Dear newer lawyers—

I know you’re telling yourself “I should be faster at this” or “this is taking me too long” (without any data to support it).

SAYS WHO?!

Seriously. Who said you should be faster? Who said it is taking too long?

Unless you have gotten specific feedback that you aren’t doing something right, I’d like to offer you this:

What if it isn’t your job to decide if something is taking you too long?

And even if it was, you don’t have a good basis for making accurate predictions yet. 

Most of what you’re doing is brand new, and it will be for a while. Even if it’s something you’ve done before, there will be something about it that is new to you. Law school doesn’t truly teach you how to do your job, and it certainly doesn’t teach you how long tasks will take you. 

You simply don’t have the knowledge you need to know how long something “should” be taking you (and the people assigning you work are often going to undercut how long they tell you it “should” take because they’ve forgotten what it was like to be in your shoes).

I still get it wrong sometimes, and I’ve been lawyering for 15 years. 

So please, please, please stop judging yourself for it.

First, it doesn’t feel good. 

Second, those thoughts - the “I should be faster” and “this is taking me too long” - will inevitably make things take even more time. Not less. Because they are going to create feelings in your body like overwhelm. Anxiety. Inadequacy. Shame. None of which will make you faster (even if we somehow had an objective way of deciding that you “should” be faster). They also tend to buddy up with your perfectionism, which always leads to more delay and you being less effective than you could be.

Third, even if it’s true, telling yourself you should be faster doesn’t actually address the problem, if there is one. It’s just a shameball of distraction. 

If someone senior to you thinks you are taking too long on something, they are the one that is managing the matter and/or that handles the bills. It’s their job to manage that. They can tell you if it’s something they think you need to address. 

And then you can decide what to do with that.

For now, pick a different thought. Some suggestions:

“It’s not my job to decide that I’m not moving fast enough.”

Or 

“I’m learning and that takes time.”

Or 

“What would I do differently next time I have a similar project?”

Speed and knowing how long things will take you will come with time and practice (and will come even faster if you intentionally note how long things tend to take you, so you can better retain that for your future planning). 

Promise. But even then you’ll mess it up sometimes. And that’s ok.