Getting started – By Elizabeth Cruickshank and Penny Cooper

Working in a law firm isn’t just about knowing the Law. That might have been true decades ago before the advent of newspaper advice columns and consumer advice programmes, but now every senior practising solicitor spends a considerable amount of time in “client development” and keeping up with what is going on in the businesses and lives of existing clients. Law firms now place considerable emphasis on the acquisition of “soft skills”, for example knowing how to make existing clients feel valued and learning how to acquire new clients.

Certainly these are skills that trainees will need to develop and good law firms will guide them, but trainees who recognise that their main purpose is to assist their firms to earn money by being helpful, by being willing to learn and by having a degree of humility, save themselves a great deal of anxiety and heartache.

It's 100% or nothing remember! Thanks to MarcelGermain for image

Being helpful

First of all accept that your supervisors are busy people and may ask you to do relatively menial things to save them time, such as getting a cup of coffee, arranging a meeting room, rushing down to the Post Room with an urgent request or even typing up a letter. This may seem like a waste of your expensive legal education, but will earn you goodwill from a frazzled more senior lawyer, especially if you do the best that you can, because the name of the game is now to provide the most efficient and accurate service that you can for the firm’s clients. It’s not about passing exams in academic subjects. In legal practice a 50% pass mark or even a 70% one will not do. Anything less than 100% accuracy and efficiency can have severe consequences for a firm’s clients and indemnity insurance premiums.

Basic requirements

New trainees find that most of their work consists of research, form-filling, getting “ the ducks in a row” (a.k.a organised), attending meetings and drafting documents through from simple letters to Instructions to Counsel. The precise mix will depend on the individual seat, the size of the firm and the complexity of the matters that your supervisor is working on at any one time. All will require that you can communicate effectively, both orally and on paper.