What they don’t teach you at law school (series)— upwards management

This is the first in my series of blogs on “What they don’t teach you at law school”. This series aims to provide junior lawyers and other junior professionals with some hints and tips about how to navigate the early years of a demanding career from what I have learned so far. I qualified as a UK lawyer (solicitor branch) about three years ago and have worked in a mixture of law firms — so this is all pretty fresh in my brain. Of course, I’m still learning too.

What is upwards management?

You have probably experienced being managed or some form of supervision in your career already (“downwards management”). This is where your manager/supervisor tasks you do something, maybe gives you some hints and tips about how best to do that task, and (hopefully) some feedback after you have done the task. This is a fairly usual process as a trainee or junior lawyer and probably one of the main ways you will learn on the job.

Upwards management flips this process on its head and it’s where the more junior member of staff is the main driving force in this cycle. Essentially, it’s about you taking more control to manage a lifecycle of a task yourself. This increases your responsibility and helps show you are a team player.

Picture created by me on Canva. A simple example conversation of upwards management in action. The supervisor is blue whilst the junior lawyer is in pink. The example shows the junior lawyer is managing their timelines and is ensuring they will receive feedback.

But why should you practice upwards management?

As someone who is just starting out in a demanding career, you might feel you are not quite ready for any management responsibilities — after all, you have so much to learn and you didn’t sign up to management responsibilities from day one. But upwards management doesn’t mean taking on your own matters, it can be done through small but effective tasks (I cover the ‘how’ part more below). I found that practicing and learning how to upwards manage has had tremendous benefits on my career so far. Here are my top reasons why.

• Your manager is too busy — upwards management helps take the load off your manager and shows that you are a valuable and dependable team member (remember, this doesn’t need to be whole matters, it’s just about owning the task you have been given).
• You need to learn or your training needs aren’t met — whilst the firm you work for should have training in place to help you meet your CPD, sometimes you just aren't getting the ‘on the job’ feedback you need to learn. The on the job feedback is incredibly valuable because it puts theory into practice.
• Owning your task and showing you are responsible — you might not be ready to take on a matter manager role yet, but you need to be responsible for the tasks you are given from day one. Upwards management is a great way to show that you know what needs to be done and that you are on top of deadlines.
• Your mental well-being — this might sound like an odd one, but simply being given work, churning it out, and repeating the cycle can make you feel bored like you have no control, and if it’s too much — burnt out. Upwards management helps you feel more in control of your workload which also helps you put boundaries in place to protect your wellbeing. For example, being honest with realistic timelines (see the example in the picture for this).

So how do you upwards manage?

Let’s think about a scenario to start:

You open your Outlook to find 6 forwarded email chains with no descriptions and then the two words from your supervisor “please deal”. You don’t know the deadline, so you drop everything and do it right away. After hours of reading and unpicking what you think the client’s questions are, you send the supervisor your draft email to the client, and they forward to the client without copying you in. They send you a quick “thx”, with no information about whether they agreed with your approach, what could be improved, or whether they made any changes before they sent it to the client.

This isn’t a great supervision experience (in fact, it is very poor) and I’d like to say this has never happened to me, but it has and it probably happened to every other junior associate I know.

(Don’t worry — if you are just starting out, not all your supervisors will be like this. In fact, I have also had some very lovely ones which explain everything in detail and are great are giving feedback, but you need the tools to deal with all types of scenarios!)

Being given no information about a new matter doesn’t have to be the soul-sapping experience it sounds like. To get more out of this, you NEED to upwards manage. Here are some hints and tips on how to make this a better experience for you (and your supervisor!).

• Understand and confirm your scope — if a task isn’t 100% clear, confirm what you have to do with your supervisor. The earlier you can do this the better. No one wants you spending time on the wrong things (after all, in private practice, clients are usually paying a heavy price for your time). I normally put this in my confirmation/receipt email e.g. “thanks, I’ll review [the precise name of] Agreement, and look for [highlight anything you think are relevant risks for the client]”. If you can’t make any sense of it or need some background, then ask for a phone call. Remember, your supervisor might not have had time to look at what’s required, so the first task they are relying on you for is to tell them what you need.
• Confirm your timeline (if there is no obvious timeline) — since you’re probably already busy, you don’t want to keep starting something new every time you get a new email. This will make your life a nightmare! You need to have some kind of task list and only adjust this when necessary. If the timing isn’t already clear, confirm your timing to your supervisor so they know when to expect to hear back from you. This actually helps them too, because they can plan when they are going to review your work and give the client an update. I would say something like: “Thanks, I have some other things I’m working on right now so I will do this on [insert next available day]. If you or the client need me to do this sooner, please let me know and I will adjust my workload”.
• Confirm your timeline (if there is a deadline in place) — this sounds like an odd one, but remember the client deadline is not the only one in play. Your supervisor is working on multiple matters too and so you want to aim to get any drafts to a supervisor at least 24 hours before the actual client deadline to give them time to properly review. This is will mean there is more time to give you feedback on your draft and you might even get a go at a second draft, which is incredibly important for the whole learning experience because you learn what to improve on there and then.
• Don’t be afraid to chase — for some reason, I found this one scary at the beginning. I worried I was hassling my supervisor but when I did do this, they always thanked me! You probably guessed it — they are busy, and they are glad you are helping stay on top of deadlines (and also reassured that you’re taking responsibility too).
• Ask for feedback — I’ve only put this near the bottom because it comes later in the task lifecycle but its probably the most important. If your supervisor didn’t give you feedback on your draft, maybe its because it was great, and they didn’t need to change anything. However, what if it wasn’t up to scratch, but as soon as your supervisor amended it and sent it out, they had to get straight to the next thing on their list? I’ve had some lovely supervisors that have put feedback meetings in my diary to go over drafts comment by comment (which is so so valuable), but if you aren't getting the feedback you need to improve, just ask. You will look keen and enthusiastic and it will help you so much next time to you come to do a similar task.

The wrap up

Upwards management sounds like scary business spiel but actually, it’s just about taking control of your every day, your career, and your learning within the limits of your role. It helps manage your time and your supervisors’ and, at least for me, this really helps with managing mental well-being.

Do you have any upwards management top tips you found useful in your career? I’d love to hear them in the comments!

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About me

In my day job, I am UK qualified lawyer specialising in data protection advice and technology contracts. You can find me on LinkedIn here.

This article does not contain legal advice and only my personal opinions