Hi, I am a fresher in a T1 gen corp practice and have been feeling a massive degradation in my knowledge of law. Any draft that I make, the senior only keeps discussing formatting and changes in active and passive voice of the sentence. On an average if I spend 6 hours on a draft, 20 mins of it is actually spent discussing the law of it w my seniors. Not like they are changing what I have written about the law, they are using it and passing it ahead. It is a little demotivating when the only review you get to hear of your work is the formatting is a little off, can you remove space after this and that, let us use x term instead of y. Not saying this is not important but ofc when after 6 hours this is the only input you get, it’s a little confusing~ because I did not spend 5 years learning the word.

When I asked one of them if I got the law right, I was told that’s not my job at this stage and I should be careful about formatting the documents correct?

My assessment is that there is heavy reliance on precedents in these firm. Everyone from Associate to Parter cut copy pastes it. This results in even senior members not having their basics clear about the provisions they deal with quite frequently- because the only research they do is a control F search.

Hi A0,

I know what you’re going through.

Unfortunately, you’re at the bottom of the food chain, and since you are still picking up the ropes, they are trying to drill into your head that formatting and spacing matters. In fact, law firms charge a premium because their drafts and emails look extremely professional (apart from having expertise in complex deals). This is the price you pay for working in a large organisation with several seniors above you. If you were in a small startup/ law firm, your learning would be more hands on - but that would not because your senior takes greater interest in teaching you; but that he/ she needs your substantial involvement in the matter and cannot handle it alone. In a bigger organisation, your team can work without you, so they just need you to focus on the tidying up the document.

Here’s another way to look at it - right now, since you don’t have much knowledge about the law, your main job is to shadow your senior. Watch what he/ she is doing, trying to learn the process, try to learn how to analyse clauses etc. Since you still lack expertise in law, right now your input is required only in correcting grammatical or spelling mistakes.

And yes, it does get better with time. As you rise up the ladder, you’ll have more freedom, more control and more visibility over your matters. Till that time, try to grind through this. But also try and show your senior that you’re up for the next phase of tour learning.

Hope this helps!