Great at law school but shitty lawyer Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

[Desert Fox]

[Anonymous User]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

Congrats, and welcome to being a first year transactional associate.

A few things:

• as you become more comfortable with docs, the shitty typo errors will become less frequent. The more new shit you're processing, the more stupid errors you make. Dunno why this is so, but it is empirically proven in other fields. (For example, taking a standardized test in a room you've sat in before adds a material number of points to your score, on average. The new stimuli from the fucking room are enough to affect performance. Imagine what seeing new types of docs etc. does to your typo avoidance ability.) So to some degree you are just riding this out.
• The more senior you get, the less this shit matters. I am far from the worlds greatest typo catcher. It was mentioned a bunch at my first review. it was mentioned less at my third year review. It has not been mentioned since.
• Try to shine in workstreams that don't reward the insane precision that some of your colleagues have. Securities work is probably not a good fit. If have a choice between running sig pages and running diligence, diligence is better (and, IMO, is better practice for deal management in the future anyways)
• write everything the fuck down. you have a to do list every day, you add to it during the day in real time as things pop into your head and you don't go home until that list is cleared or you have explicitly moved items to tomorrow's to do
• when turning comments, check off each comment you enter in a separate colored pen so that you don't miss any
• never work in track changes unless expressly asked to. So easy to make typos in track changes.
• always proof a document IN HARD COPY before you send it out. It is impossible to proof effectively on screen
• don't get on the phone with the client unless you have a written agenda handy - can be your agenda that you don't share but you should have a list in front of you of points you need to cover on the call. Often worth having a agenda to refer to for a meeting with a supervising associate. Makes you seem organized. if they surprise you with a call and you are the least worried about improvising, theres nothing wrong with asking to call them back in 10 when prepared
• helps to have a friend where you guys check each others most important stuff before sending out. extra sets of eyes are super helpful.
• if cold reads are offered at your firm, use them liberally
• order a stack of small, middle school style notebooks for each of your matters. write down all notes for a deal in a separate notebook. this way you have an easy-to-thumb-through record of all notes you've taken on calls, in meetings and such
• remember that its fucking hard for most of your peers too. there will always be some folks that are just gods at producing perfect, error free work product and they are the winners at being a junior associate. fortunately you are only a junior associate for 2 years. lots of those gods of perfection can't think on their feet - the skills don't correlate. Some day, they will be wishing for your skillset

[mvp99]

try to reduce the decisions you have to make everyday.

[UVAIce]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

Congrats, and welcome to being a first year transactional associate.

A few things:

• as you become more comfortable with docs, the shitty typo errors will become less frequent. The more new shit you're processing, the more stupid errors you make. Dunno why this is so, but it is empirically proven in other fields. (For example, taking a standardized test in a room you've sat in before adds a material number of points to your score, on average. The new stimuli from the fucking room are enough to affect performance. Imagine what seeing new types of docs etc. does to your typo avoidance ability.) So to some degree you are just riding this out.
• The more senior you get, the less this shit matters. I am far from the worlds greatest typo catcher. It was mentioned a bunch at my first review. it was mentioned less at my third year review. It has not been mentioned since.
• Try to shine in workstreams that don't reward the insane precision that some of your colleagues have. Securities work is probably not a good fit. If have a choice between running sig pages and running diligence, diligence is better (and, IMO, is better practice for deal management in the future anyways)
• write everything the fuck down. you have a to do list every day, you add to it during the day in real time as things pop into your head and you don't go home until that list is cleared or you have explicitly moved items to tomorrow's to do
• when turning comments, check off each comment you enter in a separate colored pen so that you don't miss any
• never work in track changes unless expressly asked to. So easy to make typos in track changes.
• always proof a document IN HARD COPY before you send it out. It is impossible to proof effectively on screen
• don't get on the phone with the client unless you have a written agenda handy - can be your agenda that you don't share but you should have a list in front of you of points you need to cover on the call. Often worth having a agenda to refer to for a meeting with a supervising associate. Makes you seem organized. if they surprise you with a call and you are the least worried about improvising, theres nothing wrong with asking to call them back in 10 when prepared
• helps to have a friend where you guys check each others most important stuff before sending out. extra sets of eyes are super helpful.
• if cold reads are offered at your firm, use them liberally
• order a stack of small, middle school style notebooks for each of your matters. write down all notes for a deal in a separate notebook. this way you have an easy-to-thumb-through record of all notes you've taken on calls, in meetings and such
• remember that its fucking hard for most of your peers too. there will always be some folks that are just gods at producing perfect, error free work product and they are the winners at being a junior associate. fortunately you are only a junior associate for 2 years. lots of those gods of perfection can't think on their feet - the skills don't correlate. Some day, they will be wishing for your skillset

This is all credited. One thing that has been working for me is just taking multiple looks at documents in multiple settings and slowing down when I am proofing and drafting transactional documents. Contracts are not a law school exam - your ability to think on your feet in law school is a great skill, but the name of the game with transactional documents is perfection in the details. I will literally write a sentence and then review it. Then when the paragraph is complete I review it again. When the document is done I proof it on my screen. Then I print it out and proof it from front to back. Then I read the document from back to front, bottom to top. It seems super redundant, and it is, but you're much better off taking an extra 30-45 minutes before receiving comments from a partner than spending those 30-45 minutes after they've found your silly errors. And we all make them. The name of the game is fixing them before the partner or client sees them.

