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Hello,

TLS has helped me throughout the LSAT, law school, OCI process and helped me thrive along the way. I am currently in a V50 in a major market doing corporate work. I started a few months ago and I had a meeting today with someone who helps coordinate the assignments and an additional HR person who basically told me they wanted to touch on some criticisms they have been hearing from people I have been working with so i can work on them before my actual review comes up. Many of the critiques i can and will fix (respond faster to emails) but generally it seems some? all? a few? of the people i have been working with (midlevels) are unhappy with my work. They think i am either incompetent, or just ignore directions while I am trying my best and just struggling to figure out what to do. This one mid level I was just working with I believe got so fed up with me that they requested a different first year to work with

1. I am scared that I will get fired soon

2. Any advice on how not to just suck at my job? it really really sucks having no idea whats flying. Ive done fairly well at most jobs in my life and succeeded at good schools so its hard for me to think I'm just a moron, but I am starting to think that.

3. Overall advice?

4. anyone hear of a first year getting fired for poor performance, not egregiously bad, before?

1) you are definitely going to get fired and sooner rather than later. So start looking to lateral.

2) stop fucking stuff up.

What were the work product issues?

Responding to emails faster should be an easy fix.

Anonymous User wrote:1) you are definitely going to get fired and sooner rather than later. So start looking to lateral.

2) stop fucking stuff up.

Excellent advice and use of anon.

That's not good - it's super early in the game to get a talking to. What kind of issues did they bring up? Lack of attention to detail? Junior transactional work is basically paralegal work, so I don't get how it could be some other reason aside from attention to detail.

Not to sound harsh, but I'd say that your reputation at this firm is probably done for. You should consider lateraling (start looking now) and make sure you get a good start at your new firm. In the meantime, try to improve at your current firm.

Law school isn't like practice at all - it's a whole 'nother ball game. I'd say slow down, stop trying to do assignments as quickly, and triple/quadruple check your work before turning it in.

Work product issues were mostly the midlevel thought i dint follow instructions or i just missed the task of the goal/i did most the job wrong. wasn't really lack of attention to detail. and responding to emails faster and other small things will def be fixed

krads153 wrote:
Not to sound harsh, but I'd say that your reputation at this firm is probably done for. You should consider lateraling (start looking now) and make sure you get a good start at your new firm. In the meantime, try to improve at your current firm.

can reputations go that fast?
How does one lateral as a first year?
do other ppl agree with this?

Anonymous User wrote:Work product issues were mostly the midlevel thought i dint follow instructions or i just missed the task of the goal/i did most the job wrong. wasn't really lack of attention to detail. and responding to emails faster and other small things will def be fixed

What type of assignments? a lot of the junior work involves making signing checklists, sig pages, coordination, etc. Was it heavy drafting?

Anonymous User wrote:

krads153 wrote:
Not to sound harsh, but I'd say that your reputation at this firm is probably done for. You should consider lateraling (start looking now) and make sure you get a good start at your new firm. In the meantime, try to improve at your current firm.

can reputations go that fast?
How does one lateral as a first year?
do other ppl agree with this?

I know people who have lateraled after one year (either in house or to another firm/market), so it is definitely possible, esp. in this market.

Anonymous User wrote:

krads153 wrote:
Not to sound harsh, but I'd say that your reputation at this firm is probably done for. You should consider lateraling (start looking now) and make sure you get a good start at your new firm. In the meantime, try to improve at your current firm.

can reputations go that fast?
How does one lateral as a first year?
do other ppl agree with this?

It's definitely weird to get this kind of talking to so early.

krads153 wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Work product issues were mostly the midlevel thought i dint follow instructions or i just missed the task of the goal/i did most the job wrong. wasn't really lack of attention to detail. and responding to emails faster and other small things will def be fixed

What type of assignments? a lot of the junior work involves making signing checklists, sig pages, coordination, etc. Was it heavy drafting?

most of it was middle level drafting and me just not drafting correctly. using wrong party names, didn't add some substantive things from other sources i apparently should have etc.

