This article is dedicated to the underperformers, the underdogs, the ones who couldn’t picture themselves being a lawyer-but-somehow-made-it-this-far-and-it’s-too-late-to-turn-back.
A few months before I committed my Pupillage, I asked myself “what is my objective of committing to pupillage”. I realized that Pupillage can be more than just a 9-month stretch of training. If you position yourself properly, you could catapult yourself years ahead of your colleagues in both quality experiences (rather than quantitative experience) and your own growth as a professional. Let’s be real 9 months isn’t long enough to become Harvey Specter but it was worth a try and if you did it right, your resume would look proper bad-ass.
As you would’ve guessed while reading this article you don’t have to follow suit, but I hope you open up your mind to the few things I picked up along the way and hopefully use it for the betterment of your own career. The first thing I did was to put myself in a small sole proprietor law firm. My reasoning at that moment was not necessarily right, but it wasn’t necessarily wrong too.
What about other people who want to work at highly established law firms or just want to finish their chambering without so much of a fuss? My take is, absolutely no problem at all. It’s very important that we self-actualize into the lawyer that we want to be, my point here is to figure out the best possible paths where you could position yourself to eventually become that type of lawyer you’ve always wanted to be. In short, you have to know what you want out of the Pupillage experience and how are you going to use it to leverage the next path in your career.
What I wanted was to be exposed to all forms of general workloads, be it drafting substantive legal documents, meeting clients, going to court, clerical work, or even being a runner. I needed to learn the legal trade, the run of the millwork, the fundamental day to day jobs, I wanted to understand how it all works and that was just it. More importantly, I was seeking a coherent and complete learning curve (or whatever I could learn within 9 months). I wanted to be able to start a case file by myself, and finish it by myself rather than receiving isolated parts of the case and never fully understanding how does it all work from start to finish. Sure enough, within 2-3 months I was going to court on the daily practising my court etiquettes, meeting new clients, and even drafting my own cause papers under the direct supervision of my Master. The trick is to diversify your learning curve. You’ll learn step A from one case file and probably be doing step B from another case file. Diversify and merge your learning curve into a coherent learning process.
Speaking about the learning curve, I’ve analyzed how different law firms have different types of legal appetite. Tier One law firms have an exclusive and highly specialized legal appetite and they handle complex cases aside from the general legal work. For most law firms and those outside of Klang Valley, they receive the pretty standard, run of mill Tort/Contract litigation cases and conveyancing files. This is where I wanted my learning curve to have to be positioned at. I wanted to be able to do basic Tort/Contract litigation cases before actually doing highly complicated legal matters because it is highly unlikely you’ll receive these kinds of cases first later in your careers. Mastering the fundamentals is very important. It streamlines your work efficiency and sooner or later it’ll ease you in much quicker once you receive highly complicated litigation cases.
Another reason was I wanted a Master that can invest his guidance and commit all of his teaching efforts to me alone. I’ve heard stories of Pupils in established firms with hundreds of employees, going through 9 months and never meeting their Master nor received any guidance at all, eventually, they rely on other legal associates to teach them. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some Masters tend to leave the pupils to their own devices. However, this way I’ve ensured my learning curve remains uncompromisable, aside from learning on the job, I could always go to my Master directly for guidance, and plus the bonding moments were actually fun. Therefore, while searching for your prospective law firm, it’s advisable to inquire about the working culture of that particular law firm through your seniors or even during the interview’s Q&A session. Sure you can learn and go through your learning curve in practically any law firm, at least find one where you don’t feel like killing yourself every day.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but also good for your growth as a professional. Fake it till you make it. Monkey see monkey do. What I’m getting at is to imitate the vocabulary, sentence structure, litigation strategies, templates, formats, body postures, time management, and thought processes of the best people around you. You’re not imitating so much as embodying these actions which eventually becomes your habit which in turn forms your identity as a lawyer. Again, the trick is positioning and then imitate your surroundings.
Aside from taking care of your learning curve, your mental health is just as important. I’ve never met a single colleague where they didn’t question their place in the profession. The bumps in the road can affect you mentally and existentially. Just because you couldn’t handle the workload or keep up with the learning curve, or keep making the dumbest mistakes on the daily, does not mean you are not cut out to be a lawyer. Aside from extraneous circumstances (like a terrible working environment), the mistakes you will eventually commit shall account for a major part of your mental health. While others around you might not be so forgiving, learn to forgive yourself and remember that it takes years to become a professional. The path to professional competency is laid bare with incompetencies and mistakes. Some of the mistakes I did were borderline professional negligence, some were absolutely so stupid and repeated. This will be your first time being exposed to high professional standards of work and responsibilities right after graduating, if you’re like me, expect mistakes and forgive yourself.
I’ve pondered a good deal before writing this article, I was trying to avoid the usual nitty-gritty advice on how to prepare for your chambering but to be honest, as long as you take care of your mental health and maintain a decent learning curve, it’ll be enough for you to eventually keep up and catch on to most things during chambering. Thank you for reading this far, here are some of the quick tips I managed to recollect throughout my pondering session. Enjoy.
1. Have a journal with ample spaces in the calendars to jot down court dates and the status of the cases during your case management.
2. Have a physical To-Do List to keep track of pending work and the due dates. Don’t use the To-Do List on your phones, you’ll forget what was the point of unlocking your phone and instead open Instagram 90% of the time out of sheer millennial habit.
3. Don’t bring home your work, you think you’ll be able to do them back home, but you won’t. Finish what you can at work and come back home to rest.
4. Don’t bring work into your home. When you leave work, leave the stress behind too.
5. Have more than a week’s worth of white shirts and black pants. At some point, you’ll forget to do laundry during the weekend and by then you’ll be wasting your Sunday night drying your clothes.
6. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions. If you’re afraid, it means you’re asking the wrong person.
7. When overflowing with work, focus on the single next thing. The journey to drafting a thousand-page document starts with a single sentence, and the next, and the next.
8. A small mistake in your chambering documents can cost months, if not weeks of delay from your long call date. Make no error, be very thorough when preparing your chambering documents.
Arif Azmi, casually known as Arip, is an all-rounder and sharp senior of ours who graduated in 2019. He was a pupil in chambers at Hafiz Zubir & Co and currently a practising advocate & solicitor at Farid Johan & Co.
ALSA UiTM would like to extend our heartiest gratitude to Arip for sharing his insights on pupillage with us.
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