is very possible to become a partner without having ever tried a case at a large number of firms. Decide if this is your situation and if this is acceptable to you. Act accordingly.

8. Yes, you can buy the car. In fact, it is absolutely necessary that you buy the car.

9. If opposing counsel is from Chicago, he is an asshole. Surprisingly, lawyers in New York are not as bad. Also, if opposing counsel is in Miami I can almost guarantee you are getting a couple of high holy days off, whether you are Jewish or not.

10. You should be thrilled, absolutely thrilled, with at least one legal thing you do every week. I can honestly say this is true for me. If you can’t, then lateral out because something is very wrong.

Labels: lawyer stuff, tips ‘n tricks, work