Have you started to wake up in cold sweats and think “OMG! I’m a Trainee, ” recently? Don’t freak out. This post is one of an intended series of posts about that first job as an actual proper grown up lawyer. You may be a trainee solicitor about to go into post, a paralegal or a trainee legal executive or reading around the subject as a student – whatever. The aim is to ensure that if you read this, you will not go through the same pain as I went through when I started out.
Two shopping days before week one
Your whole career and your whole life does not – repeat NOT- hang on these this week & two shopping days. But trust me, the next two years will be lots less un-fun if you start well.
What’s with the shopping days?
You probably have invested some of your hard earned cash in workwear so you can rock the interviews. But you probably don’t have a working wardrobe as such. Here’s what you need to know.
- Don’t wake up Monday morning with one suit. You’ll feel a clod by Wednesday. Get down the shops and buy some clobber. You will need two shopping days so you can take any kamikaze purchases back in time to get a replacement.
- Avoid actual pinstripe – that is for when you have become good at your job. At this stage you will look like a show-off zebra crossing.
- Black. that’s the ticket. Dark navy blue and grey is fine too. No to green, plum and double no to brown. Decide on the colour and buy in three suits (with small style variations so you don’t die of boredom) in that colour only for now.
- Chaps buy black shoes; chapesses buy matching colour shoes and handbag to the suit and both buy a dark coat that will see you through the winter.
- Piercings; if you wore them to the interview and they hired you, pray continue to wear your earlobe-hole-former and twin nose tusks. If you came to the interview sans face metal then you may startle. Your opinion on it is unlikely to be relevant, and this is also known as objectivity – a handy thing to cultivate in family work.
- Small stuff – apply to gender as required: Skirts require hosiery. Wear a bit of makeup, tidy facial hair please, clean nails, polished shoes, no novelty ties, haircut or hair off face. This is not the manifestation of media body fascism, it’s just a bit of mild grooming.
- If your office is going to be exceptionally posh then you may need to take proper advice from Tatler or bribe a Coldstream Guards officer to tell you the finer points of tie tying . But the above should see most of you through without being thrown out for embarrassing the firm.
- Hint. You are not supposed to look “fly”. You are supposed to look like a grown up.
Week one
Ok, so at least you look like a lawyer. That’s good. In a larger firm you will walk through the door and be told what to do. But in some firms, when you turn up you will have the feeling that although your arrival is welcome, they are too busy to delegate and turn your presence into something useful. Family departments are usually pretty hectic. So it’s up to you to find things to do so you don’t make them regret hiring you. Here’s some pick’n’mix stuff that should occupy you for week one and make you feel much more comfortable.
- Bring enough money on your first day for a social. I had a fiver on me on my first day. I was asked out to lunch with the whole team as a welcome do. I had to borrow money off the new boss. What a nightmare.
- Buy a small note book and pen and carry it around with you always. Every time someone tells you a useful thing, bank it in the book.
- Make the tea. Learn what everybody likes and put it in your notebook.
- Find the shredder, help out the support staff.
- Make friends with the secretaries. Keep your ear to the ground about office politics but do not form or express any views.
- Get involved in the DX (DX is like magic lawyer post. Harry Potter had Owls, we have DX).
- Find the stationary cupboard and work out who you have to impress to obtain cool stuff like coloured post-it notes for your boss.
- Make someone shows you how to log in to Outlook/ the document management system/ internet law library/ the time recording system.
- Learn the local county court phone number, your bosses preferred Chambers & barristers and the name of a good process server.
- Join Resolution http://www.resolution.org.uk/ as an affiliate member (even pay yourself if the firm won’t pay – it will be worth it for the contacts alone)
- Set up your LinkedIn profile- hell, set up the boss’s LinkedIn profile
- Find and start reading the office manual. I am serious, you will find loads out about your firm.
- Discover how to set up a file properly and how to do the initial client care letters.
- Find out if you are supposed to do any billing in your own name.
Next time “Week two – how to be psychic”
a further look at developing your practice as a junior minion…