Life as a young associate - difficult indeed

Sherry Fowler has some very frank observations about the bewilderment that young associates feel when they are given assignments with minimal information. For what it's worth, I would say to young associates: don't feel inadequate; none of the self-assured, middle-aged lawyers that you see preening and pontificating knew much of anything when they started practicing law. A lot of them still don't know very much. Instead of learning the difficult art of using judgment, they've spent their energies trying to cover up their inadequacies by ordering associates around in a magisterial fashion. Avoid these lawyers like the plague; the combination of ego and fear makes them desperate and dangerous.