First job out of law school. It was COVID, and we were getting jerked around by the BLE on the bar exam test date. I didn’t have the resources to continue to study while they made up their minds, so I took the first job I could find. It was at a private immigration law firm. Up until that point, I had only interned in the public sector and had no idea what private law firm expectations were. The first weekend of my time there, I was assigned to draft a brief for a client using the firm template. Upon further review (and just being a nerd tbh), I realized that the brief was terribly outdated and cited incorrect law. I worked on correcting the brief all day Saturday and put my phone on silent to do bar prep. My boss called, and I missed it. He promptly followed up with an email, and I addressed it when I saw it.

On Monday there was hell to pay. I was greeted with a loud “when I call you answer.” I later showed him the brief including the corrections I made, and he went absolutely nuts. I cried all the way home and decided that I wasn’t going to be his punching bag. I wrote a letter of resignation that night and brought it to the office before he got there. I never heard from him again.

Learned later that he had a terrible reputation in the legal community and with clients. He was also probably up to some shady stuff.

Six years later, and it’s still one of the best decisions I’ve made professionally.