If you are a junior associate at a firm, virtually everything that makes you successful today will not be good enough to insure your survival tomorrow. You're learning how to fill out the ubiquitous time sheet. You're learning how to bill and, hopefully, efficiently capture your hours. You're learning how to hone your craft. That's all good stuff, but it's not the stuff that will propel you to the heights of Rainmaker status later.
Yes, it's important to become a good lawyer. But frankly, give me the choice between someone who is an adequate lawyer with a $5-million book of business or a Harvard grad who is a master technician of the law and has no book of business, and I'll take the former everyday. It's an easy choice, actually. With the Rainmaker, I can hire a team of attorneys to clean up and polish his/her work. With the master technician, there isn't going to be any work brought in to polish.
The next thing you need to do is begin developing valuable business-building skills and relationships. According to an article in Forbes, more than 90% of executives surveyed considered public-speaking skills essential to their success. Guess what? They are important to yours, as well. If you're not a member yet, join a local Toastmasters International. I have made an extra $50,000 in personal annual income as the result of one speech (which I gave for free). This is a safe, comfortable environment of business professionals who meet once a week for about an hour, in order to learn and improve their public-speaking skills. Hmmm, would this also offer an opportunity to network? You bet.
I'll leave you with a few thoughts about basic career management (which will be expounded upon in future articles). First, coming out of law school, there is a belief that it's better to go to a smaller firm because you'll get more advanced work. This is usually specious, at best. Yes, you might get into the courtroom more quickly. But it will probably be on small-exposure cases with little at stake. In the meantime, your peers at large firms might only start taking depos after a couple of years, but they are involved in litigation (or transactions) where hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line. The difference in size, scope, and complexity of work will be vast and will offer a much greater breadth of opportunities to you in the future. It is almost always easier to go from a major firm to a smaller (usually lower-paying) firm than vice versa.
Finally, no matter where you start working, you probably won't end your career there. Change is inevitable. A good rule of thumb is to prioritize the value of the practice area in which you will be practicing first, the firm with the best-known name next, and the money last. If you can get all three, congratulations, you're off to a great start!
Frederick Shelton specializes in national and international placements and mergers. His website can be viewed at www.sheltonint.com
