Yesterday was my first day at work. I intended to write something yesterday, but I ended up having drinks with some of the other grads and then meeting another friend for pizza. I figure I have to make the most of it before the hard work sets in.

I was eager to make a good impression on my first day, so I woke up early and was in the city by 8.20am, this was surely some kind of record. Before heading to reception, I called one of my friends who did the clerkship with me last summer to see if she was already in the building. She was still on the train, 5 minutes away, we agreed meet at the quaint little coffee shop around the corner before heading upstairs.

Coffee in hand, we stepped into the reception at around 8.59am, just in the nick of time, and were pointed in the direction of a small mahogany conference room. I was pleased to discover that we were not the last ones to arrive. There are seven of us starting as grads this week, which is a relatively small number. But, I guess this kind of makes sense when you consider that there are two different intake times during the year and that many of the people who get offers go travelling overseas, decide to become bankers or consultants or spend a year being judge’s associate before coming on board.

To start the day of training, the firm chairman and the managing partner came to speak to us. They spoke at length about firm culture, gave a couple of amusing anecdotes and tried to distil for us some of the lessons they had learnt about the qualities that go towards making a good lawyer and a successful legal career. Both men were incredibly interesting to listen to and very charismatic. Considering that these are both men who bill out to clients at umpteen hundred dollars an hour, their taking time to speak with us was the ultimate blandishment, the perfect gesture of good will and an unforgettable welcome to the firm.

We then had an ice breaking session, which turned out to be a kind of speed networking. We were broken into pairs, given examples of questions we should ask and then given five minutes to learn about our partner and report back to the group. It was fun because being babied by HR made me feel like I was back in year six. Although, had I eaten a slightly different breakfast, I could have found it pretty patronising. Does HR not think that we learnt any social skills since primary school?

After that, we discussed career path expectations, the qualities that successful lawyers possess and, most importantly, they handed out booklets that contained, among other things, the details of our starting salary. It would, of course, be rude to talk numbers … but, let’s just say, the starting salary has gone up handsomely on last year’s figure. Apparently, the pay rise is something to do with particularly strong competition in the market for junior lawyers. I didn’t ask too many questions.

Good news! I mentioned to the HR consultant running our induction that I still didn’t know which group I was starting in. The consultant responded with a well polished look of surprise and pulled out a list. I am going to be working in Mergers and Acquisitions. I am so excited, this is exactly where I wanted to be and I couldn’t be happier. Two of the other graduates are also starting in M&A with me, which should be good because it means we can work together and help each other out when we have no clue what we are doing.

Each of us has been allocated a supervising partner, a buddy and a secretary. All of the buddies are relatively junior lawyers who will hopefully be able to answer even our most stupid questions and thereby help to ease us into the firm. Around midday, our buddies took us out for a long lunch, which was a very nice touch. The restaurant was beautiful and, just to indicate how expensive it was, it was one of those ridiculous restaurants that has a minimum order of $50 per person. I normally balk at paying $5 for lunch, but perhaps that says more about me than about this restaurant. There was an element of doubt about who would be paying for the lunch. But I wasn’t all that worried, the Junior Associates were ordering up big, so I followed suit. One of the Junior Associates put the bill on her shiny black corporate credit card. I’m so excited becuase I will be getting one of these shiny black pieces of plastic within the next couple of weeks. I can use it to pay for taxis, corporate lunches and other partner approved paraphernalia.

The gossip begins! After work, a couple of us went down the road for some drinks. We were reminiscing about the good old times and one of the grads told us that last year he saw one of the very senior partners, who was drunk at one of the Christmas parties, walk up to one of the summer clerks and say, “you mean nothing to me!” It’s almost so disgraceful that it’s funny! Points for honesty, I guess.

The training finishes on Wednesday. I am a little apprehensive about being thrown in the deep end on Thursday. I excelled at law school but, the reality is, I don’t know the first thing about being a real lawyer. How hard could it be?