Competence

LL: A feeling of competency is vastly underrated as an indicator of job satisfaction- or at least I underrated it when I first picked my legal specialty.

When I applied to law school, I wondered if I would regret leaving software. I assumed I would, in fact, and steeled myself to get over it. But I loved law school and never looked back...

until I started working. Now I find myself thinking wistfully about coding, and while I do miss it enough to consider doing it for fun in my spare time, I realize that what I really miss is being good at something. Responding to "I don't even know if it's possible, but what I want is..." with, "I can do that, no problem." Handling things on my own instead of running them by someone.

I feel like big firm corporate law instills a feeling of incompetence in new associates. Maybe on purpose. And yes, I get that we have to be really careful, and I know that I have a lot to learn, and I have to learn to do it correctly. But I'm a reasonably intelligent person. Throw caution to the wind and let me fill out a form without anybody looking at it.

Maybe in a year.