My externship work is going well.  See my post Getting in the Game for more details about my externship site choice.  I am learning a lot and I am in the process of reworking my resume and cover letter to apply for a regulatory position within the organization.  My boss told that me that managers hate to hire lawyers because after getting one or two years of experience they leave the position quickly in pursuit of better things.  

I went straight through undergrad to grad school and then to law school.  I have no professional experience other than working for Big Law firms during the summer.  For the first time, I am working outside of a law firm context with non-attorneys.  It is a whole new world for me.   Here, are a few things that stood out to me.

No administrative assistance other than an office manager. 

At Big Law, you are told to delegate anything and everything that is non-billable to an administrative assistant.  I used my administrative assistant quite often to sent out jobs to the copy center, print and arrange things for me, handle tech issues, make lunch reservations, keep up with my calendar etc… Now I get to do it all.  I miss having an administrative assistant. 

No social land mines & forced socialization. 

I noticed that there aren’t any social events going on.  You know, those social events that are “optional” but not really.  No awkward social events where you try to decipher what you are supposed to wear.  We were all invited last summer for the annual pool party at a senior partner’s house.  Of course, if you did a little research you would find out that it wasn’t an actual pool party and that there was a complex dress code to follow. 

No one sleeps at the office.

It is not uncommon to see couches inside the offices of lawyers rather than actual chairs.  That is how you know who sleeps in their office (usually from the exhaustion of working around the clock.)  Nor is it uncommon to see lawyers with raccoon eyes–a sure sign they were working all night.  Here, no raccoon eyes and no couches. 

A business casual dress code.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wear a suit in the past month.  The law firms I worked at were business casual which meant that you wear everything except for your suit jacket.  Here, the emphasis is more on casual than business.  And people get to wear jeans every Friday!  

These observations may not be very accurate because I work in a small department that is very independent from the rest of the organization and my boss has told me that their department is a very casual environment, unlike many departments at the organization. 

What kind of a work environment do you have?  Do you have people sleeping in your office working around the clock?  Do you get to wear jeans to work every Friday?