The Unloved Lawyer: Finding your feet

My last article won attention from a national newspaper and a couple of online Scottish legal blogs, which suggested I urged lawyers “to stay off dating sites” – not exactly accurate! Nor am I representing the views of the Law Society in these articles – I am an individual.

I have spent a good deal of time writing about what not to do, or what to avoid or look out for, in terms of life in the law, and perhaps it is time to focus on some practical hints and tips, particularly for trainees entering the profession who may never have worked in a legal office, or any office at all.

Not much choice

University life is so different from the world of work. Picture the scene: you’re at university and you wake up on a dark, cold November morning and look outside to see it’s been snowing.

The choice is either to stay in bed, be warm and catch up on sleep, or go to the jurisprudence lecture at 9am. The scales are very much tipped in favour of the former.

Unfortunately, not turning up because you’re hungover or you’ve chosen to have a duvet day just doesn’t cut it in the world of work.

The transition from uni life to legal office life can be very daunting. For example, you will be going from the relatively part time nature of university life (a couple of lectures/tutorials a day with gaps in between) to, usually, full time hours Monday to Friday – plus the unspoken expectation that you will work extra to show your commitment and enthusiasm for your career. You will suddenly find yourself surrounded by colleagues, most of whom you probably wouldn’t choose to spend much time with, unlike the friends you actively made at uni and stuck with throughout and beyond your time there.

Office politics, and more

For the benefit of trainees, my hints and tips are:

• There will be office politics. Every office has politics, often exactly as you’ve seen it on TV and in films! You can’t avoid it, although you don’t have to get involved. Some of it will be quite exciting and some of it will seem very petty. Drama within the office comes and goes, in waves, in terms of what happens and who is at the centre of it. You won’t like everyone and not everyone will like you. Try not to embroil yourself in it – observe it and make your own decisions about who to trust. Also, bring your own mug on your first day!
• Take a notepad and pen (or your mobile) everywhere with you. As a trainee, you will probably have a number of solicitors passing work to you, and you never know when or where another request for work will be made, even if you are just going to the water cooler. If you have seen The Devil Wears Prada, you will know the excruciating embarrassment when Andy goes into Miranda’s room without her notepad and pen and Miranda rattles off a number of instructions that Andy can’t remember as soon as she leaves the room.
• Take it easy at your first office Christmas party. Even if you started your traineeship in January, trust me on this. Your behaviour at your first Christmas party is crucial and it will be remembered. Tempting as it may be to tank all the free alcohol you can, you don’t want to be remembered as “that trainee who had to be carried out”. I have seen that happen and they were never able to shake off that tag – it came up at every event involving alcohol after that. It’s tempting to go all out with the free bar when you’ve just amassed a lot of debt at uni, but hold back! Use it as an opportunity to see how your colleagues and bosses act, so you can gauge how relaxed or otherwise the office parties can be.
• Please, please, please remember that the paralegals know more than you do, and treat them with as much respect as your boss(es). You will need their help on about a thousand occasions during your traineeship and beyond. They know about the substantive law within their field and they have the added procedural knowledge that you won’t have, in terms of registration of documents, completion of forms, drafting knowledge and the sequence of events in various matters. You can often learn more from a paralegal than from your supervising solicitor – you might find that your supervisor hasn’t drafted a missive or a court application themselves since they were a trainee, which could have been 30+ years previously!

There is a lot to navigate as a trainee in terms of life in a legal office, which often extends way beyond learning how to put into practice the theory that you learned at university. In short, hold yourself back until you have established the internal workings of the office and formed your own relationships with colleagues.

You will be glad you did.