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My seniors, including the partner I was working under, are nice people. I think that’s why, it feels worse disappointing them everytime. Moreover, I have been working hard, staying late in the office to get work done. However, that hasn’t helped me deliver a decent work product. As a result, I think, I haven’t been getting as much work either in the past week.
A few weeks ago, I thought I was getting a hang of everything and I was getting a lot of work, but now I don’t know how to proceed. A major part of me now thinks that this profession, because of it’s requirement to attention to detail, isn’t for me. I don’t even understand where my concentration goes or/and how I end up making an error. Also, I don’t feel like working, because I know that even with my best efforts, I am going to deliver a substandard work product. Even so, I like law and transactions in general. Part of me wants to be in the profession for whatever reason.
I need guidance as to how to proceed. I saw another post here on making a checklist. What should the checklist consist of? Is there anything else I can do to help myself? I am trying to take my work slow, but even then, I catch some things amiss on a re-read when the document has been sent out. After that, my morale reaches a low point and I don’t feel like working all over again. Because of this, I have been feeling very anxious as well, which was not a problem as much even when I was burdened with a lot of work.
Just saying..
At a lower rung, our job is to get the meat of the details right - that will be the figures, basic logical flow of arguments and structure and language of your drafts. You'll master the smaller bells and whistles and finesse on your work only with time and experience. And even then, perfection is just an aspiration and not really an achievable standard when many heads and hands come together to make a work product.
I'm not saying that you become complacent towards the errors you make. But beating yourself up for messing up things that you've barely spent any time learning to do is not a constructive approach either. Your team with nice people knows this, and they are rooting for you and pacing you to become a formidable resource in due time.
The sense of disappointment, lack of self worth or any feelings of anxiety you feel are your own demons to conquer apart from that. Law firms make for challenging environments even without any of this baggage you bring into your work. Give yourself a fighting chance and don't bow out without a fight!
- Accepting that mistakes will be made especially when you're starting out. Every time you look at your own draft or someone else's draft, there will be mistakes. Even partners make these mistakes. That just means that you're learning. Eventually you learn the difference between big mistakes and small mistakes and learn to make sure that there are no big mistakes and live with the smaller ones.
- For smaller mistakes, I built a habit of checking things thrice (drafts, e-mails, messages, comments to be incorporated etc.). It would take more time initially but this reduced and I just didn't make as many small mistakes anymore. It helped to also write down all the points on paper and keep crossing them out to make sure nothing is missed. For eg. all discussion points that needed to be incorporated in the draft or e-mail or even for proof reading, I would write down redundant words I needed to search and delete so that I wouldn't miss it.
- I realised that I was putting too much pressure on myself to perform as per some vague standards set by my seniors and was told many times how other people could work better than me, so I was constantly afraid which just led to more mistakes. I would blame myself for not being able to do even simple things which I now know was because of mental stress. Once I let go of these expectations from people and decided to work as per what I thought was the best approach and confirming that with seniors, things improved significantly and my work and work relationships improved a lot.
Hope this helps. All the best.
Taking solace from other's mistakes is not in my view correct, sure everyone makes mistakes, but you must only measure up to your own high standards. People in the legal profession have varying tolerances, but as long as you set lofty standards for yourself and work towards meeting them you will end up doing better. It will help with your esteem to.
As for feeling like it is the end of the world or that you are not cut out for practicing law, remember once you go up the chain your only job is to catch other's mistakes - like the ones you yourself are making. Everyone made them and has now grown past it. You will to, if you manage to just work through it. There's nothing you can do once a mistake is made and sent out apart from learn, I suggest you get good at that atleast.