I’m based in the UK and qualified as an associate a few months ago. I’ve mostly received good feedback on my work and proactivity so far which is encouraging, and generally feel that I am stepping up to the role post-traineeship well.
Recently I got put on a new matter with a partner who has a rep within the team for being difficult to work with. Basically, I fucked something up by initially misunderstanding this person’s instructions and doing a more detailed thing than was needed, and then again by missing something in this person’s email when they asked me to redo it (I had spent all night on the first version so was running on two hours of sleep). I got chewed out and told this was unacceptable and caused delays and was embarrassing to the client etc.
Having spoken with people in the team who have worked with this particular partner, they all had similar stories of having been chewed out for not having met this person’s expectations. Whilst I acknowledged it was my mistake, I also felt the reaction was disproportionate to the actual impact of the mistake (which was ultimately nothing, seeing as it was all fixed before it went to the client).
The odd thing is, this partner continues to reach out to me to staff me on their matters, but seeing what they are like makes me reluctant to want to continue to work with them. The incident has now also really demotivated me and made me question my capabilities, even though feedback I had otherwise received up until then was good.
Any advice for dealing with people like this?