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continued on back

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 posi-

tions 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 understand-

ing 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 shoulder-

ing 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

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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:

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

Know Your Job If You Intend To Keep It

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.

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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.