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Fired from v100 as a junior associate and started at another biglaw firm this past week. The old firm basically told me my work product was too shitty. I am smart, I went to a top law school, and never had any academic or work problems previously. But I feel like I suck at biglaw. I often say dumb things, miss important things, don't think of other things or just fail to see the big picture.

Any tips on how to succeed this time around? Any books one would recommend?

Thanks

Take your time and double/triple check everything. I tend to miss small typos/section references still, since I'm naturally inclined to rush things. You just have to tell yourself to slow down.

How long were you there before being fired?

Start as soon as possible on assignments so you have as much time as possible to think about it, and take as much time as you need (within reason) up until the deadline. So start immediately but work slowly. While sucky for all other aspects of your life, it improves your work product and your hours.

From the lit perspective. Have had to deal with this before. You may have also heard this before... Take ownership of your cases. WTF does that mean? If lit associate, assume your briefs will not be reviewed and will be filed as is. Would you be okay with that? Take time to think about the case, what are your client's goals? If you were the client, what would you want to be done? Re: ideas and books, get the state and/or federal practice guide for the area of law. Read it. This will give you an understanding of where your case/issue fits in the grand scheme of things, policy implications, relevant statutory scheme, etc. Pull other similar cases from the firm database (to the extent you have one), review the dockets, see what issues there were and how they were handled.

TL/DR: Care more and preparation.

smokeylarue wrote:Take your time and double/triple check everything. I tend to miss small typos/section references still, since I'm naturally inclined to rush things. You just have to tell yourself to slow down.

How long were you there before being fired?

Was given talk at end of first year. BTW I am corporate

Were you given warnings beforehand? Was your group overall busy or slow?

I find that using a ruler to go line by line in documents is helpful for attention to detail.

Anonymous User wrote:

smokeylarue wrote:Take your time and double/triple check everything. I tend to miss small typos/section references still, since I'm naturally inclined to rush things. You just have to tell yourself to slow down.

How long were you there before being fired?

Was given talk at end of first year. BTW I am corporate

Sorry to hear that man. One year seems awfully quick to be let go. Perhaps your office did no have enough business too.

Was this your first full time job? Like no full time office job prior to law school?

Biglaw can be a tough racket. A lot of its not hard but its easy to make mistakes. Neurotic perfectionism is valued much higher than genuine inspiration or intellectual acuity.