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How to Succeed as a First-Year Attorney at a Big Law Firm
So considering that, here are some tips that I would offer to bright-eyed law school grads who are ready to kill it in Big Law. 1. Consider Your Short and Long Term Plans It’s obvious, but you absolutely have to sit down with yourself and think about your short and long term plans. Why are you working in Big Law? What are your goals? In fact, I’d argue that you need to do this before you begin your first day as a junior associate. Big Law can provide you with an awesome paycheck, but the golden handcuffs can tighten once you begin upgrading your lifestyle. It can become harder and harder to leave, even if you don’t necessarily enjoy what you’re doing. By contrast, it’s marginally easier to leave if you already recognize that you will only stay in Big Law for X number of years—or until you pay off your law school debt—before transitioning into something else. Ask yourself: do you want to become a partner at your firm or another firm? Do you see yourself staying in Big Law for just a couple years so you can become debt-free and then try something else? Or are you simply not sure about what you want to do? Whatever the answer, just be honest. This isn’t like The Bachelor, where you absolutely have to be in Big Law for “the right reasons.” Whatever your motives, keep them in mind as you’re starting off. If you’re feeling frustrated or stressed in your first year, it’ll be reassuring to know why you chose to work in Big Law in the first place. And who knows—your outlook on Big Law may change once you get your feet wet. 2. Handling the Day-to-Day Grind This topic could be an entire essay, but here are several strategies that helped me become a faster and better junior associate. Your strength is attention to detail: Let’s face it. Coming out of law school, most of us don’t know much about the actual practice of law. Our first year is essentially an extended training period — even clients recognize this and are increasingly refusing to pay for first-year work. As you’re learning how to actually be a lawyer, you need to become the master of details. This is something you can do right away: all it requires is patience and dedication. So if you’re working on a current lawsuit, be the member of the team that knows the facts inside and out. The same goes if you’re working on a deal as a corporate associate. I know, some of the work that you’re completing can be extremely boring. It’s even more of a challenge if you’re pulling late hours and constantly feel fatigued. But at this early stage of your career, you’ll get noticed and will bring value to the team by being the master of details. It also goes without saying, but all of your work should be absent of typos and should include all correct citations. And absolutely don’t forget to Shepardize everything. More matters > fewer matters: The question that I and other first-year associates would often ask is how many matters to take on. This is a tough question. Sure, you can say no to a partner requesting your assistance on a project, but this will probably cause long-term damage. Partners and senior associates will see you as less reliable and less of a team player. My general advice is that too much work is better than too little work. You want to be put on matters that have a long shelf life and where you are given a good amount of responsibility. It’s obviously difficult to project these factors, but that is the ultimate goal. At the beginning of my Big Law career, I was lucky in that I was the only associate working with two partners on a new lawsuit. The partners trusted me and gave me a good amount of responsibility, even letting me argue a minor procedural point in court. If possible, you should aim for these types of opportunities. Having said all of this, there may come a point where you’re inundated with projects. For instance, a partner may barge into your office and say a project needs to be completed “ASAP,” even though a different partner on another matter told you the same thing ten minutes earlier. If this is the case, you need to take action, and the most important thing here is communication. Describe your workload to both partners and the fact that you have conflicting, imminent deadlines. Be totally upfront with your ability (or inability) to complete the tasks on time. If necessary, the partners will have to work it out amongst themselves or seek out additional help. Mind your billable hours: As you begin at your firm, you should understand how many billable hours you’ll need to receive your annual bonus. Once you know the total number, divide it by twelve so that you know how many billable hours you need per month. This will be especially helpful during your first year (since your bonus will be prorated depending on your firm’s fiscal year), but it’s useful to have a benchmark for every month going forward. You want to constantly audit yourself to see if you’re on track. And yes, this means entering your time within 48 or 72 hours (your partners will thank you). If you’re not on track, you need to find work sooner rather than later. While many of your peers will be scrambling to find billable work just weeks before the end of your firm’s fiscal year, you can avoid this stress by ensuring that you’re on track throughout the year. Better to be proactive and eclipse the threshold by a large margin than panic at the end of the year. But along with this, recognize that the work typically ebbs and flows. For as much as we want to smooth out our workflow, it doesn’t work like that. It’s often feast or famine. If
How I Said the Worst Thing Imaginable to the Worst Lawyer
