Legal Professionals Who Can Influence Your Career beyond Internship

Your internship will bring you into contact with many different professionals from both in and out of the office. Most of these professionals are described in this article. Dealing effectively with their diverse expectations is more than a necessary part of doing your job. These professionals can also influence your career beyond this internship.

Attorneys


In most law offices, no paralegal is hired or even retained from year to year without the approval of the attorneys with whom that paralegal works. For the majority of career paralegals, lawyers are the professionals on whom future employment depends. So you may need to understand them well.

All lawyers have at least one thing in common: the law school experience. This means that lawyers have had to be highly competitive and surmount some daunting hurdles in life. They have had to perform exceptionally well in college, endure a grueling law school admissions process, work extremely hard through three additional years of law school (or longer if they attended part-time while remaining employed), and spend months preparing for one of the most difficult exams in existence: the state bar exam. Younger lawyers are also likely to have incurred seven years' worth of educational loans and will be paying them off for perhaps a full decade of their careers. As a result, they anticipate respect from those around them, regardless of the work setting. They believe they have earned that respect and they are right.

As law students, they also learned early to make good use of every available moment. So, as a rule, they may also be a bit impatient. They want their time treated as if it were a precious commodity, like money. For many attorneys, that is precisely the equation that exists. Their livelihood depends on it-and so may yours.

The following rules of thumb will help you navigate your way through any lawyer relationship:

• Be respectful of a lawyer's time. You may be clearly entitled to some of that time but convey the need graciously.
  
  
• Because of their greater education and responsibilities, lawyers traditionally expect some degree of deference from non-lawyer staff. You will be appreciated for showing them special courtesy.
  
  
• Most lawyers also value coworkers who (like them) are confident about freely speaking up, telling the lawyer all that she or he needs to know. Do this often.
  
  
• Take the initiative in thinking of ways to be helpful to any lawyer you work with. They will value that above all else.
  
  
• Do not assume all lawyers are extremely well off or envy them for things they may not have. Today's lawyers are not as smugly secure, financially or socially, as lawyers may have been in the past.
  
  
• Do not judge all lawyers by television portrayals or by the news headlines a few of them make. The overwhelming majority of lawyers are hardworking people, quietly doing a difficult job for people who need their help.

Beyond the considerations just outlined, lawyers' expectations may vary considerably, sometimes depending on the work setting. For example, in corporate legal departments where hourly billing is not a factor, a lawyer-supervisor may be able to show greater patience. In public service settings, lawyer-paralegal relationships may have a somewhat more egalitarian spirit.

A lawyer's expectations also depend on personality factors. Understanding personal variations requires getting to know each attorney individually.

Managing Partners

Managing partners function similarly to the board of directors of a corporation. They are the ultimate bosses and decision makers for the office. They are often mature, experienced attorneys who are known and respected in the legal and business communities. Colleagues tend to treat them with considerable deference. Being older than many of the other lawyers in the office, they may also be more conservative than others in dress, behavior, and attitude toward change.

Because the managing partner's status is higher than that of other lawyers in the firm, paralegals who work for managing partners may also enjoy greater prestige than other paralegals in the office. A letter of recommendation from a managing partner of a widely known firm can be an impressive door opener to many offices in your region.

Associates

Associates are salaried attorneys. Experienced and trusted associates may influence other aspects of the firm's decision making as well. But generally, associates have no control over how the office is run, who gets hired or fired, or what policy decisions are made.

Many associates aspire to becoming partners themselves some day. They achieve that not just by winning cases and serving clients, but also by bringing significant client business into the firm. Called "rainmaking," increasing the firm's client base is an important part of what most attorneys are expected to do. The pressure to produce billable hours while also producing new clients can be great.

Although he or she may be more highly paid than a paralegal, a new, young associate sometimes does work that an experienced paralegal can do just as well. Consequently, a new associate may see paralegals as competition for the firm's limited hiring dollars. If aloofness or resentment is occasionally encountered in a young associate, this may be at the root of it. Guidelines for addressing this problem are offered in the section below on law clerks, who may also see themselves in competition with paralegals.

Nevertheless, most associates can be wonderful teachers. They can also be highly instrumental to your career development. As associates grow in their own careers, moving up to partner or opening their own offices, they can also become valuable to your future job prospects.

Law Clerks

Law clerks are usually "lawyers-to-be," often in their last year of law school, working part-time or temporarily during summer vacation. Some are recently graduated and waiting for the results of their bar exam. They may be found in any office. Struggling learners like yourself and usually not much older than college students themselves, law clerks have a natural affinity for paralegal interns.

Normally, paralegal interns and law clerks get along extremely well. Paralegals often find that they are better acquainted with procedural basics than a new law clerk who is steeped in legal theory but may never have even seen a will, a contract, or state court pleadings. So, your relationship with this fellow newcomer stands to be mutually helpful.

Despite their more extensive education, an occasional law clerk perceives the paralegal intern (or any paralegal in the office) as competition for his or her job prospects. This is because opportunities for law school graduates are not as plentiful as they once were. In fact, it is no longer unusual to see recent law school graduates applying for paralegal positions as a last resort. Future paralegals are wise to be aware of this.

If you believe a law clerk or new associate sees you as a competitor for future job openings, try the following-in the order they are given:

• Do not be the one to make this a personal issue. See the problem on the abstract level where it truly begins. Neither you nor the law clerk is the cause of this problem. The overabundance of law school graduates is the cause, and the clerk or new associate probably stands to lose the most because of it. Remember this whenever you feel yourself becoming defensive.
  
  
• If a law clerk or new associate makes it a personal issue and becomes antagonistic (which is unlikely), simply minimize your interaction with this individual without comment.
  
  
• Report the problem to your supervisor only under the following circumstances: (a) your own honest efforts at conflict resolution have not succeeded, and (b) the law clerk's actions have begun to interfere with your work or with your agreed-upon learning opportunities in the office.

Be assured that most paralegal hiring decisions still favor paralegals over law school graduates who are often seen as high turnover risks, taking a paralegal job only until something better comes along.3 In reality, real competition between a law clerk and a paralegal intern for the same job slot is fairly rare.

When a trusting work relationship is established, a law clerk is someone from whom you can learn and share exciting new experiences. As future lawyers, law clerks may also be in a position to help you greatly in your career some day. Most of the time, they become valued friends as well.