Beyond qualification: navigating life as a newly qualified Trade Mark Attorney
You’ve studied hard and passed the exams; now it's time to embark on your career as a trade mark attorney. It’s a big transition and not always an easy one.
Your technical knowledge has been honed by years of learning, but those early months in practice will present new challenges. From gaining confidence when providing client advice and managing client relationships to stepping into a supervisory role, networking, and ensuring you take care of your wellbeing – there’s a lot still to learn.
In CITMA’s recent webinar, Senior Associate Craig Beaumont and Partner Catherine Wiseman of Barker Brettell offered advice on adapting to this new phase of your career and useful habits that will support your professional life.
As you adjust to your new status, there are five key skills to nurture:
Commercial awareness
Students are trained to spot risks and apply the law, but in the commercial world, clients want attorneys to help them make better business decisions. This is a different skill, and the advice you give depends heavily on context. This means understanding:
- The client’s commercial landscape
- The macro- and micro-economic pressures they face
- Their budget constraints
- What they hope to achieve
- The consequences if the strategy fails
Catherine notes that it is a common early career mistake to focus closely on the legal position, without considering the wider commercial context: “It can be hard not to sit on the fence, just presenting options without recommendations. But it’s our job to make an assessment of the legal and commercial situation and provide a steer – that’s how you elevate yourself to status as a trusted advisor.”
Building client relationships: “be clear, not clever”
Good client relationships are based on consistency, clarity, and honesty.
Craig advises: “Be clear, not clever. Clients want simplicity. They want to know what is happening, what it means for them, what you recommend, and what it will cost them.”
Being responsive and setting clear expectations with clients early in your career pays dividends, says Catherine: “Always acknowledge client emails the day they arrive. If you can’t reply immediately, say so. Tell them when they can expect a reply, and stick to that deadline.”
At some point, you will need to deliver bad news to a client. The right approach can turn a setback into a relationship-strengthening opportunity. Craig and Catherine advise:
- Take time to formulate a constructive client communication
- Avoid overexplaining legal intricacies. Clients want solutions, not the problem explained in more detail
- Empathise with the client about the disappointment and its impact
- Explain the options from a practical perspective
- Recommend a way forward
Networking: be authentic and natural
Many attorneys find networking daunting, but the best opportunities often arise from chance conversations in relaxed circumstances. The key is being curious about the people you meet and establishing rapport based on shared interests or experiences.
At large events, you don’t have to work the whole room, just aim for a few good conversations. Follow up after the event via LinkedIn or email with useful information relating to your discussion.
Team work: stepping into your new role
On qualifying, team dynamics shift. You move from trainee to supervisor, and you work with more stakeholders. From managing paralegals and delegating tasks to trainees, to working with the accounts department and communicating with clients, you’ll be creating new connections all the time.
Craig and Catherine’s tips include:
- Delegate clearly: set out your requirements, so the recipient knows what they need to do, what good looks like, why the task matters, and the deadline.
- Give constructive feedback: if you change someone’s work, explain the reason and give them the opportunity to learn. Remember that it is important to praise well-done work and explain why it is good.
- Respect everyone: a strong team is founded on mutual respect and does better work when everyone feels supported.
Wellbeing: build good habits from the start
Wellbeing is hard to prioritise early in your career, but establishing good habits now will pay off in the long term.
Good habits include:
- Avoid an always-on culture: set clear boundaries and manage expectations. You don’t have to solve everything instantly, but you should communicate clearly about when you will respond.
- Develop anxiety-management strategies: use a consistent process when structuring advice so you have a checklist to follow and know you haven’t missed anything.
- Use AI where appropriate: sense check spelling and grammar with authorised AI tools to reduce the mental load.
- Lean on your support network: talk to your supervisor about workload issues and concerns; don’t sit alone with your worries.
Mistakes: be proactive and seek support
Graduating from trainee to qualified status is challenging, but you are not on your own. “I went through a phase of thinking I shouldn’t ask for help anymore, that I was supposed to know all the answers,” says Craig. “But that was wrong. I soon got better at knowing when to sense check things and who to grab to ask a quick question.”
Inevitably, at some point you will have to manage a mistake you have made. Craig advises: “Don’t try to deal with it alone. It’s often not as bad as you think and can be fixed. It’s when you try to hide it that it becomes a real problem.”
“As a supervisor, I really appreciate it when people are honest about mistakes,” says Catherine. “The difference between a manageable issue and a total nightmare is usually speed, so talk to someone and make a plan.”
Summing up best practice for newly qualified attorneys, Catherine says: “The best newly qualified attorneys communicate early, they don’t sit on problems, they treat everyone with respect, and they give credit where it is due.”
Get more tips from Craig and Catherine in our on-demand webinar.