And stupid mistakes stick in your mind more than your good work. For example, I'm still kicking myself for getting a comment on a contract I drafted when outside counsel noticed that I messed up my subject verb agreement in an "including, but is not limited to," phrase when the preceding subject was plural and is should have been are. Sometimes you just have to let it go and start fresh in your mind or your past mistakes will haunt you into creating even more mistakes. As much as we are all billing machines, it's good to just take a break for 10-15 minutes during the day, drink some coffee and read the news or something non-legal related.

It's also helpful to start building checklists for documents that you find yourself drafting on a frequent basis. List out every stupid little thing that has to be in there and, more importantly, create a list of unique identifiers in those documents. After awhile things will just pop out at you when you're drafting and reviewing documents. And a lot of it's stupid, don't refer to shareholders with a LLC and don't refer to members with a corporation, and the list goes on.

Build a little portfolio of model documents and language. Whenever I see an elegant way to express a legal concept in a document, from opposing counsel or my firm, I copy and paste it into my little portfolio. When you, or someone else, drafts that perfect document you store one away in your portfolio to reference the next time you draft one. Then at the end of a long day and I don't know if something should be capitalized, if my partners prefer letters or numbers in lists, do they use a serial (oxford) comma, etc., I have good reference material to fall back on rather than knocking on their door and asking the same stupid question for the umpteenth time.

[Anonymous User]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

Congrats, and welcome to being a first year transactional associate.

A few things:

• as you become more comfortable with docs, the shitty typo errors will become less frequent. The more new shit you're processing, the more stupid errors you make. Dunno why this is so, but it is empirically proven in other fields. (For example, taking a standardized test in a room you've sat in before adds a material number of points to your score, on average. The new stimuli from the fucking room are enough to affect performance. Imagine what seeing new types of docs etc. does to your typo avoidance ability.) So to some degree you are just riding this out.
• The more senior you get, the less this shit matters. I am far from the worlds greatest typo catcher. It was mentioned a bunch at my first review. it was mentioned less at my third year review. It has not been mentioned since.
• Try to shine in workstreams that don't reward the insane precision that some of your colleagues have. Securities work is probably not a good fit. If have a choice between running sig pages and running diligence, diligence is better (and, IMO, is better practice for deal management in the future anyways)
• write everything the fuck down. you have a to do list every day, you add to it during the day in real time as things pop into your head and you don't go home until that list is cleared or you have explicitly moved items to tomorrow's to do
• when turning comments, check off each comment you enter in a separate colored pen so that you don't miss any
• never work in track changes unless expressly asked to. So easy to make typos in track changes.
• always proof a document IN HARD COPY before you send it out. It is impossible to proof effectively on screen
• don't get on the phone with the client unless you have a written agenda handy - can be your agenda that you don't share but you should have a list in front of you of points you need to cover on the call. Often worth having a agenda to refer to for a meeting with a supervising associate. Makes you seem organized. if they surprise you with a call and you are the least worried about improvising, theres nothing wrong with asking to call them back in 10 when prepared
• helps to have a friend where you guys check each others most important stuff before sending out. extra sets of eyes are super helpful.
• if cold reads are offered at your firm, use them liberally
• order a stack of small, middle school style notebooks for each of your matters. write down all notes for a deal in a separate notebook. this way you have an easy-to-thumb-through record of all notes you've taken on calls, in meetings and such
• remember that its fucking hard for most of your peers too. there will always be some folks that are just gods at producing perfect, error free work product and they are the winners at being a junior associate. fortunately you are only a junior associate for 2 years. lots of those gods of perfection can't think on their feet - the skills don't correlate. Some day, they will be wishing for your skillset

This is all credited. One thing that has been working for me is just taking multiple looks at documents in multiple settings and slowing down when I am proofing and drafting transactional documents. Contracts are not a law school exam - your ability to think on your feet in law school is a great skill, but the name of the game with transactional documents is perfection in the details. I will literally write a sentence and then review it. Then when the paragraph is complete I review it again. When the document is done I proof it on my screen. Then I print it out and proof it from front to back. Then I read the document from back to front, bottom to top. It seems super redundant, and it is, but you're much better off taking an extra 30-45 minutes before receiving comments from a partner than spending those 30-45 minutes after they've found your silly errors. And we all make them. The name of the game is fixing them before the partner or client sees them.

And stupid mistakes stick in your mind more than your good work. For example, I'm still kicking myself for getting a comment on a contract I drafted when outside counsel noticed that I messed up my subject verb agreement in an "including, but is not limited to," phrase when the preceding subject was plural and is should have been are. Sometimes you just have to let it go and start fresh in your mind or your past mistakes will haunt you into creating even more mistakes. As much as we are all billing machines, it's good to just take a break for 10-15 minutes during the day, drink some coffee and read the news or something non-legal related.

