Mindset: Mid-Level Associate

Mindset. As a mid-level associate, I recommend two themes: invest + decide.

Years 3-6 in #biglaw can get tough. Life (and adulting) starts happening much faster, work tends to pile up, your responsibility grows.

Here, it is time to invest and decide.

First, keep investing in yourself and your network.

Continue nurturing healthy habits (or find them again if you lost them).

Continue growing your network, but now: take on leadership opportunities, be more intentional about involvement that aligns more clearly with your personal and professional goals. Shed anything and everything that burdens you and slows you down.

And: invest in your firm. Leverage opportunities to start making a name for yourself outside your practice area or industry team. Recruit, mentor, get involved. By now, you should be indispensable to at least one partner. So now, you can focus on making yourself indispensable to your firm at large.

Second, it is time to decide. You’ll know that because recruiters will try to poach you most often during this phase. You have a foundation of skills that make you marketable (internally and externally). Leverage that by asking yourself: Am I doing what I want to do? Am I working with people I want to be working with?

Start practicing boundaries and saying no. Make decisions about what you want long term. This requires finding confidants, mentors, and encouragers to whom you can ask tough questions. Be brutally honest with yourself about what you want and determine the moves to make it happen.

Things got hard for me as a mid-level associate. Those valleys, though, helped me get very clear on what I wanted. The valleys pushed me to have the confidence to build the career I wanted and that suited me. Shedding others’ expectations is hard but always worth it. Now is the time to figure things out so you can make the most of every moment as a senior associate. More on that tomorrow.

#mindfullyemily #emilylitigates #lawyerwellbeing #professionalwomen