THE STANKOWSKI REPORT #20: Ten Tips for the Not-So-New Junior Associate

by Stan Stankowski

Stankowski is traveling. Nonetheless, he offers a few words of wisdom today in the form of the following ten tips for associates:

1. When you first start, no request or demand seems unreasonable to you. You take them all. This should change over time. Make your schedule. Somehow you grew up. Really, you are pretty old and people pay a lot of money for your opinion and advice. This isn't a summer internship in undergrad where the goal is to play lackey for three months. It's your career.

2. Along the same lines, reasonable people know when you are working 15-18 hours a day and are overburdened. They understand and they make allowances. Unreasonable people yell at you.  Don't feel bad about an unreasonable person yelling at you. After all, they are unreasonable.

3. Don't stay up all night. Ever. You will get three times as much done if you get a little sleep.

4. Free beverages are still very, very good.

5. Paralegals are very, very good at checking cites and typos. This saves time and frustration with your job. Use them. Also, they don't yell at you when they have to check your cites and typos. The same cannot be said for partners.

6. Sad as this may be, there are certain people in every firm who are disfavored. Everyone knows that they will be shown the door pretty soon. Don't associate yourself too closely with them in the eyes of the partners. They will just start wondering about you.

7. It is very possible to become a partner without having ever tried a case at a large number of firms. Decide if this is your situation and if this is acceptable to you. Act accordingly.

8. Yes, you can buy the car. In fact, it is absolutely necessary that you buy the car.

9. If opposing counsel is from Chicago, he is an asshole. Surprisingly, lawyers in New York are not as bad. Also, if opposing counsel is in Miami I can almost guarantee you are getting a couple of high holy days off, whether you are Jewish or not.

10. You should be thrilled, absolutely thrilled, with at least one legal thing you do every week.  I can honestly say this is true for me. If you can't, then lateral out because something is very wrong.

About the Author: Stan Stankowski is the pseudonym of a first-year associate working in a litigation firm somewhere in the South. For more details, read his introductory post, as well as Evan Schaeffer's introduction. The collected Stankowski Reports are here.

Comments

[Matt]

Stan, I have worked in the legal industry for ten years and this is some funny sh*t! Keep writing I am fan!

[Russell]

I agree 100% with your comment regarding Chicago attorneys.

[FredN.]

Take your Chicago-hatin' and shove it.

[Evan]

Spoken like a true Chicago lawyer! Only in my experience, the abuse usually comes in the form of a six-page letter with lots of parts and subparts and a conclusion that threatens a motion for sanctions and a bar complaint if I even think about filing that motion for leave to file an amended complaint I had mentioned the previous week at a deposition--by which time I'm quite baffled, so I get on the phone and call the lawyer, and he's like, "Oh, hi! Good to hear from you!"--as if he'd never written that nasty letter in the first place. It happens to me like that all the time with lawyers from Chicago. When I asked someone who used to practice in Chicago about it, he said it's the preferred method of working up a case in the Long-Winded City--lots of wordy letters threatening sanctions and bar complaints. He didn't have any other explanation.

So is that really how Chicago lawyers work up cases? Or does it just seem like that to me because I'm based around St. Louis and some of that Cards-Cubs rivalry sometimes bleeds into the litigation?

[Buttmonkey]

I work in the Quad Cities, about 3 hours from Chicago. I was shocked a couple years ago when I had a products liability case with an associate from Lord, Bissell on the other side. The guy was a complete gentleman through the whole thing. Not at all what I was expecting. Moral of the story: Not everyone in Chicago is an ass.

[EBrown]

I can think of a couple of civilized lawyers in Chicago. I can also think of some not-so-civilized ones too.