It's also helpful to start building checklists for documents that you find yourself drafting on a frequent basis. List out every stupid little thing that has to be in there and, more importantly, create a list of unique identifiers in those documents. After awhile things will just pop out at you when you're drafting and reviewing documents. And a lot of it's stupid, don't refer to shareholders with a LLC and don't refer to members with a corporation, and the list goes on.

Build a little portfolio of model documents and language. Whenever I see an elegant way to express a legal concept in a document, from opposing counsel or my firm, I copy and paste it into my little portfolio. When you, or someone else, drafts that perfect document you store one away in your portfolio to reference the next time you draft one. Then at the end of a long day and I don't know if something should be capitalized, if my partners prefer letters or numbers in lists, do they use a serial (oxford) comma, etc., I have good reference material to fall back on rather than knocking on their door and asking the same stupid question for the umpteenth time.

This is all excellent advice. If your practice is a bit helter skelter and each contract is different, there's a basic global checklist that the partner who mentors me taught me which is as follows:

• all contracts must begin (i.e., there must be a date under which the obligations are triggered)
• all contracts must terminate
• all contracts must have consideration from both parties

You will be shocked at how many contracts you receive from the other side (or more ominously, how many contracts are in your system) that are missing one of the three.

[emciosn]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

Congrats, and welcome to being a first year transactional associate.

A few things:

• as you become more comfortable with docs, the shitty typo errors will become less frequent. The more new shit you're processing, the more stupid errors you make. Dunno why this is so, but it is empirically proven in other fields. (For example, taking a standardized test in a room you've sat in before adds a material number of points to your score, on average. The new stimuli from the fucking room are enough to affect performance. Imagine what seeing new types of docs etc. does to your typo avoidance ability.) So to some degree you are just riding this out.
• The more senior you get, the less this shit matters. I am far from the worlds greatest typo catcher. It was mentioned a bunch at my first review. it was mentioned less at my third year review. It has not been mentioned since.
• Try to shine in workstreams that don't reward the insane precision that some of your colleagues have. Securities work is probably not a good fit. If have a choice between running sig pages and running diligence, diligence is better (and, IMO, is better practice for deal management in the future anyways)
• write everything the fuck down. you have a to do list every day, you add to it during the day in real time as things pop into your head and you don't go home until that list is cleared or you have explicitly moved items to tomorrow's to do
• when turning comments, check off each comment you enter in a separate colored pen so that you don't miss any
• never work in track changes unless expressly asked to. So easy to make typos in track changes.
• always proof a document IN HARD COPY before you send it out. It is impossible to proof effectively on screen
• don't get on the phone with the client unless you have a written agenda handy - can be your agenda that you don't share but you should have a list in front of you of points you need to cover on the call. Often worth having a agenda to refer to for a meeting with a supervising associate. Makes you seem organized. if they surprise you with a call and you are the least worried about improvising, theres nothing wrong with asking to call them back in 10 when prepared
• helps to have a friend where you guys check each others most important stuff before sending out. extra sets of eyes are super helpful.
• if cold reads are offered at your firm, use them liberally
• order a stack of small, middle school style notebooks for each of your matters. write down all notes for a deal in a separate notebook. this way you have an easy-to-thumb-through record of all notes you've taken on calls, in meetings and such
• remember that its fucking hard for most of your peers too. there will always be some folks that are just gods at producing perfect, error free work product and they are the winners at being a junior associate. fortunately you are only a junior associate for 2 years. lots of those gods of perfection can't think on their feet - the skills don't correlate. Some day, they will be wishing for your skillset

This is all credited. One thing that has been working for me is just taking multiple looks at documents in multiple settings and slowing down when I am proofing and drafting transactional documents. Contracts are not a law school exam - your ability to think on your feet in law school is a great skill, but the name of the game with transactional documents is perfection in the details. I will literally write a sentence and then review it. Then when the paragraph is complete I review it again. When the document is done I proof it on my screen. Then I print it out and proof it from front to back. Then I read the document from back to front, bottom to top. It seems super redundant, and it is, but you're much better off taking an extra 30-45 minutes before receiving comments from a partner than spending those 30-45 minutes after they've found your silly errors. And we all make them. The name of the game is fixing them before the partner or client sees them.

And stupid mistakes stick in your mind more than your good work. For example, I'm still kicking myself for getting a comment on a contract I drafted when outside counsel noticed that I messed up my subject verb agreement in an "including, but is not limited to," phrase when the preceding subject was plural and is should have been are. Sometimes you just have to let it go and start fresh in your mind or your past mistakes will haunt you into creating even more mistakes. As much as we are all billing machines, it's good to just take a break for 10-15 minutes during the day, drink some coffee and read the news or something non-legal related.

