Escape the trap

Most of the lawyers I talk with enjoy practicing law, at least to some degree.  They may not love it, but there’s some part of practice that works for them, whether it’s the intellectual challenge, the stand-up work that can harness the acting bug, or even the money.  I don’t think I’ve ever met a lawyer who thinks her practice is just perfect, with no need for growth or adjustment, but the majority of lawyers aren’t desperately searching for a way out of the profession.

I find that one trait is almost universal among those who are unhappy in practice, though: a sense of being trapped, with no alternatives, no escape, just a decades-long future in the same miserable position.

The source of the misery varies, of course.  Sometimes it’s working too many hours, with the accompanying pain of a distant or angry spouse/family, no time to develop a relationship, or feelings of burnout from trying to please clients, employers/partners, family, friends, etc., but lacking time to enjoy personal pursuits.  Sometimes it’s feeling trapped in a job that doesn’t fit, because of the practice type, clients, colleagues, the way the firm (or company) operates, or because the money is an insufficient reward for the effort required and there’s no passion to balance it.  And sometimes, it’s the result of years of academic competition without any particular direction, yielding a terrific but unwanted legal career.

Lawyers talk about golden handcuffs, and especially in view of law school debt, that’s a real phenomenon.  However, I stand for the believe that no one is ever truly trapped.  There’s always an option, usually a variety of them, though it may take the help of someone else to see what those options are.

Sometimes the choices only require an adjustment.  For instance, burnout can often be countered with rigorous energy management.  (If that intrigues you, read The Power of Full Engagementby Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.)  Sometimes, the choices are much more difficult — a new job or practice, perhaps with a pay cut.  And sometimes, the path is undefined and the first steps of moving into it are exhilarating and also terrifying.

So, for anyone who’s wondering: the trap, though it looks real, is an illusion.  In Einstein’s words: “The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them,” and One cannot alter a condition with the same mind set that created it in the first place.

Book Review: The No Asshole Rule

I’ve been intending to write this review for months.  What can I say about a book that so clearly describes the consequences of working with nasty people?  Or of being a nasty person?  It isn’t often that I feel gut-level resonance with a business book.  My best advice here: stop reading, now, and go order The No Asshole Rule.  Then, come back and keep reading.

Dr. Robert I. Sutton is a champion of the civilized workplace, created and maintained through careful enforcement of the “no asshole rule.”  Expanding and deepening his 2004 Harvard Business Review article entitled “More Trouble Than They’re Worth,” Sutton’s forthcoming book The No Asshole Rule (to be published on February 22, 2007, by Warner Business Books, but apparently shipping now through Amazon) offers valuable tips for eliminating or avoiding nasty people in business.  In less than 200 pages, Bob explains how to identify a workplace asshole (even how to tell if you’re the asshole) and describes the damage these assholes wreak on the organizations in which they work and the clients and colleagues with whom they come into contact.  He even addresses how to handle a workplace asshole, while warning of the dangers of “asshole poisoning.”  This is a must-read.  Seriously.

According to Bob, an asshole is one who oppresses, humiliates, de-energizes, or belittles his target (generally someone less powerful then himself), causing the target to feel worse about herself following an interaction with the asshole.  (And, as his examples prove, this behavior is not by any means limited to male perpetrators or female victims.)  These jerks use tactics such as personal insults, sarcasm and teasing as vehicles for insults, shaming, and treating people as if they’re invisible to demean others.  Sutton distinguishes temporary assholes (because, as he notes, we all have the potential to act like jerks at times, particularly when we’re stressed) from certified assholes, who routinely show themselves to be nasty people.  The latter, he argues, must go.

Having diagnosed the problem, he then recommends how to implement and enforce a “no asshole rule,” how an asshole may reform himself/herself, and how to survive working in nasty environments or with nasty people.  Finally, Bob discusses the dangerous topic of the benefits of assholes (such as motivating fear-driven performance and perfectionism), describing his trepidation in doing so as a concern that an asshole might seize on the benefits to justify her behavior.

Wondering whether you’re an asshole?  Take the self-test on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Have a few co-workers (lawyers and staff) take the test for you.The American Lawyer has, according to Bob, published an article on The No Asshole Rule, but it isn’t available online.  Check your library.

