Avoid the Quantity Trap
Why it is worth focusing on the quality of your work over the quantity of work in your summer job.
I remember when I was a judicial law clerk my first summer after law school. I received my first assignment and I tried to get it done as fast as possible. Like really fast. A few days after getting my assignment to draft a memo for the job, I sent it back to the clerk. I was proud of myself. I wanted to walk into his office and say “what’s next?” This was a mistake.
Before he read the memo, the clerk replied that it was a complex case and it was unlikely that I could produce a polished memo for the judge in just a few days. Nor was I expected to. He suggested I go back to the factual record and the cited case law to make sure it was the best argument I could offer. And he was right. It was not ready for the big leagues. I misunderstood the goal. The goal was the best, clearest, most detailed answer. Not the fastest one.
I later realized that I had fallen prey to the quantity trap. I thought that I was being judged on how fast I could churn out work product as opposed to the quality of that work.
And I was wrong.
As a summer associate or summer intern you are rarely on extreme deadlines—and if you are it is nothing compared to the time pressure you’ll be under as a law clerk or junior associate. And at the end of the summer I promise you won’t be judged on the quantity of cases that you complete but rather on how good your work product was. If that is the metric of a successful summer for your employer, it should be your metric of success too.
Now that doesn’t mean I want you to waste time, procrastinate, or demand constant perfection of yourself. Nor am I recommending that you avoid working with different people in different practice areas or asking questions.
So here is the TL;dr: focus on building a reputation as someone who does high quality work. But in order to do that it is OK (and often necessary) to sacrifice speed.
This is one of the only times in your life as a lawyer that your productivity won’t be judged based on how many hours you bill or your efficiency in those hours. Act accordingly.
Don’t treat your summer work as a box-checking exercise. Treat it as a chance to do the best work you can even if it takes a little longer to complete the assignment.
Talk soon,
Jonah
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