It's also helpful to start building checklists for documents that you find yourself drafting on a frequent basis. List out every stupid little thing that has to be in there and, more importantly, create a list of unique identifiers in those documents. After awhile things will just pop out at you when you're drafting and reviewing documents. And a lot of it's stupid, don't refer to shareholders with a LLC and don't refer to members with a corporation, and the list goes on.

Build a little portfolio of model documents and language. Whenever I see an elegant way to express a legal concept in a document, from opposing counsel or my firm, I copy and paste it into my little portfolio. When you, or someone else, drafts that perfect document you store one away in your portfolio to reference the next time you draft one. Then at the end of a long day and I don't know if something should be capitalized, if my partners prefer letters or numbers in lists, do they use a serial (oxford) comma, etc., I have good reference material to fall back on rather than knocking on their door and asking the same stupid question for the umpteenth time.

This is all excellent advice. If your practice is a bit helter skelter and each contract is different, there's a basic global checklist that the partner who mentors me taught me which is as follows:

• all contracts must begin (i.e., there must be a date under which the obligations are triggered)
• all contracts must terminate
• all contracts must have consideration from both parties

You will be shocked at how many contracts you receive from the other side (or more ominously, how many contracts are in your system) that are missing one of the three.

Junior as well but all of this seems like really great advice--some of these things I had already started doing myself and have really helped. Just wanted to add that all junior fuck up a lot. Its just the name of the game and in my experience mid-level and senior associates get that we will fuck up from time to time. I think what they really want to see is progress--learning from mistakes and making less as time goes on.

I know it seems somewhat isolating but your peers are fucking up too. Everyone just puts up this front of perfection (that same way many did in law school). Don't worry, everyone is having the same struggles. It's just that no one advertises it, so it can seem like it is a "me" thing when it is really an "us" thing.

[aliens]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

Congrats, and welcome to being a first year transactional associate.

A few things:

• as you become more comfortable with docs, the shitty typo errors will become less frequent. The more new shit you're processing, the more stupid errors you make. Dunno why this is so, but it is empirically proven in other fields. (For example, taking a standardized test in a room you've sat in before adds a material number of points to your score, on average. The new stimuli from the fucking room are enough to affect performance. Imagine what seeing new types of docs etc. does to your typo avoidance ability.) So to some degree you are just riding this out.
• The more senior you get, the less this shit matters. I am far from the worlds greatest typo catcher. It was mentioned a bunch at my first review. it was mentioned less at my third year review. It has not been mentioned since.
• Try to shine in workstreams that don't reward the insane precision that some of your colleagues have. Securities work is probably not a good fit. If have a choice between running sig pages and running diligence, diligence is better (and, IMO, is better practice for deal management in the future anyways)
• write everything the fuck down. you have a to do list every day, you add to it during the day in real time as things pop into your head and you don't go home until that list is cleared or you have explicitly moved items to tomorrow's to do
• when turning comments, check off each comment you enter in a separate colored pen so that you don't miss any
• never work in track changes unless expressly asked to. So easy to make typos in track changes.
• always proof a document IN HARD COPY before you send it out. It is impossible to proof effectively on screen
• don't get on the phone with the client unless you have a written agenda handy - can be your agenda that you don't share but you should have a list in front of you of points you need to cover on the call. Often worth having a agenda to refer to for a meeting with a supervising associate. Makes you seem organized. if they surprise you with a call and you are the least worried about improvising, theres nothing wrong with asking to call them back in 10 when prepared
• helps to have a friend where you guys check each others most important stuff before sending out. extra sets of eyes are super helpful.
• if cold reads are offered at your firm, use them liberally
• order a stack of small, middle school style notebooks for each of your matters. write down all notes for a deal in a separate notebook. this way you have an easy-to-thumb-through record of all notes you've taken on calls, in meetings and such
• remember that its fucking hard for most of your peers too. there will always be some folks that are just gods at producing perfect, error free work product and they are the winners at being a junior associate. fortunately you are only a junior associate for 2 years. lots of those gods of perfection can't think on their feet - the skills don't correlate. Some day, they will be wishing for your skillset

This is all credited. One thing that has been working for me is just taking multiple looks at documents in multiple settings and slowing down when I am proofing and drafting transactional documents. Contracts are not a law school exam - your ability to think on your feet in law school is a great skill, but the name of the game with transactional documents is perfection in the details. I will literally write a sentence and then review it. Then when the paragraph is complete I review it again. When the document is done I proof it on my screen. Then I print it out and proof it from front to back. Then I read the document from back to front, bottom to top. It seems super redundant, and it is, but you're much better off taking an extra 30-45 minutes before receiving comments from a partner than spending those 30-45 minutes after they've found your silly errors. And we all make them. The name of the game is fixing them before the partner or client sees them.

And stupid mistakes stick in your mind more than your good work. For example, I'm still kicking myself for getting a comment on a contract I drafted when outside counsel noticed that I messed up my subject verb agreement in an "including, but is not limited to," phrase when the preceding subject was plural and is should have been are. Sometimes you just have to let it go and start fresh in your mind or your past mistakes will haunt you into creating even more mistakes. As much as we are all billing machines, it's good to just take a break for 10-15 minutes during the day, drink some coffee and read the news or something non-legal related.

