A year in this legal profession and one thing I have learned is “Litigation practice is not for the faint-hearted.”
The hard part is not in doing the work, but in getting it.
The difficulty lies in the multi-dimensionality of the role.
You must invest time in nurturing client relationships while also honing legal skills. Thus always find yourself constantly juggling both, and living on the edge of chaos.
Since it is low-paying work (initially), you have to do a lot of cases, which means long hours in the chair– a terrifying catch-22.
Long hours of work mean little to spare for business development. Without securing the work, you can’t show your legal skills.
Yet, if you socialize extensively, you don’t have the time to develop legal skills.
Moreover, these roles demand entirely different skill sets.
Legal skill requires you to be incisive, introspective, analytical, obsessed with minute detail, and wildly ecstatic about spending humungous periods by yourself mentally masturbating over some obscure point of law.
On the other hand, Client development requires you to be a pleasantly amicable sort of fellow, confident and dependable and none too threatening– always available to listen to stories or attend events.
These are inconsistent roles, and many lawyers like me are never quite able to balance the two.
But, as the Seniors people have said, those who do, make it to the top.