How to deal with rejection as a lawyer

Daniel Peacock, solicitor and immediate past chair of the Law Society's Junior Solicitors Network and the Junior Lawyers Division

I’ve been rejected for many roles and made many mistakes. It moulded me into the person that I am: I will adapt and overcome. It's a key aspect of being a junior lawyer.

Dealing with feedback can be very hard. I’m quite a ‘personal’ person – so I take everything personally. But I’ve learned over time not to take things to heart as much as I did. As I was training, I felt like everything had to be perfect and have no amendments. In practice, people have a difference of opinion. I wouldn’t read too deeply into that.

Having a supervisor cross things out and make amendments happens throughout your career. Those mini rejections can be quite tough, but it all comes down to resilience and it shapes you into being better at what you do.

There will always be times of adversity in any job which require you to build resilience. While it’s tough during training and qualifying, it’s not the end of the game – you’ll have another 30, 40 or 50 years of dealing with that adversity. It’s a necessary skill. Life experience gives you resilience, but it is something you develop over time. You’re not born with it but it's vital.

Donna Smith, business coach and former solicitor

In my final year of my law degree, I applied for lots of training contracts and didn’t get a hint of an interview. This was very hard to deal with and it made me question whether I was good enough and had what it took to reach this next phase of my career in law.

But my desire to become a qualified solicitor was so strong that I was not prepared to let this stop me. I decided to consider other ways to get myself inside a law firm so I could prove that I was worth considering for a training contract position. When you experience rejection, I think resilience and resourcefulness are both equally important. No matter what causes it, we’re going to take a hit, but our resilience levels need to be high so we can be resourceful ahead of our next move.

I continued to apply for training contracts, but I also signed up with a temping agency which provided secretarial cover for law firms. Through that I secured a short-term placement as a legal secretary in a regional law firm.

While there, I had several conversations with key partners about my career goals. By the end of the four-week secretarial placement, I had been interviewed for and offered a paralegal role in the conveyancing department. I later became a trainee solicitor with that same firm. Rejection is hard but it is not the end. It is simply unfinished business which needs a different approach.
Nobody likes how rejection feels. We want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. If you sit with it, you’ll learn how to feel empowered again.

All the tools I recommend to junior lawyers to get past feelings of rejection are very simple. First, let's do some reflection. For example, if you applied for a training contract and didn’t get it, what was good about your application? Which bits would you keep? What was tricky, and what didn’t you like about it? What would you do differently? Asking these questions after every rejection moves you away from emotion and towards objective thinking.

The more you do this, the more resilience and confidence increases. This process makes you more resourceful.

Mila Trezza, executive coach and former general counsel

The idea that 'if you’re good, you won’t experience rejection' is a huge assumption. Rejection is a part of every career – and life.

If I’ve developed any negotiation skills over more than two decades in law, it has been thanks to the countless times my ideas were rejected and criticised, not the times I had an easy win. Whether I was trying to close a deal or going for an internal promotion, each 'no' from the other side of the table forced me to think harder, listen deeper, and come up with better solutions than any ‘yes’ could have ever enabled.

When I wanted to move in-house as a junior lawyer, I don’t think I met a single person who thought it was a good idea. Everyone advised me to spend 'three or four more years in private practice.'
I could have stopped after hearing, 'we’re cutting jobs, not hiring,' 10 or 20 times, but I kept going. It was what I wanted, so I went for it. Eventually, various organisations started reaching out 'for a chat.' Although they had no vacancies, they invited me for coffee.

These informal conversations gave me plenty of perspective and feedback. Not only did they reveal that companies had different views on junior lawyers joining in-house teams, but they also confirmed that an in-house career was exactly what I was looking for.

Reframe rejection for what it truly is: feedback. Sometimes, it’s helpful and shows where you need to put in more effort. Other times, it’s feedback you will disagree with – pushing you to reaffirm your vision.

What you do after a rejection is what may bring you closer to your idea of success. No rejection is ever final. At every stage of our careers, there is always more to come.

Rejections don’t stop once you qualify, become a partner, or even get the top job. What has changed, however, is that you have gained confidence through the process and with each success. It’s that confidence that will help you perceive and handle new rejections differently.

Stay pragmatic, too. If your boss says 'no' five times, they’ll have to say 'yes' to something eventually!