Articles of clerkship in Australia are long dead. They have been replaced with a sub-standard form of yet more tertiary education. And while PLT makes an attempt to be practical, the sad truth is that you can become an admitted lawyer now with literally no idea how to practice law.
And so, while in theory articles of clerkship have been abolished, most law firms actually have to teach all of their new staff how to be lawyers anyway.
Which is a lot like what articles of clerkship was for… go figure.
So I thought it might be helpful to actually let you know what people are expecting when you turn up at the office.
Let’s roll.
Notepad and Pen
If you leave your desk to speak with anyone about anything – take a notepad and pen.
Or whatever fancy electronic device takes your fancy and complies with your firm’s requirements.
But if I ask you to come to me for a task and you don’t have a notepad and pen to take notes, then you’re going to just be wasting steps when I send you back to get them.
Listen
Nothing is more irritating to busy people than having to repeat things they have already said because you weren’t paying attention.
So pay attention.
This means you have to adapt to something that university hasn’t taught you – the ability to listen and take notes simultaneously. This is a hard skill.
Because if you try and write down everything (see previous step) that I tell you, you’re not actually listening – your ears are connected to your hand, not your brain.
So you need to train yourself to write down what’s necessary, while still listening to what I’m telling you.
Questions
I realise that it’s a bit intimidating to have someone talking quickly at you about things you barely understand and then to walk out and execute a task.
Generally, therefore, you need to be prepared to ask questions. Some senior lawyers will be more amenable to this than others.
There are two types of good questions:
- Process questions – how long should I spend on this, when do you need this, what form do you need the task done in?
- Understanding questions – I’m sorry I’ve never heard of X before – would you prefer me to look it up or do you mind just explaning that briefly to me?
There are also dangerous time-wasting questions:
- Why would our client do that instead of this?
- Why haven’t we investigated X?
- Shouldn’t we be doing X instead of Y?
On rare occasions these questions might be useful.
But unless you’ve earned the right to ask them – probably shouldn’t.
Appropriate Initiative
Showing initiative is good, as a general rule.
So, if you’re researching something you’ve been asked to research, and you know that the lawyer wasn’t confident about the space, then checking in with them to discuss your findings and suggest that the research be diverted to X rather than Y (and explaining why) might be a completely appropriate use of time.
On the other hand, deciding that you should spend 10 hours researching a sideline topic because you thought it sounded relevant while your supervising lawyer is waiting for your task to be completed is probably not. After all – how do you know that they haven’t already done that previously?
Appropriate initiative is hard – I probably need to do a separate article on it to be honest.
Be Interested!
You know what’s annoying? Someone who does only what is asked, exactly and precisely, and then couldn’t give a stuff what happens after that.
This is similar to showing iniative, but it’s more of a mental position – do you actually care about this or not?
Because if one thing is going to affect both how YOU feel about your legal career, and how it goes in the long run – it’s actually giving a stuff.
What does this look like? It looks like:
- Pointing out areas in your research/task that might be worth further investigation;
- Following up after the task to see how things turned out;
- Asking if there is anything further you can do to assist;
- Delivering something useful that does what you were asked; and
- If necessary, perhaps giving up a few minutes of your lunch/end of day/morning to actually finish the task in a timely fashion.
I recognise this last one is uncool these days, since we’re all told that working is bad for our mental health.
That’s rubbish.
Care about what you do – that’s good for your mental health.
So In Short
Just care about what you do.
The others follow from that.