I interviewed a fair number of candidate attorneys during the years and I see others who make it in the legal profession and those that don’t.  I would say probably 50% of those who have a law degree never end up actually making it as attorneys – they go into other areas or become corporate legal advisors, which is not always as fancy as the name implies.  In many cases it involves working in a mobile telecommunications company sorting out clients’ arguments about their phone bills and issues with the contract – not something that I obtained a law degree for, but obviously each to their own and what they prefer to do.  

It would be wonderful if one could say, in terms of becoming a candidate attorney, that every aspect of the Basic Conditions of the Employment Act must apply to you, that people must treat you with incredible respect because you have a University degree and the staff in the office should bask and pay attention to every word that you utter, but that is not reality.  If I have to give somebody advice, I feel that I succeeded with my articles because I took the view that I was back in Std 6.  I was back at the bottom of the pile.  I did not adopt an attitude that I had two University degrees, which I had (I have three now, including an LLM in Tax law) or that I was entitled to be treated with tremendous respect everywhere I went.  I understood that in terms of the actual practice of law I knew next to nothing and that I would have to learn about office politics.  Office politics are probably the biggest reason that many of those that I was at University with never made it as attorneys.  They had disputes with secretaries at firms, or put up the backs of some junior staff by treating them as junior staff and then subsequently finding that they would not help them with anything.  It is not as if, in the average firm, your principal or the attorneys in the firm take a few hours off to explain each and every issue or document to you.  They often simply ask you to do something and expect you to go off and do it and if you have no idea how to do it sometimes a secretary can indeed be your best friend.  Don’t pick fights with secretaries, don’t have arguments with support staff however junior you may consider them to be in comparison to you.  Also, don’t be naïve to think that you have a superior knowledge to them in any way – in many cases, and I have certainly come across a number over the years, they are better suited to being attorneys than some people who do have law degrees.  

They may simply not have them because, for example, their parents did not have enough money to send them to law school and they might very well be studying for a law degree part-time by correspondence, not having had the luxury of taking 4 years off to go and be lectured at University, etc.  

During my articles I did a lot of photostatting, a lot of delivery of documents and I don’t begrudge that at all.  I don’t understand why, in some firms, filing ladies are left to put together court documents.  If I put together a court document, none of the pages would have been put back to front, upside down or out of order and while photostatting a bundle of documents and numbering it consequentially might seem like a simple task, but it is precisely the kind of task that needs to be done by a candidate attorney.

During my articles I was asked to have a look at my boss’s Jacuzzi cover at his house, which was a bit of a strange job to give to me, not because I was a candidate attorney, but because I was not particularly good with my hands.  I also, on one occasion, had to deliver a letter to a vet to thank them for being so kind to my boss’s wife when their cat died.  I don’t think that is what articles is about, but I did not walk away with anything other than an overall respect for the attorney I did my articles with, because he was a good attorney.  Quite frankly, if during the hours he was paying me to work for him he gave me a job to do, I was happy to do it as long as it was not unethical or criminal.  I am sure some people will take exception to what I am saying now, and that does not mean that people who work at my firm are required to do those types of things – far from it – they never had been, but I think that today there are far too many would be attorneys who take this training period far too casually.  They seem to chop and changes jobs, have to explain to who they are  are and how they should be treated and are always ready to march out the offices exactly at 5pm, if not 1 minute before.  I see very few hard workers who want to put in the extra hours – I remember one particular night finishing at 10pm at the offices of my principal.  I was not paid overtime, I did not expect overtime and when I bumped into my former principal as I have from time to time, particularly in Hyde Park Corner, I am always happy to see him because I don’t have any unhappy memories of the time I spent in his offices.

You may well choose to disagree with some of the things I have written, but it is practical advice based on years watching many of my friends at other law firms not ultimately becoming attorneys because they did not understand that they were back at the bottom again, and it was time to roll up their sleeves, do some hard work and drop the attitude!