Earlier this week I shared 2 interview sessions with 2 new trainee solicitors as part of my Freshers Week 2020 sessions.
In relation to this, I was forwarded an article written by Claire Williamson, the Director of Leading Minds, sharing tips for building a strong working relationship with your supervisor. You can connect with and follow her on LinkedIn here and visit the Leading Minds website here.
Claire formerly worked at Magic Circle firm Slaughter and May as a Litigation Associate before retraining as a resilience coach and then founding Leading Minds in February 2020.
Leading Minds offers integrative resilience and mental health training for law firms across the country. The organisation offers firm-wide resilience programmes, Mental Health First Aid training, trainee-centric programmes around mental health and resilience, and half-day mental health awareness programmes. There are also podcasts to listen to where inspirational lawyers empower others with their strategies for sustainable success in the legal industry.
I am very grateful for her kind permission to reshare this article.
The original article can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-three-tips-strong-working-relationship-your-claire-williamson-1f/
Whilst the article was originally written with trainee solicitors in mind, it can also translate to how other junior staff, including paralegals and legal assistants and interns, can build good relations with their supervisors.
Being a trainee can feel like being on a two year job interview - with you striving to show that you are keen, capable and willing to learn, whilst regularly having no idea how to tackle tasks that are given to you!
There are lots of challenges that come with being a trainee solicitor, long hours, tight deadlines, demanding clients, but the thing that caused me the most anxiety as a trainee was building a strong relationship with my supervisors. Despite my supervisors being inspiring individuals and very supportive supervisors, I found myself constantly questioning their perception of me and whether I was doing enough to be kept on at qualification. Plus did I mention I sat with four partners, two of whom were heads of departments…
From my experience as a trainee at a Magic Circle law firm and having coached thousands of trainees to support their mental health and resilience through my company Leading Minds, I wanted to put together a few tips to leave you feeling confident, empowered and to ensure your relationship with your supervisor flourishes.
1. Have a discussion with your supervisor to ask about their expectations
For two weeks of my second seat I came in every single day at 7.30am. Not because I had anything to do, or because anyone had asked me to, but because my supervisor did and I therefore assumed I should too. Until my supervisor mentioned to me that he actually came in early so he could do his work unbothered by emails and trainees constantly asking him questions…my bad.
So my 6am starts became strictly reserved for when I went to the gym before work (ok that happened once) and I made a conscious decision that at every seat change I was going to actually ASK my supervisor what they expected of me.
So ask your supervisor the things you need to know ie:
Do they expect you to be accessible via email at the weekend or just when your workload requires it?
Do they want you to use your initiative when it comes to capacity emails or always check in with them before taking on work from someone else?
Are they happy for you to go to that spin class you love (!!!) at lunch time on Tuesdays provided you aren't in the middle of an urgent transaction?
Not only will you know what is expected of you from your supervisor, but they will also be impressed by you taking the initiative to hold the conversation and by your ability to communicate effectively. And nobody will have to be in the office at 7.30am twiddling their thumbs.
2. Always ask for deadlines
As a trainee any time I was given a task I would automatically assume it needed completed ASAP. This led to many late evenings and missed social engagements that could have been avoided had I simply asked when the work was required by.
If I can give you one piece of advice that will save not only your sanity but also your social life it is this, ask for deadlines, and make everyone aware if this conflicts with pre-existing deadlines. Because as impressive as it is to be the keen trainee who answers every capacity email, it is not impressive to be the overwhelmed trainee who lets people down because they took on too much.
3. Ask for clear instructions
You know the scenario well, your supervisor says they have a task for you, you grab your notebook, frantically scribble notes whilst nodding encouragingly, then post conversation realise that you have absolutely no idea what it is that they want you to do.
In this familiar scenario you have two options:
Try to figure out what they are asking you to do on your own, inevitably go down the wrong route and take twice as long to do the task, then hand in a piece of work which isn’t what your supervisor had asked for
Ask for clarification so you can complete the task they wanted you to do in a timely manner
I know which one I would be more impressed with as a supervisor, however it is also the route which many of us don’t follow as we don't want to look stupid by admitting we need further guidance.
So how do you ask for further instructions without feeling like you are admitting your ignorance:
Utilise those around you, can you ask another trainee/junior associate who is also involved in the matter and might be able to fill the gaps in your knowledge around a particular area of law/client matter/administrative procedure?
As far as possible batch your queries. Rather than asking questions every ten minutes, show some initiative and complete a thorough list of questions and ask them all at once - therefore not thoroughly annoying your supervisor and interrupting their workflow
Be strategic - After receiving instructions I always used to say ‘I will just check I have everything I require to complete this task’. This subconsciously turns the tables and any further questions will be deemed to be because your supervisor failed to give you full instructions versus a lack of knowledge on your part…sneaky but brilliant right?!
With any working relationship comes its challenges, but hopefully these tips will leave you empowered and able to build a strong relationship with your supervisor.
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