Whether you are an attorney new to law firms, new to the in-house role, a new paralegal, a new legal operations specialist, or a new contracts administrator, starting your contracts journey is daunting. Even industry veterans still shudder at the sight of a fifty-page master services agreement with ten appendices!
And if you are leaving a law firm or a more established corporate legal department, you may not have the opportunity to walk down the hall to ask your friend a question about a novel area of contracts. Instead, a law firm may now bill you for that conversation.
Whatever your background, you may feel “outgunned” as compared to your peers who’ve been working with contracts longer. So, how do you accelerate your learning? A majority of seasoned contracts professionals learned what they know by teaching themselves. Luckily for us, we have lots of great resources at our fingertips to get us started. The below resources are those that I have used, and they are certainly not exhaustive!
I recommend finding two to three credible professionals who are where you want to be eventually, and asking them respectfully if they’d be willing to be your mentor. Then, make sure to meet with your mentor on a regular basis to build and maintain the relationship. Here are a few tips to help find that mentor:
Also, try to find two to three peers that have the same level of experience that you do with whom you can talk honestly about the challenges of working on contracts or being an in-house attorney. Another blog post about this will follow soon!
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If you’re new to contracts, be sure to check out the other articles in this series. Stay tuned for more on the New to Contracts? column by Jack Terschluse, exclusively here on Contract Nerds.
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