Your first legal job (perhaps a summer associate position or legal internship) can be an exciting, but also a nerve-wracking experience. It may be your first time working in an office environment, your first role, and even if you worked before law school, the transition from studying cases to working alongside practicing lawyers can be intimidating.
We were both former summer associates at Hogan Lovells and continue to work with them annually, serving as assignment supervisors and formal and informal mentors.
After all, your first law job is supposed to be a learning experience, so here are five tips to help you start your legal career on the right foot.
Enthusiasm, curiosity, and hard work go a long way. Good news! We don’t expect legal brilliance or amazing writing from our summer associates. How could we? You’ve never done this before. Enthusiasm is important because some cases and tasks can seem boring. The excitement of diving in goes a long way.
Curiosity is important because it shows you want to understand the case — how your work fits into the bigger picture and how the practice of law works — and diligence is crucial because it shows your willingness to put in the time necessary to find the answers and hone your deliverables, even if they’re not perfect.
Explore practice areas and work outside your comfort zone. You may think you know what you want to do. But the actual practice of law in your dream field may not be what you imagined. We have interviewed candidates who wanted to do cross-border deals because they love to travel, but in reality, they found that they mostly ended up closing corporate deals with co-counsel in inconvenient time zones.
I’m not saying you have to tackle an IPO if you have your heart set on litigation, but try your hand at some regulatory projects — you might find yourself drawn to work you never knew existed, and if not, you’ll develop connections across the firm.
Hire mentors of all ages. Build a team of advisors at all stages of your career, not just one. Partners can share their wealth of expertise from their established careers and teach you about the firm as a company. They are also the ones who make the final decisions on return offers, practice group placements, and assignments. Senior associates can help you navigate the dynamics of the firm, suggest key people to meet and work with, and provide insight into what a particular practice group is really like.
Junior associates can be a lifeline in learning the firm’s culture, expectations, and quirks, from how a particular partner likes to format memos to how to unjam the printer across the hallway. And don’t limit yourself to formal or assigned mentors: The lawyers you work with on projects may be better mentors than someone the hiring department picked for you.
Understand how your job works. It’s easy to get caught up in the grind of assignments and summer associate events and forget about the nuts and bolts of how a company works, but learning how the company works is a key component of your success.
Learn about time management practices, recommended research tools, document retention policies, and resources. Pay special attention to how the company records summer assignments and gathers feedback. That great project you did for a junior associate may not have made it to the hiring committee if it wasn’t properly recorded in the system.
No matter how senior you are, everyone is only human. It’s easy to think of partners, especially those who manage large teams, as distant figures you only talk to over “please respond” emails. But even partners need to have lunch, and most people drink coffee, so don’t be afraid to ask if they have time to learn.
Sometimes senior attorneys want to connect with summer associates and interns, but they don’t get asked because everyone thinks they’re too busy. Of course, some people are nasty, but the cold emails and unexplained silence are usually due to a full inbox, a sudden fire drill, or kids or family commitments taking priority. That doesn’t excuse inconsiderate behavior, but it’s usually not your fault.
Above all, we are rooting for you to succeed. You are the future of the profession, and employers are happy when you succeed. Your first law job will be one you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.
Author Information
Sean Marotta is a partner in Hogan Lovells’ Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Group and a member of the firm’s Washington, DC Summer Associate Committee.
Dana Raphael is an associate in Hogan Lovells’ Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Group.
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