Absent from this book are threats of doom, catastrophe, and the proverbial reexamination of your career choice that the new graduate usually reads about regarding the practice of law. As a new associate, starting off your career with a good understanding of the nuances that will be measured in your first year of practice will provide a great advantage for you to be successful. It is not a system of gamesmanship or office politics. Rather, it is a system developed over years observing new associates become good attorneys by learning from their mistakes. It is a system that applies at every law firm. Whether the firm is a sole practitioner, five-attorney firm, or 500-attorney firm, the navigation tools contained in this book are necessary to understand and adopt early in your career that will make the first two years of practice more productive, educational, and - even in the most difficult working environments - more palatable and tolerable so that you can succeed.

This book is not geared to any one predisposed environment. Whether you will work in a small rural community, a medium-sized firm, or a big-city/big-law firm ("BigLaw"),the principles and disciplines contained in this book will set you on a path to success. This book helps avoid the mistakes that partners see being made by new associates in a variety of law firm environments. These mistakes are not made because of a lack of preparation or intelligence, but are often due to a lack of training by the partners and senior attorneys, who may not set forth clear objectives and rules to allow new associates to be successful. The Early-Career Guide for Attorneys is a compilation of reminders that decision makers in law offices need to give to new associates every day. These are the behaviors, habits, best practices, cultural rules, and values of the office that the decision makers know are needed to make law offices successful.