I’m a junior associate (rising 3rd year) in a transactional field. A few weeks ago, while a partner was on vacation, I was basically staffed to do a major transaction with him all by myself. The client got very angry at a few mistakes (an email typo, one email crossing etc.) and at being forced to talk to me instead of the vacationing partner, and the partner shouted at me and threatened to take me off the deal for not being careful enough. I had asked for someone more senior to be staffed on the deal, and I said I would be ok being taken off because I didn’t understand what was going on. In the end I was kept on because we’re extremely short staffed. Fast forward a couple of weeks later, and the partner (after reviewing some docs I sent the senior with a note to sanity check the mechanics because I’ve never done this deal before) called me into his office and basically said I’m the worst lawyer he’s ever worked with, point-blank asked me if I lied on my CV about past experience and said that no one makes mistakes like I do (he said other juniors send him flawless work product and even sometimes correct him, while my drafts are useless). I’m not exaggerating, those were basically his exact words.
Until this deal, no one at my current firm (including this partner) had given me negative feedback, so I was completely taken aback. I had been laid off before from a much bigger office of another big firm, so I was usually accustomed to bigger teams and more oversight, rather than working with partners directly, but even at my previous firm I had received almost universally good feedback and had been let go for low hours (I got recommendation letters from partners at my old firm, and one even put me in touch with their spouse, who is a recruiter). I do realize that maybe because of this I’m not as experienced as someone at my year level should be, but after this exchange I was genuinely dumbfounded and left wondering if I have a future in law or if I should just quit. The group head and a counsel had given me good feedback only a couple of weeks prior, so I had no clue I was messing up this badly.