It’s easy to identify the asshole partner in a law firm – the kind of lawyer who berates less senior lawyers and staff, the kind who’s prone to throwing things, the kind who goes red in the face, the kind who makes cutting comments thinly disguised as “humor.”  Those are the partners (or occasionally associates, but quite rarely so) who are labeled difficult, possibly aren’t permitted to interact with summer associates, and are tolerated only to the extent they bring in the business or the money.  Lest anyone think the choice is between being an overly polite wimp or a raving jerk, Bob specifically addresses the value of healthy, even noisy, conflict that is constructive for all involved.

Although the asshole partner is, unfortunately, almost an archetype in law firm life, it’s just as important to identify asshole clients – or better yet, asshole potential clients.  Those are the clients who will demand and demean, who will push good lawyers to make bad arguments, who will cause their lawyers untold stress.  Lawyers must know when to refuse a case, and evaluating the cost of representing an asshole is a critical underlying skill.

Client-centric marketing

Do you ever feel uncomfortable talking about yourself and your practice when you’re networking in hopes of developing new business?  Many lawyers do.  (And some lawyers who don’t feel that way perhaps should — but that’s another post.)  But there’s good news: talking about what you do isn’t the way to generate interest from a potential client.  Of course, clients care that you (and, if applicable, other lawyers in your firm) have strong experience and good skills in the practice area that matches their needs, but chances are, something else sets you apart.

Have you ever considered what makes you different from other lawyers who serve similar clients?  I hope at least one response is that you care even more deeply about your clients than other lawyers do, and that your practice is all about client service.  Assuming that to be the case, shouldn’t you market in the same way?

When you have the experiences and credentials to back you up, the best marketing is client-centric.  It’s all about being interested in the client’s needs, the client’s concerns, and how you can meet those needs and concerns to accomplish the client’s objective.  (In some instances, of course, it may be that the client’s objectives shouldn’t be accomplished — if a parent wants to use child custody to punish the other parent in a bitter divorce, for example — but that, too, is another post.)

Of course, you won’t often be presented with an opportunity to demonstrate this to a potential client, but you can do the next best thing: show interest in each person you meet.  Demonstrate your attitude of service in each networking encounter.  Rather than approaching networking as an opportunity to let people know about you and what you’ve accomplished, focus your attention on finding out about the people you meet and their interests.  Give it a try, and notice how people respond.  You’ll almost certainly be pleased.

Side benefit: this is a terrific strategy for introverts.  The conversation is likely to flow easily and to require little of you (at least initially) other than your genuine interest.

Diagnosing problems to create effective solutions

Tom Collins, author of the well-respected More Partner Income blog has written a must-read post titled “A Problem Solving Policy for the Law Firm.” (Post is no longer available)

He describes the ordinary approach to problem-solving as the process of identifying and closing the gap between how things are and how they should be, which treats the symptom but not the ultimate cause of the problem.  Tom recommends focusing on opportunities, not problems:

If management is going to concentrate on opportunities, it must avoid problems. That means when you do have to tackle a problem, you should do so with a no-return policy. Look for the conditions that permitted the problem to occur and take steps to prevent reoccurrence.

I’d like to tag onto Tom’s post and to discuss the same approach within the context of individual problem-solving and development.

Suppose you’ve decided that your marketing isn’t producing the results you want.  You assume that the amount of your effort will determine your results: more is better.  Based on that assumption, the simple solution would be to redouble the marketing efforts you’re making now, so you attend two networking events a month, arrange to take a potential client to lunch twice a week rather than just once, and so on.  And that might help you to develop more business — but it also might not, or you might not devote the time to following through on your plans.  Instead, perhaps you might pause to evaluate the effectiveness of your current efforts and discover that every time you attend the [relevant industry] meeting, you walk away with valuable new contacts that bring in business 40% of the time.  Rather than increasing your efforts in marketing generally, perhaps it would make sense to deepen your contacts within that group — perhaps dropping another group altogether.  To find that solution, though, you’d have to examine your assumption that more efforts leads to better results.

Likewise, suppose you decide that you want to communicate more effectively with your assistant to correct a problem that’s developed in which he or she doesn’t deliver things you request ASAP in what you consider to be a timely manner.  You conclude that your assistant doesn’t pay attention when you say ASAP, so you tailor your solution to that issue. You might emphasize that you need the work “ASAP, really, as soon you can get it done.”  You might express disappointment when work isn’t delivered as quickly as you’d hoped.  You might even sit down with your assistant and explain the problem and ask how the two of you might solve it together.  But the problem might well continue until you discover that when you say ASAP, your assistant interprets that to mean “as soon as conveniently possible” rather than “drop everything and do this now.”  Or perhaps the real issue is that you practice as if you were working in an emergency room, running from crisis to crisis so that everything is on an ASAP basis — which means that nothing is a priority.  A shift in your perspective is the only thing that will truly solve the problem here.

