Weather matters. And so does finding a great mentor. I moved to Los Angeles for a 2L summer job at Milbank and returned to California the following year to study for the bar exam on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto. I was wide-eyed by my surroundings – people actually got to go to college here? It was like a resort and country club. California and I were off to a good start.
Once I started work in the Fall, it was hardly a vacation.
A month into my job at Milbank LLP I was told to go to the financial printer. If you are a corporate lawyer today and don’t know what that means, ask Jim Gurbach. He can share some stories. I missed the “good old days” by a few years. For a junior associate of my vintage, it meant proofing pages as we made changes to a draft prospectus. I went there on a Tuesday morning and didn’t go home again until Friday morning. A triple all-nighter. Well, almost. By the time Thursday night had rolled around, with two consecutive nights of zero sleep, it was clear that I had become useless for cognitive tasks – even checking pages – and it would have been unsafe to drive. I checked into the Checkers Hotel in downtown Los Angeles around 10pm, woke up the next morning still in my suit with a room service meal half-eaten in front of me that I had no recollection of ordering, much less eating.
Things got better as the Fall progressed, as I purposefully migrated to be under the tutelage of Ken Baronsky. Looking back, he was only about a 6th year associate but he had the gravitas of a well-established partner. It’s no surprise he wound up being one of Milbank’s most successful partners. I did whatever Ken told me to do and I learned how to be a lawyer. He was my first great mentor and I chose wisely.
Lesson: Find someone good to mentor you. Someone who has been successful in what you want to become with a style that meshes with your personality and who is not shy about being directive. But don’t ask them to be your mentor – just find a way to work with them, help them, and learn from them. We humans are mimetic creatures. Doing this will accelerate your development 10-fold.