“I’ll take you up to meet the head honchos and all the candidates,” she said, as she turned in the direction of the elevator and I followed her.
Neither of us bothered to say goodbye to Morgan.
My palms were sweaty, and my head was spinning even more now, at her seemingly constant references to how many people were here for the interview.
I tried to take a few deep breaths and to repeat the phrase “I am strong and calm” to myself mentally.
It wasn’t really working, though. So, I decided to try to scope out some intel from my new pal Cynthia in advance.
“So, you said there are a lot of people here?” I asked, testing the waters.
“There sure are,” she said. “Davies seems to have a very… unorthodox way of doing things.”
I was about to ask her what she meant by that, but just then the elevator dinged, letting us know we had arrived.
That was a very fast ride!
I wasn’t sure I was ready for my possible future at this firm to begin, but, ready or not, here it came.
Chapter 2
Jocelyn
Before I knew it, ready or not— and in my case, it was definitely not— I was being ushered through yet another lobby area and then into a large open area that was like a conference room on steroids. There were many long, rectangular tables lined up, and a lot of people were already seated at the chairs around the tables.
Great, I thought, as I pulled out my chair.
Just what I needed for my social anxiety. I was usually a bit early, and I had meant to be even earlier today, but I wasn’t, because I had been trying to rehearse all the mantras in my Confidence Tracks first.
At least I hadn’t been late, but I was surprised to find so many people had arrived before me, and I wanted to kick myself for breaking my normal pattern. Hopefully, no one noticed, since there were so many people here, though.
Looking around the room, I realized that I recognized several people from my law school, who had been a class or two ahead of me. They currently worked at large firms with well-paying salaries.
Clearly this was a very competitive position and I began to doubt that I should even be here trying to get it. I had just graduated from law school and hadn’t managed to land any job, and these other contenders already had experience working at distinguished firms.
I have everything I need to be whatever I aspire to be, within me.
I tried to repeat this mantra to myself, but I didn’t even make it to the second half of the sentence before I gave up. My Confidence Track was clearly failing me now. I had no idea how I could stand out among this crowd of elite lawyers.
Soon, a meeting was called to order and several people walked up to the podium that was in the front of the room. One of them switched a monitor on began a slide show presentation, with the heading:
McKenzie and Smith Technologies merges with Davies and Sons Law firm!
Underneath that heading, in smaller letters, it said:
An exciting opportunity for growth and cooperation!
“Welcome, everyone,” the man said. “I’m Ashton Smith and this is Kane McKenzie.”
He gestured to the man standing beside him.
“I’d like to introduce you to the key players here at McKenzie Tech. We are a firm that started small but has grown into a much larger area, but we’ve remained focused on our core founding principles of respect and determination.
“The McKenzie and Smith side of things is made up the financial and accounting decision-makers,” Ashton continued. “And I’m happy to announce that we hired our own in-house legal counsel, with whom we will be partnering for advice and in-house counsel and who will be representing us on McKenzie and Smith matters, as well as maintaining their partnership. Davies and Sons will continue to represent the client base they’ve brought with them to our firm, including these distinguished companies and individuals.
Ashton clicks a button and names of large New York City and national, even international, companies flash on the screen. They roll by like movie credits, except to us they’re a lot more impressive, at least considering the industry we were working in. Or trying to work in.
“The reason we are hiring interns, which we hope to turn into employees in the form of associates here at the firm, are because we have a lot of legal work that needs done. Davies & Sons consists of a father and three sons who originally founded the firm, and then an already large staff consisting of senior and junior partners, senior and junior associates, paralegals, and legal assistants. Yet the staff will need to grow larger because we have additional work now and we plan to take on more.”