What we’re discussing here is single-loop learning, in which we tinker with our strategies in reaction to our results, as compared with double-loop learning, in which we examine the assumptions and perspectives that underlie the problem and, if needed, create new assumptions and perspectives to support a new set of strategies to solve the problem.  For an excellent explanation of single- and double-loop learning, visit Ed Batista’s post Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching on his Executive Coaching & Change Management blog.

In short, the task is to stop climbing the same tree harder, faster, or smarter and instead to pause and ask whether this is the tree to be climbing at all and if so, why.  This isn’t navel-gazing; it’s careful analysis of the entire situation at issue and strategizing to meet the actual problem rather than the apparent problem.  Although lawyers tend to be very good at performing this task for our clients, we tend not to take the time to do it for ourselves.

Effective problem solving requires effective diagnosis of the problem, not just the symptoms.  Identifying and challenging our assumptions and expectations is key to creating meaningful and lasting change, whether personal or professional.  Each of us has the ability to do this.  However, recognizing the frame that we use to perceive the world may be difficult simply because we’re so accustomed to it.  That’s why it may be easier to engage in this process with someone who can help with the task of self-observation and challenging perspectives.

Coaching provides assistance and support in finding the truth that underlies a situation and creating the changes necessary to improve performance and results. By working with a coach, you engage not only his or her expertise, but also his or her impartiality to the situation (thus opening the opportunity for an unimpeded view of what’s really going on and why) and dedication in service to the client.  Coaching has often been recognized as a tool for advancing lawyers’ career success.  Is the time right for you to consider hiring a coach?

Lawyers Appreciate…

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading the storm of “Lawyers Appreciate…” posts over the last 10 days!  Each blogger has added a new perspective on what lawyers appreciate and why.  As I read, I found myself wondering what I might add when my turn came; as it turns out, that’s been easy.

Lawyers appreciate colleagues.  I can’t count the number of times that I’ve stuck my head into someone’s office and said, “Hey, can I bounce something off you?”  The resulting conversations almost always helped me to think through my approach, to challenge my reasoning, to hone my arguments — and also to provide the pleasure of discussing interesting issues with bright colleagues.

Lawyers appreciate support staff.  I’ve worked with various secretaries, assistants, paralegals, IT staff, filing clerks, HR staff, librarians, and the like over the years.  Although it’s tempting to say that I couldn’t have carried the workload I did without those people, that isn’t completely true, as proven by the years in which I filled each of those roles myself.  But working with those professionals made my life easier and more pleasant on many occasions, and I am grateful for the terrific support I’ve received.  (And on this note, do read Mike McBride’s musings on lawyers’ frequent failure to praise support staff for their work and contrasting the tangible rewards that lawyers may offer instead… It may be an eye-opener.)

Lawyers appreciate technology.  Although at times technology makes it feel that we have to be “on” 24/7, technology makes it possible to work much more efficiently, to present arguments more persuasively, and to spend time away from the office without being unreachable.  Used responsibly, the benefits of technology far outweigh the downside.

Lawyers appreciate laughter.  The work that we do is serious, sometimes deadly serious.  But we can’t fall into the trap of taking ourselves as seriously as we do our work.

Lawyers appreciate our clients.  Without them, we’d have nothing to do!  But, more importantly, I am often humbled to realize that someone is willing to trust me with their representation.  What may be a fairly routine matter to me is a critical matter to my client, and it’s an honor and a privilege to be invited into clients’ businesses and lives.  This appreciation forms the basis for my insistence on excellent client service.  Clients deserve no less.

Finally, lawyers appreciate being viewed as people, rather than as professional roleplayers.  We each bring a unique combination of perspectives, experiences, skills, likes, dislikes, values, etc. to the practice of law.  No two lawyers will approach practice in the same way.  That’s what makes it fun to work with colleagues, and that’s why there’s a practice niche that will work for every lawyer who wants to practice.

