Tips for young lawyers just starting out that I wish someone had told me!
“We have all been where you are. It takes years to gain experience. It will not happen overnight, it will not happen in a year, heck even after over a decade there is still so much to learn in the ever-changing landscape we call the Law...”
This is to all of you young lawyers just starting out – stop over thinking things and calm down. I see it every day, you’re second guessing yourself and it is destroying your confidence! It really doesn’t have to be this hard. Just give yourself time. Trust me, I’ve been where you are. We all have.
Whilst I can’t say that I remember it like it was yesterday, how it was to be a young and inexperienced lawyer and if you were to ask me now, well over two decades since being admitted, I’d tell you I was always ok at what I do… (and you’ll think that after being a lawyer for as long as I have as well!). However, when I squint and think really hard, I remember. I remember going into Rod’s office (my first lawyer boss) and, knowing I had no idea nor that I had even tried to find out myself before coming to him, him asking me straight off the bat whether I had even read the Act, the Rules or checked anything in CCH (loose leaf back in those days! Let’s appreciate that the internet was not mainstream… Google was only a couple of years old… and email was not the norm – faxing was. But not everything cause it was expensive! I know right?!?) and one time Rod got so frustrated with me that he threw the file I was asking him about (that’s right – it was a paper file) out his office door… literally picked it up and threw it…
And now that I have my own practice and I have had young lawyers work with me, it has made me even more conscious of how inexperienced we all once were and how we really knew nothing to begin with, despite having worked hard at a 4-year degree! When I supervised other lawyers, I had to consciously think of what each person’s experience was and what their current capabilities were when I reviewed their work or when they came to me with questions. And a lot of the times I lamented that young lawyers need to remember their current capacity and work from there. I have seen a lot of the lawyers that have come and gone from my practice choke, and they choke because of some simple things they forget to remember and to just do. They get too wound up looking at all the problems they are experiencing and don’t stop to either ask for help or take onboard and implement the feedback they are getting.
So, my tips for young lawyers starting out in their career and getting to a point where they are unsure whether the law is for them:
Don’t judge yourself by others. We all experience and learn differently. Don’t look at me or your boss/supervisor/other solicitors and think you should be like us, to know what we know. We have a fair few years of experience on you. You cannot find that in books – it takes years of making your own mistakes to get where we are! You cannot make comparisons. You can only self-assess and find your weaknesses, then work on those to become your strengths. That is how you improve.
Talk with your contemporaries (those are the people with the same experience as you). I say talk, don’t compare. You’d be surprised about how similar the obstacles you are both facing are and it is quite cathartic to speak to someone about what you are experiencing. Join clubs, get involved in associations and committees. Get to know who your contemporaries are for they are your colleagues, those you will be working with. We are not adversaries; we are colleagues and potential friends. There is nothing that says lawyers cannot hang out, get to know each other and get along! It will make working as a lawyer so much more fun!
Do something, it’s better than doing nothing. Don’t sit on a problem and ignore it – it will only get worse. In fact, it has the potential to get really really bad. I try to have a 2-day turnaround policy (ok – sometimes that doesn’t always pan out!). So, if it is taking you more than 2 days to deal with something, then I know you are struggling somewhere – whether that is content or workload.
Don’t think criticism or feedback is an attack on you as a person. It’s not. If anything, it’s an attack on your skill set, which will be lacking. Take it as a learning opportunity and take the criticism/feedback for what it’s worth – a learning experience. It’s also highlighting your weaknesses, which as I said above you need to do a stock take of so you know what you need to work on to make them your strengths. I always say, “what happened, how do we fix it, then what have we learnt from the mistake”. If you do that each time you make a mistake, then you are always learning. Don’t wallow in your mistakes or the feedback you receive.
Ask questions. Always ask questions. That is with your clients and your boss. With a client: always ask why, delve deeper to try and understand what the real issues are. Don’t be a surface lawyer or post box lawyer, just doing what your client wants. Try and find out what the problem is so you can treat that instead of just the symptoms. And when asking questions of me/your boss – a warning: don’t just come to me with just a question. Make sure you have, prior to coming to me, tried to figure it out yourself by first looking at the Act, the Rules, the case law and CCH. If you still aren’t sure, then ask (promise I won’t throw the file out the door…). Don’t be lazy or slack. Your own learning is more important, and you will grow more that way than getting spoon fed.
Keep at it. Don’t quit. Don’t think it’s too hard. Just do it (watch this video from 1987, which is still relevant today and is something my team watch and say often). Whenever I think something is too hard, I either put it aside for a few hours, take a break, ask someone or start over again, but this time differently. It is surprising what fresh eyes/perspective can bring. Persevere. Don’t give up. No one, and I mean no one, ever said it would be easy. And just remember: the hardest things are usually the most rewarding… eventually!
You may not have all the answers. And that is ok. Our job as a lawyer is to collate and analyse information we get, find out what the options are and relay that to the clients and help them analyse their options to see which one suits their needs. That really is it. And sometimes, there may not be an available option for the client to do something that they want. And that is ok. You just need to ask more questions, see what the actual problem is that the client wants resolved and even then, it may be that you have to tell the client that what they want is not achievable. Don’t think you have to have all the ‘right’ answers straight away. There is power in saying “that is a good question – I will need to think about that more and get back to you”.
To help get through the hard years (and life in general) one book I implore you to read is “How to Win friends and influence People” by Dale Carnegie. It is a fantastic book that I try to read every year and I tell everyone about.
As I said at the start, we have all been where you are. It takes years to gain experience. It will not happen overnight, it will not happen in a year, heck even after over a decade there is still so much to learn in the ever-changing landscape we call the Law.
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