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:
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.
See the Top 32 Reasons Attorneys Lose Their Jobs Inside of Law Firms to learn some of the most common reasons attorneys are fired or let go from law firms.
