More on Paranoia and its Origins

Listen up, partners and clients:

Young associates are smart folks with a grounding in law and business who are still learning "the ropes" in a technical and nuanced world. We're asked to jump in and do pieces of transactions or litigation, often without being told the context or hearing all the facts from the client directly. We often get our assignments from busy partners, by email, in little detail. And we don't always have the years of experience, or the history of dealing with particular other lawyers, to have an instinct for which things are big problems and which are little ones. (Because we've read cases and seen transactions where the things that are little in this transaction turned out to be big and important, and we're trying to be thorough.) So we're trying to operate as best we can, as efficiently as we can, with very little information. If you can give us more information, please do. For me it's essential. And if you can say something gently, please do. We KNOW how much we don't know, and we're learning tons every day. I can promise you that something I don't know in this transaction / proceeding / case will be something I know in my next one.

My conscientious co-worker, and impatient comments from clients or partners within or outside of my firm, make me feel like it's not okay to be inexperienced. That sucks. It means I can't learn as well, because I have to pretend I already know things I don't know. It means if someone asks me a question or tells me something I don't understand, I feel unsafe asking straightforwardly what they mean. Instead I have to close my door, email a trusted source, or page through the Rules or the Code or look online for the context. That's bad for clients and everyone -- very inefficient. Presumably the fact that I bill at rates $60 to $150 lower than the partners here is a rational reflection of my relative inexperience. Making me feel like there's something wrong with me because I don't have 10 years behind me doesn't help.

I'm going to experiment with being unashamed. I know I'm smart and nimble and quick in those areas I know something about. Those areas are expanding every day. I'm not (usually) ashamed at the pace at which I'm learning new things about business, bankruptcy, and corporate law, and about the mechanics of how lawyers get things done with one another. I trust the partners here to nudge me or intervene if I'm not progressing fast enough. I recognize that opposing counsel can immediately learn the year I graduated from law school from Martindale-Hubble, and there's no use pretending I'm anything other than a second-year associate muddling along as best I can. So be it. I'm trying, guys. I don't want to be paranoid about what I don't know -- there will always be worlds and worlds.

Comments

[harvard LLM]

HI. I LINKED OUR LLM BLOG TO YOUR ARTICLE. HOPE U DON'T MIND.

[Scheherazade]

Pleased at the link. Just so you also point to the post about why I really like my law firm....

http://civpro.blogs.com/civil_procedure/2003/09/why_i_really_li.html