New Associates: A survival guide for your writing

Dear New Associate,

Let me begin by congratulating you for not only successfully escaping from law school but also for landing a job at your new law firm! You’ve worked hard to reach this stage, and I’m sure you would like to continue on your path of achieving excellent results.

To help you on your way, let me share with you some survival insights on how to use your writing as a tool for impressing your supervisors.

I. Knowing vs. Advising

When I started as a law firm associate, I thought that my bosses would be amazed by my writing. Instead, I found myself receiving a never-ending stream of criticisms and red pen edits of my writing.

Unfortunately, you will quickly discover that law school didn’t do a great job of preparing you to write in the real world. In law school, your professors were encouraging you to use your writing to communicate what you know about the law. But, in the real world, nobody cares about what you know. Your bosses and clients only care about getting clear and concise answers that solve business problems.

Survival Tip 1: Answer the questions

As a young associate, it’s going to feel great to do a lengthy analysis of a client’s legal problem. Such an analysis will enable you to research the relevant law and show off your ability to interpret the law’s relevance for your client. In fact, these analyses can feel so fun that young associates oftentimes get distracted from addressing the client’s questions.

But remember, clients aren’t paying for your brilliant analyses. They are paying you to help them solve their problems by answering their questions. If you fail to provide answers, your advice is worthless to them. (And, you put your boss in the uncomfortable position of doing your work for you and, possibly, making the painful decision to write off your time.)

II. Inconsistent Feedback

I was oftentimes surprised by how inconsistent my supervisors were in their comments and edits about my writing. One supervisor would constantly complain about one stylistic issue (e.g. passive sentences) and another supervisor would go ballistic about a different issue (e.g. not using his favorite legal expressions).

You might oftentimes hear from your firm about its excellent writing style. (They might even have some kind of style guide.) But, in reality, you will start to realize that the only style that matters is the one preferred by the attorney currently supervising you on your matter.

Survival Tip 2: Manage your styles

Your supervisors won’t feel comfortable forwarding your advice to clients unless it is compatible with their preferred style. So, you need to find a way to ensure that your advice is reasonably aligned with the personal style of your current supervisor.

I found it useful to create separate journals for each of my supervisors with notes about their stylistic preferences. By maintaining these journals, it was easier for me to edit my writing with a focus on such preferences. (This approach also enabled me to spot frequently repeated comments, which was a warning sign that I was really starting to upset my boss.)

III. Non-Stop Negativity

Since I was super successful in school, I found it extremely frustrating to get edits and negative comments on every damn piece of writing that I submitted to supervisors. I felt that either my bosses were being jerks, or more likely, I was an unbelievably sub-par writer.

You are probably going to be surprised by not only the stream of corrections for your writing but also by the utter lack of any positive feedback. This latter aspect will be especially annoying because you were used to plenty of positive feedback in law school (i.e. great grades).

Survival Tip 3: Step in their shoes

I recommend that you observe the lives of your supervisors and try to appreciate the immense amounts of pressure that they are facing. Not only do they need to supervise your writing, but they also need to:

·???????? Supervise the writing of other associates

·???????? Produce their own writing for clients

·???????? Address the complaints and issues of clients and colleagues

·???????? Manage the billing reports for clients

·???????? Provide updates and reports to the partners

·???????? Engage in the frustrating world of business development

·???????? Fight for a little time to deal with their personal lives

In other words, your supervisors usually have zero time to think about what you are doing well and give you a pat on the back.

Further, if you imagine yourself in the role of your supervisor as an editor, you will quickly realize that it’s completely normal for them to constantly provide you with a stream of edits and comments. In fact, when you need to be an editor someday, you will discover that no matter how good the writing, you will also find something to edit or comment on. So, there is no need to take the feedback personally as some sort of negative criticism – they are just doing their job.

Learn More

If you are looking for more help on your writing, visit us at Evelaw.eu for some tips and training.