Thanks to Stephanie West Allen for the conversations that led to the “Lawyers Appreciate…” countdown, and thanks to everyone who’s played with us!  My commitment is to hold on to this spirit of appreciation in 2007 and to revisit it often, in hopes of making what’s strong even stronger.

Happy New Year!

How to ask for work as an associate

I’ve decided to do a series of posts based on the most popular search phrases that take people to my blog.  It’s an experiment, and I’d be curious if anyone has any comments or requests for specific topics.

Some version of “how to ask for work as an associate” is a common search, and that’s quite logical since it’s impossible to hit the critical billable hours without sufficient work.  The short answer to how to ask for work is easy: go to a partner or senior associate who does work that interests you, let them know you have some time, and ask if there’s anything with which they’d like help.  There’s no real formula, no do’s or don’ts, and not a lot of risk.

The bigger question, of course, is why someone might need to ask for work.  There are 3 primary reasons, and each calls for a different response from the associate, and potentially the firm as well:

1.  Business is slow.  If this is the case, in your practice area or in your firm, explore opportunities to network or to write/speak.  Either will be a good use of your time for your own personal promotion and, one would hope, to help generate business for your firm.  Of course, neither of these activities is a short-term strategy and are best done on a regular basis.  Slow times, though, free up time to focus on these activities.

2.  Your workload has been declining and business overall is not slow.  This situation generally isn’t good news.  Although it’s possible that a benign explanation exists, a logical conclusion is that those who assign work are unhappy with the associate.  The problem is generally professional, though on occasion a personal conflict may exist.  Unfortunately, the nature of the professional problem (or even that a problem exists) may never have been communicated to the associate, who may be left feeling a general anxiety and discomfort without knowing quite what’s happened.

If this is your situation, go to the most senior person with whom you’ve developed a strong relationship, tell them you notice your workload has slowed to a trickle (and, if true, that you’ve been asking for work without success), and ask if there’s a problem.  Having that conversation will be difficult, but it may also create an opportunity for a turn-around.  Having performed a realistic self-evaluation of your skill and experience beforehand will be helpful, as will retracing the timing of the slowdown to search for any precipitating event.  And perhaps you’ll learn that there’s another explanation for the slowdown.

If your conversation reveals an insurmountable problem, or if it’s met with stonewalling, your next step should perhaps be polishing your resume, although recovery may be possible with great effort.   If you’re facing this situation, you might consider working with a coach who can help with a realistic look at what’s going on, what your ultimate goals are, and how you can work within the current situation to read your goals.  This is one of the most difficult career issues that a lawyer may face, and having someone in your corner to help you navigate can be invaluable.

3.  You’re experiencing a brief lull.  Find out by asking for work and by checking to be sure that your light load is an anomaly, and then enjoy.  While the business development activities suggested in scenario #1 will always be useful (and you should be doing them even when you’re busy), taking advantage of a short-term lull in your workload is a good work/life balance tactic.  One of the immutable laws of legal practice is that for every lull, there’s an equal and opposite busy period — so you may as well enjoy the lulls when you can.

I hope this is helpful.

Using your time sheets and bills to communicate with clients

Have you ever received a legal bill?  It’s an interesting moment; all too often there’s a sharp intake of breath (it costs that much?), quickly followed by an investigation into why it costs so much.  What do you want your clients to find when they read your bills?

What you don’t want is pretty clear.
*  You don’t want them to wonder how much time your/your firm spent on a matter.
*  You don’t want them to wonder who did the work.
*  You don’t want them to wonder what each member of the team did on their case.
In other words, “For services rendered” will not be a phrase that pleases clients.

It’s standard to require attorneys and paralegals to keep time sheets that describe in detail what they’ve done.  The issue, though, is how well that standard is honored.  As you’re filling out your daily time sheet (because you do keep your time on a daily basis, right?  if not, visit Time sheet habits: don’t procrastinate  and New lawyer skills focus: Are you losing time? to find out why you should) consider the information value of your billing.

Block billing is easy to do, but very difficult for clients to interpret.  An entry like, “2.5 hours, reviewed documents and drafted/revised motion to compel ” will leave a client wondering how long each task required, and the client may not be pleased to find an entry the next day for more time on the motion to compel because she may expect that the 2.5 hours covered drafting the motion when in fact you only reviewed documents and drafted the motion but not the memorandum in support.  Block billing creates questions.  Instead, consider whether you want to indicate more precisely the amount of time you spent on each task, or whether it would be preferable to include multiple entries.

