Anyone who has ever attended law school knows the intense pressure that law students face every semester. Overwhelmed with the amount of material that a first-year law student has to learn, all 1Ls know memorizing the substantive rules and concepts is only half the battle. To achieve high grades, law students have to write a completely different style and tone for each of their exams. A torts professor might expect definitions of any relevant legal terminology and a thorough application of rules that do not even apply to the exam fact pattern, while a criminal law professor prefers responses that are concise and to the point. As a first-year law student at Duquesne University School of Law six years ago, I thought to myself that I couldn’t wait to be done with law school, where the law would be the law and I wouldn’t have to alter my work product to the preference of any one person. I was wrong.
Three years later, I landed my first job working as an associate at a 14-attorney boutique family law firm. My workload consisted of assignments from all five of the firm’s partners. I quickly realized that just like my law school professors, each partner had his or her own expectations as to the format and style of pleadings, the approach to preparing for a trial and the overall strategy to a case. The personal preferences of one partner were sometimes discouraged by other partners. In fact, one partner would often send me in a completely different direction than the other partner who was right down the hall.
