The first legal position decides less about what you will practise than about how you will practise. Two lawyers can start in the same field and finish their first two years with entirely different abilities, because the work they were given and the feedback they received differed more than the subject matter did.
This article is what to look for, and the questions worth asking before you accept.
What actually determines whether you learn
Four factors, in order of importance.
1. Supervision. Someone senior who reads your work and tells you what was wrong with it. Without this, you are producing drafts into a void and calling it experience. The single most important question about any first position is: who reads my work, and how often?
2. Volume of real work. Not attendance — work product. A junior who drafts three documents a week for two years learns more than one who attends meetings for the same period.
3. Feedback that is specific. "Not quite right" is not feedback. "Your second paragraph buried the conclusion; the court reads the first sentence and decides whether to keep reading" is feedback, and it is what turns a mistake into a habit corrected.
4. Exposure to the whole matter. A junior who sees only the drafting sees half the work. One who sits in on the client interview, then drafts, then watches the filing, learns how the pieces fit — which is the knowledge that eventually becomes judgement.
The structural options, briefly
The categories matter less than the four factors above, but they shape what you will see:
- A firm — volume, structure, supervision, and a range of matters. The trade-off is that juniors are often a small part of large files.
- A small practice or solo practitioner — responsibility early, supervision variable, and almost everything passes through your hands. The trade-off is that the method you learn may be idiosyncratic.
- Government service — procedure, volume and regularity, with a clearer hierarchy and more predictable hours.
- A clerkship with a court — the best seat in the house for watching how decisions are actually written, and for reading a great many arguments. The trade-off is that you observe rather than produce.
- In-house — commercial exposure and process, with less litigation, and supervision that may be thin.
None of these is the right answer. The right answer is the one where you can get the four factors.
The questions to ask
Ask these in an interview, and listen to how they are answered — the manner tells you as much as the content.
- Who reads a junior's draft, and at what stage?
- What did the last junior hire work on in their first three months?
- How many matters would I be on at once?
- Is there a review process, formal or informal — a marked-up draft, a conversation, a checklist?
- What proportion of the work is drafting, research, and appearance?
- What is the expectation on hours, and how is it measured?
- Who leaves after two or three years, and where do they go? (A healthy practice has an answer.)
- May I speak to a current junior?
Question eight is the most useful. A firm that will not arrange it has told you something.
The red flags
- "You will learn by doing." On its own, this means there is no supervision.
- No junior on the interview panel, for a practice that employs several.
- Vague answers about hours.
- A starting role described entirely in terms of attendance — shadowing, sitting in, observing — with no mention of work product.
- Turnover discussed as a personality problem. It is usually a supervision problem.
What to do in the first six months
Three deliberate habits, whatever the position:
- Ask for the mark-up. Every time your draft is revised, ask to see the revised version and to be told why. Most seniors will explain if asked; almost none volunteer.
- Keep a correction log. Every mistake corrected, dated, and what the correct version was. It is the same instrument as the corrections layer in notes that last four years, applied to practice.
- Read one finished matter end to end each month — pleadings, correspondence, the order. Seeing the whole file is how you learn where your piece fits, and juniors rarely do it.
The honest test at two years
By then you should be able to say three things: I can draft this kind of document without a template; I know the procedure for this kind of matter from filing to resolution; and I have a method for a problem I have not seen before.
If you cannot say the third, the issue is not the practice area. It is the apprenticeship — and it is worth changing, earlier rather than later.
For what the work is like day to day, see what a new lawyer actually does; for what comes after, choosing a practice area.