It's also helpful to start building checklists for documents that you find yourself drafting on a frequent basis. List out every stupid little thing that has to be in there and, more importantly, create a list of unique identifiers in those documents. After awhile things will just pop out at you when you're drafting and reviewing documents. And a lot of it's stupid, don't refer to shareholders with a LLC and don't refer to members with a corporation, and the list goes on.

Build a little portfolio of model documents and language. Whenever I see an elegant way to express a legal concept in a document, from opposing counsel or my firm, I copy and paste it into my little portfolio. When you, or someone else, drafts that perfect document you store one away in your portfolio to reference the next time you draft one. Then at the end of a long day and I don't know if something should be capitalized, if my partners prefer letters or numbers in lists, do they use a serial (oxford) comma, etc., I have good reference material to fall back on rather than knocking on their door and asking the same stupid question for the umpteenth time.

Can you really seriously bill all that time proofing the documents? My partners would go ape shit if I spent that much time proofing the document. Also, even if I didn't bill the time proofing, but wasn't producing the docs fast enough, they would go apeshit. So many times, they are looking for the docs five minutes after giving me the assignment. There's not a lot of leisure time to proof.

[Traynor Brah]

Re: printing everything out because it's to proof on screen, one alternative I've found to be useful is copying the raw text and pasting it into a new document, and then make the spacing and font opposite of the original (i.e. if double spaced, go single, and if serif font, go sans).

[crit_racer]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

Congrats, and welcome to being a first year transactional associate.

A few things:

• as you become more comfortable with docs, the shitty typo errors will become less frequent. The more new shit you're processing, the more stupid errors you make. Dunno why this is so, but it is empirically proven in other fields. (For example, taking a standardized test in a room you've sat in before adds a material number of points to your score, on average. The new stimuli from the fucking room are enough to affect performance. Imagine what seeing new types of docs etc. does to your typo avoidance ability.) So to some degree you are just riding this out.
• The more senior you get, the less this shit matters. I am far from the worlds greatest typo catcher. It was mentioned a bunch at my first review. it was mentioned less at my third year review. It has not been mentioned since.
• Try to shine in workstreams that don't reward the insane precision that some of your colleagues have. Securities work is probably not a good fit. If have a choice between running sig pages and running diligence, diligence is better (and, IMO, is better practice for deal management in the future anyways)
• write everything the fuck down. you have a to do list every day, you add to it during the day in real time as things pop into your head and you don't go home until that list is cleared or you have explicitly moved items to tomorrow's to do
• when turning comments, check off each comment you enter in a separate colored pen so that you don't miss any
• never work in track changes unless expressly asked to. So easy to make typos in track changes.
• always proof a document IN HARD COPY before you send it out. It is impossible to proof effectively on screen
• don't get on the phone with the client unless you have a written agenda handy - can be your agenda that you don't share but you should have a list in front of you of points you need to cover on the call. Often worth having a agenda to refer to for a meeting with a supervising associate. Makes you seem organized. if they surprise you with a call and you are the least worried about improvising, theres nothing wrong with asking to call them back in 10 when prepared
• helps to have a friend where you guys check each others most important stuff before sending out. extra sets of eyes are super helpful.
• if cold reads are offered at your firm, use them liberally
• order a stack of small, middle school style notebooks for each of your matters. write down all notes for a deal in a separate notebook. this way you have an easy-to-thumb-through record of all notes you've taken on calls, in meetings and such
• remember that its fucking hard for most of your peers too. there will always be some folks that are just gods at producing perfect, error free work product and they are the winners at being a junior associate. fortunately you are only a junior associate for 2 years. lots of those gods of perfection can't think on their feet - the skills don't correlate. Some day, they will be wishing for your skillset

This is all credited. One thing that has been working for me is just taking multiple looks at documents in multiple settings and slowing down when I am proofing and drafting transactional documents. Contracts are not a law school exam - your ability to think on your feet in law school is a great skill, but the name of the game with transactional documents is perfection in the details. I will literally write a sentence and then review it. Then when the paragraph is complete I review it again. When the document is done I proof it on my screen. Then I print it out and proof it from front to back. Then I read the document from back to front, bottom to top. It seems super redundant, and it is, but you're much better off taking an extra 30-45 minutes before receiving comments from a partner than spending those 30-45 minutes after they've found your silly errors. And we all make them. The name of the game is fixing them before the partner or client sees them.

And stupid mistakes stick in your mind more than your good work. For example, I'm still kicking myself for getting a comment on a contract I drafted when outside counsel noticed that I messed up my subject verb agreement in an "including, but is not limited to," phrase when the preceding subject was plural and is should have been are. Sometimes you just have to let it go and start fresh in your mind or your past mistakes will haunt you into creating even more mistakes. As much as we are all billing machines, it's good to just take a break for 10-15 minutes during the day, drink some coffee and read the news or something non-legal related.

