I won’t apologise for not writing sooner. Well, ordinarily I would, but I have learnt better. If you do something good, make a point of it; if you make a mistake, explain it away. Or better yet, exclude it from the scope of your due diligence analysis.

The last three weeks seem to have flown by. The first week was very pretty easy going. Three days of training, and then two days of light tasks interspersed with familiarising myself with the stationary cupboard. The novelty of free pens hadn’t yet worn thin.

The second week was also fairly light on. The sub-prime mortgage crisis might have had something to do with this. I’ve heard of new grads working twelve hour days in their second week before, so I guess I should count my lucky stars that the investment banking industry lost all those hundreds of billions.

Start of week three and the work suddenly started rolling in. Two pieces of work hit my desk almost the moment I sat down in my office. Well, office is the wrong word. I sit in a pod with another grad. A pod is basically a half size office with no door.

The great thing about our pod is that we have views out over the harbour and gardens. The downside is that I can hear anyone who coughs on my side of the building. Small price to pay, I guess...

Well, no, pretty damn annoying, actually!

I think the management consultant who invented the ‘open door’ policy never expected people to actually start removing doors from offices. Open communication is one thing, but no peace and quiet is quite another entirely.

So, anyway, two pieces of work hit my desk and by lunch time I have six things due by the next morning. Gulp!

During one of our training sessions, HR went to some lengths to explain to us that “it’s okay to say ‘no’ to work.” With all due respect, I say "Bull Shit to that"!

You heard me!

As a junior lawyer, my clients are the senior associates and partners in my group. You can’t turn clients away unless you have a really good reason. They'll just go to another junior lawyer, and who knows if they'll come back.

Well, it’s not quite like this, but you get the idea. It makes sense to take a lot of work and do it well. A good reputation is hard to build.