Partners and grads - a tale of two firms

Law grads adjusting to life in the law ... Cultural misfits ... Learning to conform to law firm stereotypes ... Barely Legal discovers the Social Bermuda Triangle ... I spent Saturday at Bunnings ... How was your game of golf? 

A law firm bears a strange but uncanny resemblance to 19th century London.

On the upper echelon are partners, senior associates and star legal secretaries. They wear freshly dry-cleaned designer suits, dine at hatted restaurants and put their newborn babies on private school waiting lists.

And there's the rest of us - junior lawyers, law grads, paralegals and "word processors" (not the software but people with magic touch typing skills, affectionately known as WPs) - who take public transport and eat $10 Thai food.

Most of us are reluctant to cut the umbilical cord to the university life of weekday drinking and partying.

One grad got carried away with his university style antics on a weekday. Tired and hungover, he was sighted wearing sunnies in his windowless office.

As for me, I am determined to stay down to earth and not to grow up. Yet, persevering with my university lifestyle is sure to mark me as the cultural misfit.

And I have ambitions too. I plan on getting an external office one day.

"How was your weekend?"

"I went to a party at an abandoned warehouse, drank a lot of $5 PassionPop then passed out on my mate's couch and now I have to do discovery with a terrible hangover."

Nope. That would be career suicide. 

A respectable conversation at a corporate law firm would go like this:

"How was your weekend?"

"It was great! I went to a restaurant featured in Sydney Gourmet and then spent the rest of the weekend at my holiday house on the south coast."

Bonus points if you mention anything about your own children, visits to Bunnings or playing golf.

My social life from university days is withering slowly, thanks to my newfound affinity for television and bed.

Weekday nights are spent watching Masterchef, Friday night Better Homes and Gardens. Weekends are reserved for laundry and washing hair. 

Among graduate circles there is this thing called a Social Bermuda Triangle.

Between three to six months of entering the workforce, new lawyers will lose a large slice of their social life.

Before starting full-time work I always wondered about friends who graduated, got a fancy job and then completely disappeared off the radar. Now I am one of them.

Entering corporate life is like leaving your public school friends to go to a tony private school. I have donated my university clothes to Vinnies and replaced them with set-piece corporate costumes. I have lost tolerance for public transport and became scathing of people on student allowances.

Oh god, is this how Joe Hockey's political career got started?

One day I will run my practice like Google, with PlayStations and free food and Zumba classes.

Until then, it's power suits and trying to fit in while nursing blisters from court errands and discovery-induced paper cuts.