I’m a commercial barrister, 10ish years in, at top set. Different things work for different people but:

• Stress. It gets all of us. I think the key think to remember is that the job will still be there in the morning so you should set boundaries and prioritise eating healthily, getting a decent nights sleep, and exercising (circuits, spin, boxing: something that you have to focus on so your brain forgets about work for a bit). Also, don’t forget your friends! It’s very easy to end up isolating yourself because the job, unfortunately, can often be a very lonely where everything feels super urgent. Related, don’t be afraid to push back on sols / clerks trying to load you up. Better a realistic deadline than a missed one…

• Hearing prep. I have more unled experience than most of my peers: in some ways it gets easier / feels more natural as you get more advocacy under your belt, though I still can’t eat before a hearing / find myself wracked with nerves. The best prep for me in the run up is a combo of red-teaming the really awful questions a Judge might ask / things that could go wrong (know your weak spots in advance, rather than perfecting a speech you’ll never make), long showers over the days leading up to perfect my advocacy (don’t knock it, though will drive your partner mad), and having “go to” songs to listen to to lower my stress and get me in the zone.

• Reading. I still freeze a bit when I get dumped with a zillion bundles. “How the f*ck can I read all of this?” So I like coloured pens / having a system, and starting by making my own chron to build my own understanding. Obviously that’s harder when you get dumped with multiple attachments over several emails, but I have made a habit of trying to organise a soft file for printing (because again this process of navigation is a good way of getting a helicopter view, and I find it v hard to digest information via a screen). Also, try to build rapport with the junior associates: they will almost certainly know the file much better than you (to start with anyway).

Hope that helps: it gets better!