Your chances of career progress, appreciation and retention increase when you succeed in satisfying expectations of stakeholders. Just slogging away and keeping your head down to somehow finish appointed tasks by the end of the day is insufficient to ensure progress and security. One must act, as well as look, the part expected of his/her job role to keep things in balance. And this cannot be done without a job analysis. And, of course, a job analysis also helps you manage your workload in a more efficient manner. So, let's see how to do it. Collect And Review All Available Documentation On The Job Role: Start with the job advertisement the firm had put out and to which you had responded to get your job. The most important cues and expectations of the company would be there. Try to learn whether persons in similar job positions did their job well and how they did it. Also try to get feedback on how to do the job better. Find out whether there is any job-role specific training out there in the market, possibly online, that would help you to gain a better understanding of your job Analyze reward and incentive schemes for the job and you'd understand what is given priority. But, you have to understand that just shouldering high priority work is insufficient and there would be many things that would come with a job, and taken for granted. Doing them would not earn you a laurel, but not doing them can cost you your job. Try to Understand the Organization's Or Law Firm's Strategy and Culture: Cultures keep changing with lessons learnt by the management. The meteoric fall of Dewey & LeBoeuf would find the greedy preaching against greed, at least for this year in law firms across the country. In law firms with poorer but more conscientious lawyers, things would continue as they did. But if you are in a big law firm, be prepared to fight against ‘greed' and prove your point by ‘sacrifice.' It always comes down to that, anyway – ‘you' sacrifice; ‘we' have a blast in Bali. Be that as it may, understand that you have been given a job for a reason, and you need to justify that. The rationale for keeping you in your job would be determined by how well you fit into your job role and align yourself with the strategy of your team. Prime yourself for performance that fits in with organizational expectations and culture as advertised by the management. Do not follow what they practice, but try to follow what they preach, and do what they tell you to do, if you want to keep that job going. Always Check And Confirm Priorities With Your Superior: Related Article Take Hold of Your Emotions: If You Don't Survive, Your Career Becomes Meaningless Too often, I have seen fresh, upstanding young lawyers become beasts of burden. Well, not literally, but the amount of burden on their emotions does make the situation bestial, to say the least. These are also the people who are most outspoken against the lack of humanity they perceive in senior lawyers. They .... Alternative Legal Careers: What are your options if you are planning to leave your legal career? This guide is intended as a reference for career services professionals and as a workbook for law students seeking alternatives to traditional careers in law. .... Talk Straight if You Want to Handle Stress in Law Firm Offices In law firm practices today, while you may not be sure of income or jobs, there's one thing you can count on to be constant - and that's stress. So, understanding the nature of stress in a simple manner, and being able to tackle with stress from a strategic point of view is a mark of competence, and essential .... Don't ever let the boss get angry. Excuses are not weapons of defense, but of suicide, in a grim economy. Don't ever put yourself in a position where you need to pull out an excuse. Especially in a law firm, where there are extremely sharp and hard people all around, excuses are quickly seen through as what they are. Confirm lack of resources with your boss: Complaining of lack of resources is useless, but if there is something that is absolutely essential for you to do your work, and it is not there, make sure that your boss also knows of the lack of resources. Chances are that you would be asked to do your work without adequate resources most of the time, so whining is of no use, but it is also useless not to have people aware of the situation and understand obvious limitations. Understand, you still need to finish the job though left to your own resources. There are many law firm employees who today use their own memberships and accesses to legal databases, as well as other facilities that should have been paid for by the employer or the law firm. But, those days are not there now any more, but we hope they would return, for it had rarely been this way in law firms as it is now. Do your job and fulfill expectations at personal costs if you need to keep the job, and if you find it too difficult, look for another one while you still have a job. That's our advice for all law firm employees and young lawyers this year.

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LawCrossing Fact #153: We peruse a variety of job sources, which means you can use our industry-specific site to search for a specific job.

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