Transactional Practice Boot Camp: Part 1 - Zero to Hero: What You Need to Know During Your First Years as a Transactional Attorney

• Developing a systematic approach to working in transactional law practice; who this series is and isn’t for; explanation of methodology (20 minutes)
• Universal background that will assist any 0-2 year lawyer with professionalism and problem solving in a transactional context (15 minutes)
• The top 6 “best” things that you can do in your first days on the job (20 minutes)
• The bottom 4 “worst” things that you can do in your first days on the job (15 minutes)
• Anecdotes, “war stories,” and a preview of other topics to be discussed in future parts of the series (10 minutes)

Runtime: 1 hour, 12 minutes
Recorded: June 24, 2020

Law school often prepares new lawyers incompletely for transactional practice. Moreover, adversarial/winner-take-all litigation experience may not prepare young lawyers for the perspective shift toward collaborative/team-oriented transactional work.

This program is for 0-3 attorneys who have never experienced transactional law (and maybe even never worked in a law office) to rethink the "litigation-first" perspective that gets ingrained during law school. For a large number of law students interested in working with business transactions, as in-house counsel, in IP prosecution, licensing, etc., we want to provide guidance for what you should be thinking about on your first day of an internship, your first day at a job, or your first day running your own firm. These are tips to distinguish yourself on your first day even if you don't have any direct transactional experience.

This is the first part of a multi-part presentation for early-career transactional lawyers called “Transactional Practice Boot Camp”. You can watch it on its own or as part of the series.

As the first in a 2-part series, this discusses basics, but is intended to lay out those basics in a systematic way: in the same way a piano teacher might teach students about posture and fingering on the first day rather than “playing songs.” More experienced attorneys shifting to transactional work from a long career in litigation may choose to start at another program in the series since this first program in the series may be too basic.

In addition to the course content described, we will provide practice notes on how the material here relates to the material in other parts of this series.

This program was recorded on June 24th, 2020.

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