It's also helpful to start building checklists for documents that you find yourself drafting on a frequent basis. List out every stupid little thing that has to be in there and, more importantly, create a list of unique identifiers in those documents. After awhile things will just pop out at you when you're drafting and reviewing documents. And a lot of it's stupid, don't refer to shareholders with a LLC and don't refer to members with a corporation, and the list goes on.

Build a little portfolio of model documents and language. Whenever I see an elegant way to express a legal concept in a document, from opposing counsel or my firm, I copy and paste it into my little portfolio. When you, or someone else, drafts that perfect document you store one away in your portfolio to reference the next time you draft one. Then at the end of a long day and I don't know if something should be capitalized, if my partners prefer letters or numbers in lists, do they use a serial (oxford) comma, etc., I have good reference material to fall back on rather than knocking on their door and asking the same stupid question for the umpteenth time.

OP Here.

Thanks a lot for your tips. This is all really helpful stuff.

I especially like the idea of making a list of changes for each document that I'm drafting. Seems like the same few "switches" are ale always flipped in any given document, so I am going to start keeping track of what those are and double checking those provisions.

I also like the idea of making a list of tasks for each day. Obviously, we use deal checklists that outline the documents involved in any given deal, but sometimes I forget to do minor tasks that are personal to me (e.g., follow up with ___ about ___).

Also really like the separate notebooks idea. I've been forcing myself to be a better note taker (I never was very good at this in undergrad and LS), but I put all my notes from 3 or 4 different deals in the same notebook, so it's pretty worthless when I actually need to go back and look at something.

Thanks again. Glad to know that this shit isn't going to plague me for my entire career because honestly as a junior sometimes it feels like organizational skills are the only thing that matters...

[whatsyourdeal]

OP, also keep in mind that you're doing transactional work, which requires more attention to detail than litigation (at least based on my experiences). I don't know about you, but I never learned how to redline contracts in law school; I was still making typos a year and a half in as a contracts counsel (but less so after a year). It definitely takes time. Hang in there, OP.

[piccolittle]

Thanks all for the excellent advice and support. Not OP, but I've been having a similar feeling and it's nice to hear that it gets better.

[UVAIce]

Hi,

I am a 2014 grad doing corporate work at a top law firm (mainly M&A but with a mix of some other stuff). I am starting to feel pretty shitty about my work performance. I make an inordinate amount of small errors (typos, formatting errors, sig page fuck ups, etc). Most of these have not been a big deal, but a few have been client facing where a senior associate has had to step in and cover for me.

I have not received any formal warnings or anything so it's totally possible I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting a shitty reputation in my group. I am not lazy, I just for some reason have a very hard time staying organized and being methodical in my fast paced practice.

For what it's worth, I did very well in law school (top 5% at a t14), and just did not expect to feel so down about myself in my second year of practice.

Anyone gone through anything similar or have any tips to share?

Congrats, and welcome to being a first year transactional associate.

A few things:

• as you become more comfortable with docs, the shitty typo errors will become less frequent. The more new shit you're processing, the more stupid errors you make. Dunno why this is so, but it is empirically proven in other fields. (For example, taking a standardized test in a room you've sat in before adds a material number of points to your score, on average. The new stimuli from the fucking room are enough to affect performance. Imagine what seeing new types of docs etc. does to your typo avoidance ability.) So to some degree you are just riding this out.
• The more senior you get, the less this shit matters. I am far from the worlds greatest typo catcher. It was mentioned a bunch at my first review. it was mentioned less at my third year review. It has not been mentioned since.
• Try to shine in workstreams that don't reward the insane precision that some of your colleagues have. Securities work is probably not a good fit. If have a choice between running sig pages and running diligence, diligence is better (and, IMO, is better practice for deal management in the future anyways)
• write everything the fuck down. you have a to do list every day, you add to it during the day in real time as things pop into your head and you don't go home until that list is cleared or you have explicitly moved items to tomorrow's to do
• when turning comments, check off each comment you enter in a separate colored pen so that you don't miss any
• never work in track changes unless expressly asked to. So easy to make typos in track changes.
• always proof a document IN HARD COPY before you send it out. It is impossible to proof effectively on screen
• don't get on the phone with the client unless you have a written agenda handy - can be your agenda that you don't share but you should have a list in front of you of points you need to cover on the call. Often worth having a agenda to refer to for a meeting with a supervising associate. Makes you seem organized. if they surprise you with a call and you are the least worried about improvising, theres nothing wrong with asking to call them back in 10 when prepared
• helps to have a friend where you guys check each others most important stuff before sending out. extra sets of eyes are super helpful.
• if cold reads are offered at your firm, use them liberally
• order a stack of small, middle school style notebooks for each of your matters. write down all notes for a deal in a separate notebook. this way you have an easy-to-thumb-through record of all notes you've taken on calls, in meetings and such
• remember that its fucking hard for most of your peers too. there will always be some folks that are just gods at producing perfect, error free work product and they are the winners at being a junior associate. fortunately you are only a junior associate for 2 years. lots of those gods of perfection can't think on their feet - the skills don't correlate. Some day, they will be wishing for your skillset

This is all credited. One thing that has been working for me is just taking multiple looks at documents in multiple settings and slowing down when I am proofing and drafting transactional documents. Contracts are not a law school exam - your ability to think on your feet in law school is a great skill, but the name of the game with transactional documents is perfection in the details. I will literally write a sentence and then review it. Then when the paragraph is complete I review it again. When the document is done I proof it on my screen. Then I print it out and proof it from front to back. Then I read the document from back to front, bottom to top. It seems super redundant, and it is, but you're much better off taking an extra 30-45 minutes before receiving comments from a partner than spending those 30-45 minutes after they've found your silly errors. And we all make them. The name of the game is fixing them before the partner or client sees them.