Although it’s essential to remember that your bills may be discoverable and that they must not include privileged information, consider how you may communicate the scope of your work without crossing the line.  So, for instance, you might include entries like, “Researched law re admissibility of [opposing party’s] statement in [brief] that [whatever].”

Errors happen, but do everything in your power to ensure that you bill the correct client for the work you’ve done.  Finding an entry that doesn’t pertain to your matter is a disheartening experience for the client, who may wonder what other mistakes you’re making.

In-house counsel often complains about reviewing attorney bills because they’re cryptic, not explicit, and sometimes just plain wrong. Draft your time sheets so that your clients know who did what, why, and when.

And a note: in case a new associate is reading this and thinking it’s inapplicable because you don’t get to review the bills that clients receive, remember that what goes into your time sheet is what goes into the bills.  Don’t allow yourself to slip into bad billing practices; that’s not a favor to the partners who review your time sheets or to your clients, and both will hold it against you.

Target fixation

In World War II, fighter pilots spoke of the danger of target fixation.  During bombing runs, pilots could become so focused on their targets that they’d dive, drop a bomb on the target, and yet remain so intent on hitting the target that they’d fail to pull up in time.  They’d end up hitting their target and killing themselves.  Although they would have achieved their mission, they wouldn’t survive to fly the next one or even to celebrate their accomplishment.

What does this have to do with practice?

Imagine a lawyer — let’s call her Mary — who is so focused on making partner that everything else recedes.  She spends the hours between 7 AM and 7:30 PM in the office on weekdays and at least 6 hours a day there on weekends.  When she isn’t at work, she’s either working at home or thinking about work.  When she meets someone, she immediately thinks about how they might fit into her goal, whether as a potential client, referral source, or otherwise.  Perhaps she’s married, perhaps she has children, and if so, her family is important to her and yet they’re accustomed to her missing dinner or school plays and being busy for “just a few more minutes” when she’s home.  Mary doesn’t go out to lunch unless there’s a reason, and she feels that exercise is just a waste of time that she could use for work or for marketing.  Her office looks like a tornado hit it, but she doesn’t stop to clean up until she starts to lose things on her desk.  She’s generally known as a nice person, but when she gets stressed, she’s liable to snap at her colleagues and the support staff — and she gets stressed rather often.  Vacations are important to her, but all too often she feels that she’s just moved her work from the office to a spot off-site.

And then, Mary makes partner.  Though she may fantasize about cutting back, chances are good that she won’t.  After all, her hard work put her ahead of the pack, and letting up now would knock her off her game.

And then, something happens.  Maybe a parent gets sick, maybe a child, or maybe it’s Mary.  Maybe something goes wrong at the office, or perhaps she just stops one day and thinks wistfully about her life Before, when she used to enjoy talking long walks through the neighborhood at dawn to get her heart pumping.  Perhaps she wonders what happened, when she quit spending time on non-work things.

Mary is a victim of target fixation.

None of us can function well as a single-dimension individual.  We need input on the intellectual level, but we also need to pay attention to our emotions, our body, and our spirit.  Although it’s possible to neglect those domains, their weakness will eventually bleed over and reduce the effectiveness of the intellectual output, simply because there’s nothing to sustain it.  Another word for target fixation is burnout, the moment when we experience having poured an unsustainable amount of energy into one area of life to the detriment of other areas.  It’s crash-and-burn success.

Work/life balance prevents burnout by nourishing all areas of life, though perhaps not in equal proportions.  Some people really love their work and would feel lost if required to cut back (see Stephanie West Allen’s excellent post Hot worms revisited: Extreme lawyers often love their work for an exploration of what work/life balance “really” means and who gets to decide) and others feel pushed to work so much that important areas of their lives are neglected.  Of course, what’s tricky is that the extreme lawyer may feel restless if he “only” works 60 hours in a week, whereas the more traditionally “balanced” lawyer may start to get antsy and worn out if she sees no choice but to work 60 hours.

Bottom line: define your own balance between work and life, or recognize that your work is your life and work/life describes a continuous, integral whole.  Whatever you decide, though, be on the lookout for target fixation — and pull up well before you crash.

What would you do if you weren’t practicing law?

