I'm a senior in a corporate transactional practice (V50-ish), and I'm not really sure where to go from here.
My most recent reviews have been good and my hours are okay but not great for my team.
But I genuinely feel like I'm technically behind and it's been leading to a really bad patch, where it feels like a negative feedback loop. For example, I just spent 10-15 hours marking up a purchase agreement and wanted to cry, really. It was difficult because I was coming in on a deal I hadn't really been involved in. But my time was like: spend first few hours trying to get up to speed on what's going on, spend 1-2 hours getting confused about a technical point and then trying to figure it out, spend 3-4 hours slowly going through mark up, PANIC about time, rush....and then get things wrong or miss things, even though that added up to 10-15 hours spent on a document. And then work on other deals just piles up because I've spent 15+ hours on one thing.
Or else, I've felt overwhelmed on deals where it just feels like things are going too fast for me to process. And it's hard because, either, I'll cling to the partner (I know this isn't good!) or do work that's more junior than what I should be doing, and feel better because it feels 'safer'.
I think recently I've been so overwhelmed or even burnt out that I've been hiding from work and being slow and pushing deadlines.
I know I can't keep going on like this, and I want to feel confident and in control at work, or at least get myself out of this state before I get warned about quality of work product etc.
But I don't know how to make this better? I'd like to move in-house or even to another team but I feel like I'm not where I should be for my class level, so feel trapped and like I need to improve before I can move.
Has anyone been in a position anywhere similar to this? Or any ideas on people to talk to about this? I tried talking to friends at different firms, but I don't think they understand because they don't have the same technical concerns/issues. I tried to talk about it indirectly with partners I get along with, and they reassured me that I've improved a lot since I first started at the firm and it's normal to feel unsure. But also feel a bit at breaking point because the combination of feeling pressure to perform and feeling unsure, at senior level, is causing huge amounts of stress.