And stupid mistakes stick in your mind more than your good work. For example, I'm still kicking myself for getting a comment on a contract I drafted when outside counsel noticed that I messed up my subject verb agreement in an "including, but is not limited to," phrase when the preceding subject was plural and is should have been are. Sometimes you just have to let it go and start fresh in your mind or your past mistakes will haunt you into creating even more mistakes. As much as we are all billing machines, it's good to just take a break for 10-15 minutes during the day, drink some coffee and read the news or something non-legal related.

It's also helpful to start building checklists for documents that you find yourself drafting on a frequent basis. List out every stupid little thing that has to be in there and, more importantly, create a list of unique identifiers in those documents. After awhile things will just pop out at you when you're drafting and reviewing documents. And a lot of it's stupid, don't refer to shareholders with a LLC and don't refer to members with a corporation, and the list goes on.

Build a little portfolio of model documents and language. Whenever I see an elegant way to express a legal concept in a document, from opposing counsel or my firm, I copy and paste it into my little portfolio. When you, or someone else, drafts that perfect document you store one away in your portfolio to reference the next time you draft one. Then at the end of a long day and I don't know if something should be capitalized, if my partners prefer letters or numbers in lists, do they use a serial (oxford) comma, etc., I have good reference material to fall back on rather than knocking on their door and asking the same stupid question for the umpteenth time.

Can you really seriously bill all that time proofing the documents? My partners would go ape shit if I spent that much time proofing the document. Also, even if I didn't bill the time proofing, but wasn't producing the docs fast enough, they would go apeshit. So many times, they are looking for the docs five minutes after giving me the assignment. There's not a lot of leisure time to proof.

Honestly it all depends. On shorter documents or when you have a short deadline you are not going to have the luxury of spending that much time on the document, but to be honest, at this point I can do that type of proofing pretty quickly because I'm used to it. The first time it might take thirty minutes, but by the twentieth time it only takes a few minutes. And honestly, sometimes I feel my partners are more irate when simple documents have mistakes rather than the 25 page option agreement I just drafted for the first time. And once you have a nice portfolio of go to form documents you only really have to proof the changes you made and not every single sentence.

The reality is that so much of this stuff is context specific. You have to figure out what is important and what isn't to the various people you provide work product.

[orangecup]

Can you really seriously bill all that time proofing the documents? My partners would go ape shit if I spent that much time proofing the document. Also, even if I didn't bill the time proofing, but wasn't producing the docs fast enough, they would go apeshit. So many times, they are looking for the docs five minutes after giving me the assignment. There's not a lot of leisure time to proof.

Just bill the time you spent working on the document. It's the partner's job to trim the hours if he or she thinks it shouldn't have taken you that long and doesn't want to put that bill in front of the client.

[Anonymous User]

I'm having the same problem- just started in a litigation practice that I was very lucky to get into, (punching way, way, above my grades) and I am worried that I'm just not as smart as everyone else around me. I'm trying hard though...hopefully I'll pick it all up quickly.

[Anonymous User]

Very common issue - don't sweat it. I was worried that I was going to be fired every day for at least the first 1-1.5 years of practice in M&A/VC/PE for many of the same reasons you describe. It happens to everyone. I ended up lasting at the same firm for 6 years and was well regarded when I left for in-house. This was all after a very senior partner publicly expressing concerns about whether I "got it" about 6 months into the job to several other partners in the group - you can always recover. I was not fully comfortable until years 4-6, but the lack of confidence got much better each year. You will be fine. The first 2 years as a junior is a mind fuck. Some people are pricks. Client deadlines are insane. You are trying to learn a new career and probably no one is really mentoring you. You are drinking from a fire hose.

Try to meditate, go for walks, work out, spend time with your SO (if you have one), listen to music or play music (whatever you need to do to relax outside of work), and sleep. Lack of sleep will create errors regardless of how good of a lawyer you are. Try to not become use booze/prescription meds to sleep. Natural remedies like melatonin are good alternatives if you need something.