One reflection exercise I suggest to disenchanted lawyers is to contemplate what they’d be doing if not practicing law.  The reason is not to identify the lawyer’s next career, but instead to get in touch with what might be preferable and why, and then to consider whether that quality could exist in a legal practice.  Finding the joy the long way around, really.

For instance, one client said she would teach if she weren’t practicing law.  She said she’d enjoy imparting knowledge, challenging her students, and getting the intellectual high of an exchange about principles.  She said she’d want to teach something on the college level, maybe above, where her students would really want to be in class and would be more likely to be engaged.  We explored what she thought she’d like about that kind of teaching, what benefits she felt it would bring, and so on.  When we turned to see whether she could find similar experiences in the law, she indeed found them — not, as you might be expecting, as an adjunct professor (though that would have been a good choice) but through doing training in her firm for new associates.  She found that she got energy from working with these fresh-faced idealists and that she was able to bring that energy back to her practice, with the added benefit of knowing something about which associates she’d like to work on her matters.

So, if you’re unhappy — or even if you are happy, but you’re willing to explore what could be even better — I challenge you to play with this idea.  What would you be doing if not practicing, why, and can you get that “why” in practice?   What steps must you take to do so?

Transition in the practice of law

In April, I’ll be presenting at the NALP annual conference along with 3 colleagues.  Our topic is titled, “Facilitating a Successful Transition from Student to Lawyer.”  Our proposal identified a number of issues that confront new lawyers, and we’ve also identified ways that law schools and law firms (our primary audience) can support those going through this transition.

My transition to practice occurred in 1993 or 1995, depending on whether a clerkship should count as practice for these purposes.  However, I had a second transition when I moved from Georgia to Florida, complete with another bar exam and needing to learn a completely new set of local customs and local rules.  Frankly, I think the state-to-state transition was more traumatic than the school-to-practice transition, simply because after practicing law for 10 years, I’d learned how to do the things that constituted a part of my practice and I was comfortable with those.  I knew what I knew, and I also knew what I didn’t know, so I’d moved past the stage of needing to look up every procedural step to be sure I was doing it correctly.  Ah, but that was no longer applicable!  I suddenly learned that local custom (not rule, which is written, but custom) required service of original discovery, something that was simply unthinkable in my home jurisdiction.  That, and seemingly hundreds of other differences, tripped me up on a regular basis after I moved to Florida, making me feel like a newbie all over again.

We’ll discuss at NALP what schools and firms can do to assist in lawyer transitions, but today, I’d like to consider what lawyers can do to facilitate their own transitions.

1.  Be prepared to learn new habits.  This seems to elementary, and in some ways it is, but I’d submit that it’s tough to change basic habits without a significant effort.  Taking my discovery example, I had to stop each time I was going to serve requests or answers and think about what I needed to ask my secretary to do.  My habits couldn’t stand.  And, frankly, I resented having to remember to check the rules I’d learned so long ago!  But after a few months — notably, after I was willing to relinquish my resentment — the new habit took over.

2.  Find a mentor or colleague you can ask for help.  Whether you’re a new lawyer or just new to your current jurisdiction, you need resources.  Someone who’s been in practice for a few years can be an invaluable ally to help you learn everything from the quirks of particular judges to which lunch spot will guarantee you a stomach ache.  Ideally, you’ll have more than one person to ask, but do yourself the favor of locating at least one friendly and knowledgeable colleague.

3.  Accept that you’re going to feel clueless for a while.  Especially if you’re going to a new jurisdiction, you’re likely to feel that everything you’ve known is suspect, if only because you’re going to have to keep checking the local rules or the new (new to you) state law.  This period is called Conscious Incompetence — you know what you don’t know.  Know that it passes.

4.  Spend extra time getting to know your new city, firm and/or jurisdiction.  This is the time for you to find and read past issues of the local business journal, legal newspaper, firm newsletter, and so on.  You can’t substitute for the knowledge that comes with being in a place over time, but you can begin to create your own database of knowledge.  It takes time, and that time will be well-spent.

5.  Declare your expectations for yourself.  This is specific way of saying, set goals.  Sometimes getting acclimated to a new environment is the top priority; sometimes you’ll be thrown right into a big project and showing your mettle is even moe important than learning your way around.  Super heroes may be able to do everything, but the rest of us have limited time and energy.  You’ll make the most of yours if you make conscious decisions about what you want and need to do as you transition into your new practice.

What’s your best tip for transitioning?