Anonymous User wrote:

krads153 wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Work product issues were mostly the midlevel thought i dint follow instructions or i just missed the task of the goal/i did most the job wrong. wasn't really lack of attention to detail. and responding to emails faster and other small things will def be fixed

What type of assignments? a lot of the junior work involves making signing checklists, sig pages, coordination, etc. Was it heavy drafting?

most of it was middle level drafting and me just not drafting correctly. using wrong party names, didn't add some substantive things from other sources i apparently should have etc.

A large part of that sounds like attention to detail (using wrong party names). Hard to know about substantive stuff when I dunno how much context you had - that could just be knowledge based. I would just triple/quadruple check your work. It will make it take longer, but it's better to take longer and turn in ok work product.

I just keep telling myself, its impossible to get fired this early in biglaw, I never heard of that happening. Isn't that true? Should i speak to my partner mentor? I feel like he has no clue this is happening and me telling him will do nothing but inform him that i suck.

Anonymous User wrote:I just keep telling myself, its impossible to get fired this early in bigly, I never heard of that happening. Isn't that true? Should i speak to my partner mentor? I feel like he has no clue this is happening and me telling him will do nothing but inform him that i suck.

No - do not talk to your partner mentor - that will just spread the word. I would talk to an associate FRIEND (not mentor - lots of people gossip behind people's backs) if you have a friend who is more senior that's best

You may be fired by the end of year 1, but you'll have at least 3 months severance to look. I'd be proactive and start looking now.

krads153 wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I just keep telling myself, its impossible to get fired this early in bigly, I never heard of that happening. Isn't that true? Should i speak to my partner mentor? I feel like he has no clue this is happening and me telling him will do nothing but inform him that i suck.

No - do not talk to your partner mentor - that will just spread the word. I would talk to an associate FRIEND (not mentor - lots of people gossip behind people's backs) if you have a friend who is more senior that's best

You may be fired by the end of year 1, but you'll have at least 3 months severance to look. I'd be proactive and start looking now.

what are associate friends going to tell me?? should i go back to the people who gave me the talk and ask what this means?

Anonymous User wrote:

krads153 wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I just keep telling myself, its impossible to get fired this early in bigly, I never heard of that happening. Isn't that true? Should i speak to my partner mentor? I feel like he has no clue this is happening and me telling him will do nothing but inform him that i suck.

No - do not talk to your partner mentor - that will just spread the word. I would talk to an associate FRIEND (not mentor - lots of people gossip behind people's backs) if you have a friend who is more senior that's best

You may be fired by the end of year 1, but you'll have at least 3 months severance to look. I'd be proactive and start looking now.

what are associate friends going to tell me?? should i go back to the people who gave me the talk and ask what this means?

No - I mean if you have any friends who are associates. otherwise, I wouldn't tell anyone at your firm, period. Nobody gives a shit about your at your firm - bad idea to talk to non-friends.

I think you need to focus on trying to fix your issues because even if you do successfully lateral in your first year, your next firm is going to be unhappy with your work for the same reasons. Your first firm will be the most forgiving, so see if you can fix the issues. The email responsiveness should be an easy fix, just do it. As far as the messing things up, if you don't have good attention to detail and are not a careful person, you can create a work-around by using a formal process for everything. You need to create a checklist of things you tend to mess up, i.e. party names, numbering, whatever it is, and then every time you work on something, go through your list to make sure you caught all the mistakes you tend to make. Don't rush anything, do the work, then check it over line by line. Control-F the old contract terms to make sure you removed them all, etc.