Lots of great advice in this thread. I'll add 2 more tips for organization that are no brainers IMO. Create folders and subfolders in Outlook for various clients/deals and categories. For example, create a main folder for M&A transaction Project DontFuckUp and have subfolders for diligence, signature pages, disclosure schedules, etc. As you finish with emails, file them. Create a "Finished" folder for all old deals/matters that are done so you have them as easy reference. Keep a clean inbox as much as you can. Having a clean inbox with only emails that require action/follow-up will do a lot to keep you organized. In addition, flag emails that require immediate action so it is really staring you in the face. This is all in addition to keeping a to do list. It's a system of checks to make sure you don't forget something. I also like to calendar reminders (e.g., if you close a deal and escrow is going to be disbursed on 12/31/2017, add a reminder in calendar for 9/30/2017 to check in with partner/client about it, or if a memo is due Thursday, include a calendar reminder Wednesday morning). You will be sleep deprived so you need lots of reminder to keep you shit in order.

Last, keep a clean work space. Clutter in your office breeds disorganization and does not instill confidence in you. If your office looks disorganized, YOU look disorganized. I hated physical files so I tried to have everything saved electronically by matter (my folders on my computer for working files were organized in a similar manner to what I described above for outlook). I also kept a folder for forms. Good forms are huge. Ask other more senior associates if they have a sample form whenever you start a new drafting exercise or other project. No need to re-invent the wheel and different partners/associates like different forms. They will not always remember to offer up forms/samples, but you will save yourself a lot of frustration and time if you have good forms. It's like using other people's outlines in law school. Limiting physical files helped me keep a clean work space. If you need to keep physical files, keep them in manilla folders that are labeled (ask secretary to create labels) and keep those folders in labelled redwells.

Best of luck with it. Don't be afraid to ask more senior associates that you trust if they have tips for staying organized too. I think you've already gotten great advice in this thread, but you should leverage the knowledge of your colleagues too. Just be mindful about who you ask

[andythefir]

I'd like to add that this isn't just for big law folks. I'm a year into being a rural DA and to this day I haven't received a minute of formal training on how to actually do my job. I get lots of trainings on how not to sexually harass, how not to hide evidence, etc., but every single thing I've learned about actually doing the job has been catch as catch can. The first office I worked for hated training baby lawyers, but I was the only application that came through the door. The second was a big promotion for an "experienced" attorney, and I guess faking your way for a year counts as experience?

Something I've noticed is that lots of folks who did other things before going to law school are much more effective first thing first day because they have at least done something like what they're doing. And I was much more effective my first day of my 2nd job, even though I had been sworn in for less than a year.

The crazy thing for me is I was top 10% of a top 25 school, and the bulk of the people in rural DA work (at lest here) were bottom of their class at for-profit law schools. I would say I actually use any skills I learned in law school for maybe 1 hour per day at the absolute most.

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

Please change the thread title to"great at law school but mediocre secretary."

[84651846190]

This is actually a lot more common than people might think. You get these "top" law grads who are highly trained at issue spotting and cranking out exams in 3-4 hours, but they wilt when up against the daily grind of biglaw month after month. Success in law (over the long term) takes a totally different skill set, IMO.

[somewhatwayward]

People have given a lot of good advice but I think you have to figure out what works for you - experiment with the suggestions and see what makes a difference. One small suggestion I have wrt forgetting to follow up with so-and-so about x is use the task/alarm fx in outlook (unless you're at csm with their shitty lotus notes)...you can right click on the email and add it to your tasks and then put an alarm on it that will remind you. ..only takes like 5 secs.

Another thing I think is crucial is having friends who are real (not strivers). Do you have close friends at the firm? You should try to spend at least some time with them every day (even if only walking to get lunch and bringing it back to your desk if busy). They don't have to be people in your class...my close friends are several yrs more senior, which gives me the added benefit of their mentorship.

I think some of the problem is your attitude too. Maybe you expected that bc you killed law school you would excel at the firm? I don't really see a correlation between law school grades and firm performance. Something to keep in mind also is that over time the job changes and different skills are needed. ..attention to detail and drafting will always be crucial but as you get more senior your ability to manage people, to negotiate, etc is also important and you may have more of a knack for that.

Your first year experience sounds pretty typical. Unless you have had someone pull you aside and tell you that you're making too many mistakes even for a first year, or you've had a review in which you were told that these mistakes are a serious problem, then I'd assume that you are performing like a typical first year and that you will begin to get it and could very well over time become one of the best associates...who knows?

Some of the problem is the firm and lawyers' notoriously poor management skills, too....you always hear about a mistake (as you should) but you don't always hear about what you did right. I had no idea for about a year that I was actually doing a good job. Also training for stuff like sig pages is pretty much non existent (teaching people how to set up sig pages for LLCs, how resos sig pages work, etc) so inevitably people make mistakes.

Good luck! I bet in a year you will feel much more confident but then it will be time to start midlevel stuff and you'll be back in new terrain again but that's law firm life.

[pancakes3]

Re: printing everything out because it's to proof on screen, one alternative I've found to be useful is copying the raw text and pasting it into a new document, and then make the spacing and font opposite of the original (i.e. if double spaced, go single, and if serif font, go sans).

I used to try to find any alternative possible to save paper with "tricks" like this, or printing double-sided but I've settled into the "fuck it, print it all" equilibrium.