A two hour tour

Today, I spent two hours looking over some agreements for a partner for whom I've done quite a bit of work. At the end, the documents were almost completely covered with highlighter. I know she'd sent them to me in hopes I'd review them, catch a few things worth noting, point them out, and, you know, actually make her life easier. I'd done this on a few other assignments this summer and she seemed to like my feedback.

Today, instead of making her life easier, I walked into her office and had to admit that I had no idea where to start, what to highlight, whether the general structure of the agreements was something worth getting worked up about or not, etc. She grimaced, told me that wasn't what she was hoping for, and added it to her to do list.

I'm serious, guys, I was fascinated by this agreement because I'd never heard of anything like it. And I had no clue what kind of opinion I was supposed to have about any of it. It was all building blocks I'd seen before, but put together in a configuration beyond my wildest imagination. It took me almost two hours to confirm that I really was completely clueless on this one and had no value to add. I knew the partner was too busy to walk me through it, so I just sucked it up, walked in, explained that I didn't know how to handle it, and walked out. At least she was nice about it.

It's good to know that there's plenty of room to learn new stuff at firm #1 -- I was concerned that I might get bored with my future career, but if the last few weeks are any indication, I'm going to be thrilled. So while my efforts were a waste of the firm's money in the short term, it was probably one of the best investments they've made thus far, in terms of getting the talons in.

Ready to drink the kool-aid and sell my soul. Sign me up.