A Letter To An Incoming Associate

Advice for the newest members of a changing industry.

Dear future colleague,

Spring is here, and your last semester of law school is winding down. The next few months will be a series of crunches. You’ll be crunching for your final exams. Then you’ll crunch for the bar. Then you’ll probably get back to the gym for the first time in three months and do some crunches there, too.

After that, you’ll be starting out your career as a newly minted associate at a prestigious law firm. Congratulations! Your newest professional journey is about to begin. With that in mind, I’d like to offer some unsolicited advice for navigating those first few years.

Nothing you did in the last three years matters any more. Graduating summa cum laude as the editor of the law review might have helped you land this gig, but you’re starting out with a clean slate. Your work product, your professionalism, and your growth as a practicing attorney are what you’ll be assessed on for the next few years. I hope you take that as good news, because it is. You’re not being graded on a curve against your peers any more. You’re not following a curriculum set out by the school administration. Starting in a few months, you’re in charge of your career. You get to make yourself into the lawyer you want to be. You can seek out the kinds of work you want to do and skills you want to develop. You get to choose your adventure.

You’re gonna feel dumb. Don’t stress it. The first few months basically feel like drinking from a firehose. You’ll be learning substantive law, the day-to-day of your practice, the personal preferences of the senior attorneys you work for, and local customs of the region you practice in. Almost everything you need to know isn’t written down anywhere. This kind of on-the-job training can brutalize your ego if you let it. Don’t let it. Trust that you’ll end every day feeling slightly less incompetent than you were when you started it. Make an appointment on your calendar for six months from your start date to go grab a coffee with your other first-years and reflect on how far you’ve come.

You’ll never go wrong making friends. You’re a fresh face in the office. There are going to be plenty of people interested in getting to know you. Take advantage of those opportunities at every level. Make friends with your fellow first-years, and you’ll keep each other going. Make friends with senior associates. They’ll be your best advocates, mentors, and guides. Develop personal relationships with partners you work for, and those you don’t. And make time to get to know the staff you work with. They can make your life infinitely easier, or infinitely harder. We’re in a business that centers on people. Every warm relationship you can build is going to make you a better person, and you never know what relationship might be the key to some major career success down the road.

Build relationships that will last outside the law firm. Fifty years ago, the business model was to join a firm, make partner, stay at the firm for 50 years, and die at your desk. Today, there is more lateral movement and attrition happening in the industry than ever before. You will be approached at some point, whether by a headhunter, another firm, a client looking for an in-house lawyer, or by a business looking for a lawyer to bring into the executive ranks. Attorneys you care about will move to other firms. You’re not going to be seeing the same people every day for the rest of your career. If you want to keep both your personal and professional lives thriving, you’re going to need to build real relationships that can continue on even when you’re not seeing each other at the office every day.

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Speak up. You don’t have much experience yet, but you wouldn’t be where you are if you weren’t sharp. You were hired for your brain, so use it. If you’ve got an idea, let it be known. You’ll spend plenty of time being told it’s not a great idea, and most of the time your first year, it won’t be. But every idea you throw out is another piece of evidence that you’re thinking, learning, and creating. You’re not just a machine awaiting input. I’d rather an associate at our firm share 10 terrible ideas than have one great idea they keep to themselves. Prove that you’re trying, and you’ll keep getting opportunities.

Maintain your personal life. It’s easy in the first few months of your practice to shut everything down and focus solely on grinding out hours in the office. There are some law firms that practically require it. I’m happy to say that my firm isn’t one of them, and we see that kind of strategy as a long-term dead end. You need a social life. Without it, it’s just a matter of time before you’re burned out and looking for either a new firm or a new career. Plus, socializing is good for business. As you move up the ranks, you want to be generating business. Keeping those social networks alive and growing is the best way to do that. So stay in touch with your friends. Make time to hit the gym or go see a movie. You’ll be better off in every way.

Embrace new technologies. Tech is revolutionizing the practice of law, yet many partners across the industry remain hidebound. I’ve had partners at other law firms email documents from word processing software so old that I couldn’t even open it on my computer. New technology is an opportunity for you to jump to the head of the class in terms of experience. If you’re the only person in the firm who’s used the new trial presentation software, you’re suddenly indispensable. Contracts law is hundreds of years old, but blockchain expertise didn’t even exist before a few years ago. Lack of experience is your biggest weakness right now. If you can find a more level playing field, take advantage of it.

Pay attention to how work gets delegated. For the first few years, every scrap of work you get will be handed down by senior associates or partners. Once you get a few years under your belt, though, you’re going to be expected to do some of that delegation yourself. Pay attention to the projects that you succeed on, and which ones you struggled with. Note the ones that taught you skills, and the ones that had you spinning your wheels. Figure out how you want to be treated as a junior associate, and use that to make you a better boss when it’s your turn to hand work off.

Make this place yours. Don’t be an employee punching a clock. You’re a part of an ecosystem now. With hard work and some luck, you’ll own a piece of this law firm in a few years. So why not start making it a better place to work right now? Be kind. Help others. Figure out what you want and fight for it. Let the firm know the kind of place you want it to become, and put in the sweat to make it happen. It’s hard. It doesn’t always work. But an investment in other people is always a smart investment. Maybe you’ll change the firm for the better today. Maybe you’ll plant the seeds for a better firm tomorrow. But whatever you do, at least try.

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James Goodnow

James Goodnow is an attorneycommentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of an NLJ 250 law firm. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management category. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.