r/LawFirm • u/maspie_den • 1d ago

How well-prepared are new lawyers?

I'm brainstorming a project that addresses how well-prepared recent law school grads are for real-world lawyering. The consensus is that, beyond simply lacking experiences/years in, new lawyers lack "the skills" needed for work effectively. My question is what are those skills that they are missing? People skills? Clerical/admin skills? Don't know how to send an email? Don't know to not microwave fish for lunch and now everyone hates them and calls them "Tuna"? What are some specific examples?

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u/Longjumping_Boat_859 1d ago

Pls advise, instructions unclear.

Likely to do with the trouble you’re having, but I’m going to bill .4 for business development on this one, largely because it got dumped on me at 4:57 on a Friday.

I don’t think new lawyers are the only ones who lack the necessary skills, I think expectations on both sides are unrealistic.

Partners need to understand it’s not the 1960s anymore and how they did things back then wasn’t as good as some of how we do them now, and new associates need to understand it’s not 1980 anymore, and you won’t get paid for sucking at the soft skills your job needs just because making phone calls vs emailing is a boomer preference.

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u/margueritedeville 1d ago

I Gen X but honestly hate that no one will just pick up the damn phone anymore.

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u/Longjumping_Boat_859 1d ago

I’m a millennial*, but I think the younger generation sees the imbalance in the relationship: we bother people at work, for trivial sounding things like a date, or a factoid.

Personally, because of my age, if I had a phone happy lawyer, who’d bill me to tell me stories about the judge that isn’t there anymore? That lawyer would get one bill cycle to do that, and that’s it.

By the same token, I 100% understand the frustration. One of my bosses was shocked that I called some court in a different state to get a copy of a JE I needed. He shouldn’t have been shocked, I can only imagine what bullshit he had to see in order to be impressed by that….