Anonymous User wrote:I think you need to focus on trying to fix your issues because even if you do successfully lateral in your first year, your next firm is going to be unhappy with your work for the same reasons. Your first firm will be the most forgiving, so see if you can fix the issues. The email responsiveness should be an easy fix, just do it. As far as the messing things up, if you don't have good attention to detail and are not a careful person, you can create a work-around by using a formal process for everything. You need to create a checklist of things you tend to mess up, i.e. party names, numbering, whatever it is, and then every time you work on something, go through your list to make sure you caught all the mistakes you tend to make. Don't rush anything, do the work, then check it over line by line. Control-F the old contract terms to make sure you removed them all, etc.

I really feel its more of a i am as positive as could be xyz is supposed to be there, i know its there, i want it there, and then the middle level is like wtf? thats wrong! mistakes than spending more time prob won't fix

You may not realize it but the first 6 months at your firm is your "first impression". You don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Mid-levels and seniors know very quickly if someone is good, ok or bad and they talk to each other. The first thing I do when I'm working with a new junior is to ask friends and people they've worked with if they are any good. I need to know if I can trust them and if I can expect them to run with tasks.

You need to start asking the associates you work with more questions. I'd rather explain a bunch of things to a junior if it was going to save me from having to explain it again or do extra work fixing bad work product in the future. Dont be afraid to ask the people you work for criticism. Listen to what they say and make a conscious effort to address what they are telling you. They are not likely to be brutally honest, but they'll point out the big things you're doing wrong.

Effort is everything at this stage. If you're making lots of typos and messing up party names it implies to a senior associate that you're not applying the appropriate amount of effort to the one thing a junior associate should be able to do: pay close attention to the details. We don't expect you to know anything about practice, but we expect you to put in effort and learn from mistakes.

You could have looked up a couple samples to see if people normally put XYZ there.

It sounds like you don't know how to fix the problem. You need to figure that out. Ask. To some extent this may be a failure of management by the midlevels expecting you to know too much. Even so, it becomes your problem once you fail to clarify things you don't understand.

To the limited extent I can offer any advice based on your description of the problem, it's to ask more questions.

I'm a little worried that you claimed to not have attention to detail problems when you seem to have them.

Time for a serious reassessment.

zot1 wrote:I'm a little worried that you claimed to not have attention to detail problems when you seem to have them.

Time for a serious reassessment.

Im not against admitting I have attention to detail problems. In fact, I probably do have them and they contributing partially to my failure. However, the problem with labeling this attention to detail, is attention to detail can normally be fixed by you know, attending to detail. Many of my biggest errors came after sitting in front of my desk, thinking long and hard, not really being sure, double checking shit , looking at other sources, and still fucking up. Seat me in that chair for another 45 hours i prob would have gotten the answer equally wrong. So it could be attention to detail, but not the easy type to fix

dixiecupdrinking wrote:It sounds like you don't know how to fix the problem. You need to figure that out. Ask. To some extent this may be a failure of management by the midlevels expecting you to know too much. Even so, it becomes your problem once you fail to clarify things you don't understand.

To the limited extent I can offer any advice based on your description of the problem, it's to ask more questions.

You think its too late to even fix? But you are correct, not sure how to or even if I am capable, of fixing it.

Anonymous User wrote:

zot1 wrote:I'm a little worried that you claimed to not have attention to detail problems when you seem to have them.

Time for a serious reassessment.

Im not against admitting I have attention to detail problems. In fact, I probably do have them and they contributing partially to my failure. However, the problem with labeling this attention to detail, is attention to detail can normally be fixed by you know, attending to detail. Many of my biggest errors came after sitting in front of my desk, thinking long and hard, not really being sure, double checking shit , looking at other sources, and still fucking up. Seat me in that chair for another 45 hours i prob would have gotten the answer equally wrong. So it could be attention to detail, but not the easy type to fix

Well, why do you think you would always get the assignment wrong? Do you not understand the assignment? Do you fail to take notes to guide you? Do you fail to follow up? Do you not give yourself enough time to map out your strategy? Afraid to ask, but are you just not good at what you do?