First impressions matter

You’ve made it past the most challenging part of the process. You’ve impressed the partners or senior lawyers and been offered a role, so you’ve absolutely done something right. First impressions set the tone. There are six key elements that affect first impressions: promptness, appearance, handshake and eye contact, smile, conversation, and confidence (quietly confident is the best approach). The conversation piece mainly focuses on caring, consideration, respectfulness, and attentiveness. That first 10th of a second, which accounts for the first impression, is stubborn and absolutely sets the tone, so if you can start off strong, you are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt down the track. In addition, be aware of your body language — confident but comfortable is the message.

Meeting the team

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Lawyers are busy. They are not standing around the proverbial water cooler telling tales; however, it’s important to get to know the team as early as possible. In many recruitment processes, the lawyer doesn’t meet their future colleagues, only the partners or managers they would be working for. Not everyone is going to embrace your arrival, and that is okay. Account for the more introverted personalities, and don’t take things personally. Work out quickly how long each member has been at the firm, their PQE and their background. Understand that some members of your team might be under work pressure, home pressure, or both. Give your new colleagues the benefit of the doubt. Being tactful and doing more listening than speaking tends to work well. The sooner you get to know your colleagues, the easier work life gets and the sooner you will start feeling at home.

Keep the ego in check

Regardless of your PQE level, humility goes a long way in the first 90 days (and generally always). It may be that you’ve come from a very large firm into a smaller one, or it may be that you worked in London or New York, but every one of your new colleagues has toiled as hard as you have to get to where they are, and they need to be treated accordingly. Humility helps to extend your empathy and compassion. Humble people are more likely to consider others’ beliefs and opinions. Sometimes, ego can come out as an understandable protective mechanism, but if you know this about yourself, be mindful. Also, the way you treat support staff matters. Some support staff have far more clout and power than they are given credit for. These colleagues can be your greatest allies or your greatest threat. Humility works here also.

Be realistic and keep communication up

As important as it is to feel excited about your new role — it’s equally important not to come in with rose-coloured glasses. Cultural adaptation (a set pattern of thinking, communication and acting) is nuanced in each organisation, and you are likely to not walk into your new role living and breathing the culture of the place. Remember that you have been recruited on the basis that you will “fit in”, but the fit piece can and will take some time. If you’re not sure about organisation norms, ask someone who would know. Be proactive in getting on top of your work but also be realistic that even the most senior of practitioners won’t hit the ground running on day one. Most importantly, check in to see how the firm/team thinks you’re progressing, especially from about week four through 13, and then again at about the 20-week mark.

Accelerate your learning

The early phase is the best time to ask questions about the past — clients, files, the way matters have been run, and the present — what’s in front of this team right now, and where are we going, what are the challenges and opportunities for the future. Having some understanding of this will allow you to get on top of things and help you understand who you can learn to trust and rely upon. There are four domains of learning, each providing different types of information. In the technical domain, you learn about technologies, processes and systems. The interpersonal domain lets you learn about your peers, your partners and so on. The cultural domain is largely about values and norms. Finally, the political domain concerns informal structures not visible to someone new to the organisation. We advise that new employees remain very unbiased and unpolitical while you learn about this last domain.

Build credibility through early wins

Early wins are important as they energise and excite people and help build personal credibility. The wins you get in the first 90 days can accelerate your success in the future. Obviously, junior lawyers may have a lot less control over the files they might inherit and, as such, little or no control over their ability to get early wins. Our advice is to try to do your absolute best in “a few” things rather than an average job in “many” things. Time is usually not a friend, but if you can show that you are good at your job, that your skill level is where it should be, and have an open dialogue with your supervising partner around volume and getting up to speed, you are likely to be afforded some leeway while you find your feet.

Start building your networks

Building rapport early is important, remembering at the same time that you are unlikely to be able to build rapport with absolutely everyone in the team. Usually, finding a point of commonality can help build rapport; it needn’t be profound and can be as simple as knowing people in common, having gone to the same university, having similar interests outside law and so on. The goal is to make a personal connection. In this day and age, it is perfectly acceptable to have researched someone on LinkedIn, which often provides “conversation fodder”. Don’t try to impress the other person; bear in mind that, as a general rule, people love to talk about themselves, so remember to ask thoughtful, open-ended questions that will create a conversation that is memorable.

Cut your losses early

Unfortunately, not every new job will actually be your dream job. Despite your efforts, the cultural fit may just not be there; your partner may have turned into a different person outside of the interview setting; the work may have been miscategorised, or maybe you misunderstood exactly what the role entailed; you may have been recruited at a level that actually doesn’t fit the team, and many other things we have heard go wrong early. Our advice is DON’T wait to not pass probation. Give it a decent shot, but if after four to six weeks it’s just not feeling right — then it probably isn’t. You need to be reasonable but not naïve. We advise candidates in this situation to take control and to go back into the market early — a “mis-fit” can be much better explained to your future employer than not passing probation.

Elvira Naiman is the director of Naiman Clarke Legal Recruitment.