By Alf Macolino
Legal practice is tough.
Law school might teach you how to think like an academic lawyer and teach some fundamental legal principles but it cannot prepare you for the reality of legal practice. It is not designed for that – nor should it be.
The first five or so years are the toughest. Coping with competing deadlines, the demands of clients, your employers, bureaucracy, the Judiciary and office politics are just the start. Let alone finding the relevant facts and applying the relevant law!
It would be a rare lawyer that has not at some stage in those years asked themselves, ‘Am I ever going to get this caper?’.
When I commenced legal practice almost half a century ago, the main practical legal training before admission was by articles of clerkship. You signed a deed promising to serve one of the partners in the firm as his or her servant and in return got paid 60 per cent of the salary of the most junior clerk in the office. I’m not sure if the system would survive the Modern Slavery Act.
During my articles, one of the partners asked me to write a short letter of advice to a client. I did so. It was about one page long and I was chuffed at the result. I handed the letter to the partner and sat down in the chair.
He took out his trusty red pen and without looking up once proceeded to settle the letter reading out the amendments as he went. He wrote in between the lines and up the margins and eventually started writing on the back of the letter.
The colour drained from my face as I slumped in the chair and asked myself the question. When he had finished, he looked at my ashen face and said, “If I didn’t think you were f…..g worth it I wouldn’t waste my f…..g time.”.
He told me that I had the skills but they just needed refinement.
But he could have taken the approach that I have occasionally seen but mainly heard about. He could have simply read the letter and thrown it back across the desk and told me to do it better without telling where I was going wrong. He could have berated me for getting a law degree and putting that sort of rubbish in front of him.
But in doing that he would have crushed my spirit. It might have led me to find another legal firm or started me on the path of finding something else to do to earn a living. How would either of those been in the interests of the partner?
If you are a senior lawyer reading this, reflect on that anecdote when settling work. Put yourself in the position of the junior lawyer and ask how you would like to be treated? If you have been poorly treated in the past as a junior lawyer there is no need to perpetuate that attitude.
If you are a junior lawyer reading this, and you are getting consistent feedback that your work is not at a sufficient level and you are not improving, you need to ask yourself the question. Perhaps the law is not for you or at least private legal practice is not for you. Perhaps the area of law in which you practice does not resonate with you or your skill set.
Do not ask the question too early in the piece, but don’t leave it longer than five years. It won’t get any better and you don’t want to be practising law just to pay the mortgage and the school fees. You need to enjoy practising as a lawyer.
A guiding hand is sometimes needed during these early years. After I had been practising for about three or four years, one of my partners (admission to partnership came early in those days) was perceptive enough to pick up that I was struggling a bit with legal practice and asked how I was going. I was honest enough to say that I was struggling a bit with the demands of clients, the demands of partnership and having confidence in the quality of my legal advice.
He then gave me the best piece of advice that I have ever received as a lawyer. He said, “Alf, if you haven’t f……d it up, it is always the client’s problem.”.
Once that pithy advice sunk in, the weight lifted from my shoulders. I did not then spend the rest of my legal career in a state of Zen but those words always helped me keep legal practice in perspective.
The underlying philosophy of that advice enables you to assess the client’s problem and occasionally give advice which the client does not want to hear. It preserves your independence from the problem. If you have taken the client’s position as your own, it is more difficult to do that.
On most occasions, some criticism can be levelled at the conduct of your client in a matter. If you have become the client or have come to align with the client’s position, you become stressed when that position comes under challenge from the other side.
It enables you, in cricket parlance, to play everything with a straight bat. Importantly, it lowers your stress level and enables you to cope with the rigours of legal practice.
As you can see from those anecdotes, I was fortunate to have had some excellent mentors in my early career, who I should say did not always use the F word in every sentence!
Mentorship is so crucial in being a contented lawyer. The pressures of modern legal practice are such that it is too easy to forget the role that mentorship plays for the benefit of the individual lawyers and for the profession.
Mentorship is not the performance review. It is the gentle enquiry about how things are going. It is the guiding hand of experience as to how to handle a difficult problem. It is giving people confidence to open up without judgement.
When I reflected back about being on both sides of the mentorship equation, I realised that the best mentorship came not from structured monthly meetings but from informal chats over a cup of coffee or behind a closed door where the occasional F word was spoken. The key is to make the time to have a chat.
If you enjoyed reading this article (and even if you didn’t!), you might consider buying my recently published book: The Contented Lawyer – How to Survive and Thrive as a Lawyer. You probably won’t agree with all of my philosophies on legal practice, but you just might get a different perspective.
