Transitions

At the firm, I was repping tiny startup companies and clutching at the skirt of BigCo, pleading for provisions. Now I am BigCo. (Might as well come out with it: Sun Microsystems.) It's taken some getting used to; I'm still learning to say No in negotiations, and that sometimes it's okay to have residuals in an NDA.

Some other things I've had to adjust to:

* The lawyers I work with have time. They use this time to explain things to me, such as two hour training sessions on drafting software license agreements.
* Dressing casually to work really means casual, not business casual. Tie-dyed shirts, light-colored jeans, etc.
* Communicating with your clients is tricky when they're in India, or South Africa, or Europe. At first I found it unsettling, but then I adjusted to the 18 hour delay in emails.
* 1 in 4 Sun employees works from home on a given day (or so I've heard). This meant getting used to calling people rather than dropping in to their office. That's actually something I miss a lot about the firm.
* Staff meetings have 50% of the people calling in, many of them from outside the country. This translates to some time wasted on technical difficulties - yes, even at an technology company.
*On many nights, at around 6 PM, the strangest thing happens: everyone goes home.


PS: I was kindly cited as an entertaining law blog on this site for paralegals.