Fungus was a lawyer in Reno. Of sorts. By which I mean he had a law office where he took money from desperate clients, tried fruitlessly to improve his golf game, and vented spleen onto every female within venting distance. He went through 14 legal secretaries in nine years before he hired me. One lasted five years, matching his nastiness with her own (I liked her). One only lasted through lunch. Fungus took her to a casino buffet where he ate his weight in shrimp, then hit on her. She blanched, went silent, went back to the office, and went away. Fungus was cheap. He once presented a fellow attorney with a Christmas gift of his wife’s inedible ravioli and then presented him with an invoice. He was also the first Holocaust denier I ever met. Fungus generally spent Fridays out of office, which was a relief until he returned at 3:30 to make certain no one left before five. One way to make certain I complied was to demand the mail be walked up to the corner mailbox at exactly 5 o’clock and no earlier, in case he had something last minute to mail out. This 5 o’clock rule presented a unique challenge since the mailman picked up the mail at exactly 5 o’clock, and the mailbox was one block up from the office, across a very busy downtown street. I was expected to leave the office at 5 pm, walk to the mailbox and arrive there at 5 pm, before the mailman did. I started leaving five minutes early, so I could drop off the mail before the mailman picked it up. Fungus spotted me one day, slammed the office door open and shouted across the traffic, demanding what the fuck I thought I was doing? I told him. He called me several names and slammed the door closed. I mailed the mail, went home, vented to my husband, laughed, then had a great weekend. Fungus had a weekend-long migraine. Jose was the last straw. Mentally challenged, further damaged by a car accident (the case), he understood little English. Fungus hated pro bono work, and because it wasn’t lucrative for him, he never did it. When he’d see Jose approaching through the heavily tinted office windows, he’d buzz me: I’m not in. Get rid of him. Jose was big, angry, and confused. He scared me and I felt sorry for him. He would ask, “Mr. Dan: he’s worked on my case?” and I’d have to say Mr. Dan hadn’t prepared anything yet, and no, he wasn’t right around the corner, cowering in his office. Until the day Jose came in angry. At me. Because Fungus had told him that I refused to do the work Fungus had directed me to do on Jose’s case. That was it for me. I told Jose everything: that Fungus was in the office every time Jose came, that he was lying to Jose, that he had never given me work to do on Jose’s case, and that he was right around the corner, cowering in that office. I pointed to the unlocked office door. Then I went home. Unfortunately, Fungus was there the next day. At 18 months, I took a vacation. It was my first job with paid two-week vacation and I fully expected that when I gave Fungus my check to sign (I prepared my own payroll) he would shout that it was an unpaid vacation. When I gave him the check, he snarled, “I can’t sign this.” “Why not?” I asked. “Because you only get one week. You weren’t supposed to be gone for two weeks, and I’m sure as hell not going to pay you for two.” I had no response to that one. I was so blindsided I just stood there with my arms folded, glaring, completely unable to move. Which he took as a challenge. He signed the check so hard he carved his name into the desk blotter below. “Consider it a severance check,” he bellowed. But I was so angry that I didn’t leave. I un-fired myself. I kept coming in and worked two more weeks before Fungus officially fired me while calling me names. Quietly, directly, I said, “You’re a joke.” He said, “So are you.” Fungus must’ve been great in court. There was another exchange I don’t remember. But do I remember what I said last. “You’re a — “ and called him the worst thing you can call a woman. Being called anything a woman might be called was unbearable for Fungus. He turned purple. He went into a complete door slamming, screaming rage. I laughed at him, left for good, and drove directly to the bank with my check. It was a Friday, 5 o’clock. Quitting time.
Block category: Widgets
The shortcode widget: The Archive Widget: The same Archive widget but as a dropdown: The Category widget block has an additional option for showing category hierarchies: The Latest Comments widget can display or hide the avatars, the date, and the comment excerpt: Here is an example of the Comments widget with all the options disabled. The number of comments has been reduced to two. And here is the Latest Posts widget in the list view, with dates: Grid view, now sorted from A -Z. You can also change the number of columns used to display the latest posts. The block below only displays posts from the Block category: Search widget: Tag Cloud widget: RSS Feed widget:
Block category: Layout Elements
The Layout Elements category includes the following blocks: Group, Button, Columns, Media & Text, separator, spacer, read more, and page break. This group block has a light green background color. The read more block should be right below this text, but only on list pages of themes that show the full content. It won’t show on the single page or on themes showing excerpts.
Block category: Formatting
The formatting category includes the following blocks: The classic block can have almost anything in it. a heading The custom HTML block lets you put HTML that isn’t configured like blocks in it. (this div has a width of 45%) The preformatted block.The Road Not TakenRobert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel both (_/) And be one traveler, long I stood (=’.’=) And looked down one as far as I could (“)_(“) To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, |_/| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; / @ @ Though as for that the passing there ( > º < ) Had worn them really about the same, `>>x<<´ / O And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. and here’s a line of some really, really, really, really long text, just to see how it is handled and to find out how it overflows; The pull quote can be aligned or wide or neither. Theme Reviewer The table block This is the default style. The cell next to this is empty. Cell #5 Cell #6 This is the striped style. This row should have a background color. The cell next to this is empty. This table has fixed width table cells. Make sure that the text wraps correctly. The Verse blockA block for haiku? Why not? Blocks for all the things!
