Top Tips for Trainees (and others) 3 - People

The views in this post represent my personal views and not those of my employer. The below constitutes generic information only and is not advice.

This is the third post in my “Top tips for trainees (and others)” series. As explained previously, I have tried to loosely group the tips I have gathered. This article is entitled “People”.

The first first tip in this post is – make friends with your colleagues.

We spend a significant portion of our day at work, and the majority of us will spend a large part of our adult lives working. It could be a very lonely place if we did not make friends with our colleagues. Without friends, work might start to look more like a place we want to escape from to the comfort of our personal lives, rather than one aspect of our lives in which we can find fulfilment.

As lawyers, we can on occasion expect late nights, weekend work, missed events, and tight deadlines. The rewards and accomplishments of the job, to my mind, make up for this, but that does not make it significantly easier. What does, however, is having a strong group of work friends with whom we can share the burden, and weather the storm.

I’ve been lucky enough to make friends with some amazing people during my career. The experiences that I have shared with them have made it a joyous ride so far, including: singing Queen at our desks on an evening; slow-motion acting in the kitchen as a partner walks by looking perplexed; giggling very loudly at one end of the office late at night, causing someone at the other end to leave their room to see what was going on; mad rushes from our desks to catch a glimpse of Arnold Schwarzenegger outside of the office; birthday, summer, and Christmas parties (and raps); Friday trips to the local food market; an Anglo-Spanish wedding at which my friend (the bride) looked the happiest I had ever seen her (and at which a partner and associate did a vinyl DJ set); additions to families; and much more.

Further, through making friends with our colleagues we have the opportunity to witness the fantastic variety of lives; the joys, the sorrows, the funny stories, the odd experiences, the sounds, the scents, and the magical colours. Personally, this has made my work life an enriching one so far.

I understand the present circumstances make it a little more difficult to make friends with your colleagues. But reach out. Attend virtual quizzes, drinks, and other events. And when everyone is finally able to see each other again in person, you’ll be able to pick up those friendships where you (virtually) left off.

Two final points in this article that I think might be useful:

1. You’re not in competition with the other trainees. As much everybody wants the NQ job, your role as a trainee is not to beat out the other competition. It is to display your skills by producing great work and, ultimately, by assisting in securing the best result for the client. And that is done through working with, not against, your colleagues. Much of the work I do is done in teams, and the way to get the best result for the client is to work with my colleagues. Sharp practice and overly competitive behaviour will get you noticed, but for all the wrong reasons, and it’s not the type of behaviour that is conducive to doing this job (at least in my own experience).
2. Get to know your secretarial hub – they can save your life (metaphorically speaking)! They will know the systems and the workings of the office better than you do, which can be extremely valuable when you’re up against a deadline or in a pinch. If you are in doubt about an administrative task you have been asked to do (opening a matter, preparing an engagement letter, preparing a bill, liaising with the print room to prepare bundles, filing and serving documents), it might be worth asking the secretarial hub for assistance in the first instance; they will likely have done the task many times before.

Does anybody else have any practical “people” tips that could be of use to trainees in an office environment? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments below.