Admission to the Roll: So, Now I Can Be Sued.....

My new mug for the office

I realise I have been away from blogging for a while.  The reasons for this are numerous: lack of time, involvement at work, general brain funk from thinking too hard.  The underlying reason for all these is simple: I wanted to get a job.

I will say that my firms retention rate this year was 100% - in fact, there were more jobs than trainees qualifying, and no-one got their second choice of position.  However, if you'd have said that to me back in November, I would have laughed at you.  The simple truth is that the recession has hit law firms hard, and the last couple of years have been really difficult for qualifying trainees.  Retention rates have been very low and there has been a lack of NQ jobs in the market.  This has now picked up, but the uncertainty adds to the pressure of the NQ process.

I don't think those outside the law (or indeed, those who have been in the profession a while) appreciate how much pressure trainees are placed under during the run up to qualification and the battle to secure an NQ position. From the start of the second year, the white elephant of potential unemployment starts to grow. Bottom line: your career is in the balance.  This may sound a little dramatic, but it is entirely true.  Your workload, firm, job security, wages are all dependent on securing that NQ position.  Getting the job offer can be the difference between making the first strides on the rest of your life, or scouring the adverts for a new firm.  If you add the fact that nearly all trainees have a large amount of financial debt, built from years of student living and training on wages that don't match the expected lifestyle, the potential of being thrown into the job market at little notice isn't particularly relaxing.

If you remove the question of employment, the question of practice area still remains; what do you want to do for the foreseeable future?  This is question is as loaded as when you were asked it after your A-levels, and for some is just as unanswerable.  Trainees hope that during the course of their training contract they have a romantic epiphany; they look across the room at a lone practice areas, the seats meet, electric energy charges the room and at that moment they know career satisfaction. They have found 'the one'.  I was actually surprised at how this happened at my firm, 4 out of the 7 of us (including me) fell in love with one of our second year seats.  The rest have positions but I don't sense the same passion in them - maybe their choice was fuelled by other motivations, perhaps they are just less verbally smitten.  What I do know is that there has been a visible release of tension in all of us since we signed on the dotted line.  I don't think any of us realised the stress we were putting ourselves under.

Personally, that stress was enormous.  I have been working for 7 years to get where I am now, struggling financially for the most part, constantly striving to do better, to stand out, to get ahead (I am writing this watching the Olympics and realise I sound like one of the athletes - took me down of my dramatic high horse a little!).  The ramp up of the pressure in the second year was one I wasn't expecting.  Looking back I realise I was stretching myself very thin - never saying no to anything, willingly burning the candles at both ends and travelling round the country to stay in my boss' good books.  I'm not complaining in the slightest - I was and am willing to do what it takes.  However, I don't underestimate what it did to my social life (what social life!), my interests (what interests?) and general health (what health? there's a pattern here....).  Coupled with this was my ability and drive to blog - it was the first casualty of my stress ridden life.

Trainees-in-waiting shouldn't be put off by this post.  Anyone who has got as far as the second year of their training contract and is serious about qualification is likely to be willing to put themselves through the stress.  It takes a certain type of person to become a lawyer - one of the personality traits tends to be a drive to do well is one of them (This can be based in ambition, arrogance, neurosis... they all have the same result!).  In all honesty, you don't realise its there until you get the job offer and it disappears.  Qualification is the anti-climax on the cake after signing your contract of employment.

I am happy to say I qualified last Wednesday. Let 1 August 2012 be set in stone as the first day of the rest of my life.  I am very proud of myself and currently very happy.  As yet, I have not been set upon by the stress of targets, billing, time recording etc - the general responsibility of the qualified solicitor.  And so I return to my neglected blog - for the time being.  I am now Miss NQ - please don't sue me!

The grumpy young men; the anti-social media movement for trainees





Miss TS kinda cracked with all the hatin.......





As some of you might be aware from my (slightly frustrated) tweets, my firm has recently embraced* social media.

*read introduced in a stumbling, halting series of initatives, not unlike like bambi standing up.

The trainees have been involved from the start, not through choice but through the powers that be assuming young people have an affinity for all things technology. Born in the digital age, we use and understand technology without thinking, it is second nature to us. Or so they thought.

It turns out, I am the only trainee tweeter and, I am sad to say, the only trainee who had ever read a law blog. Shock horror! I thought perhaps this may have been due to the previously onerous social media policy, which was very heavy handed and likely to put off any newbie from going anywhere near. Or perhaps like me, the trainees secretly blog and tweet but didn't want to admit it.

In fact this was far from the case. Half the trainees are social media sceptics.

I know that most of those who slate social media have never used it; they simply don't understand the uses of twitter or linked in. A lot of sceptics convert and rave about social media once they have learnt how to use it. Personally my knowledge and understanding of the law has been widended through twitter discussions and blogging has hugely improved my writing skills (if I do say so myself, I think I write a damn good blogpost!). Even if not used to engage, twitter delivers a wealth of relevant, topical and timely information to your screen just by following the right accounts. Several snippets I picked up from client tweets gave my supervisor an edge whilst talking to the client in question, information which was not available through any other medium.

The trainees are not converts in waiting - they have actively tried social media and dismissed it. They feel it is a waste of time they could be using elsewhere and they found no value in the information disseminated. Even linked in didn't interest them as they had no client contacts to link in with.

In particular I have been stumped by the response to one idea from marketing; a trainee blog; hosted by the firm but run by trainees. The content will be written from a trainee point of view and more personalised than the client briefing style blogs the firm currently hosts. The target audience is those looking for training contracts initially but, provided it is done well, could very possibly have a wider appeal. On a more selfish note, a trainee blog would be a good personal marketing tool both internally and externally as, unlike the articles that many of the trainees write for their supervisors or sector groups, we would take the credit. It would give us something to push through social media and, of course top of the list, something to put on the CV.

Unfortunately, what I thought would be an easy win has turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. Every spearhead meeting I would organise with the trainees, the sceptics would turn up and slate the idea. I actually had one trainee tell me 'there was nothing interesting about his job to write about'. Lucky for him, there was no partner in the room! Despite the proposed discussion topics for the sessions (e.g. post ideas, partner interviews and the infamous naming meeting that lasted 2 hours) they manage to turn the conversation back to their lack of belief in the idea. What iritates me most about this is that it isn't compulsory; they turn up to the meetings out of choice!

All in all I am flabbergasted (yes, it merits the use of that word) that trainees could be so narrow minded. I am not suggesting that everyone should be forced to use social media, not at all. However, actively shooting down a new iniative because you don't see the merit in it and aren't willing to try shows lack of vision. Law firms are going to have to evolve to survive; how are they going to act if they are so opposed to a little optional idea?

I hope, trainees to be, that you will be more open to innovation when you become trainees!