Lots of posts like this. “If I extrapolate YTD hours, I’m not on track for my target. Should I get a job elsewhere?”
The answer is always: if you like your firm and like the people you work with, no. Make more noise about trying to get more work, within whatever systems your firm uses for assignments. If all else fails, ask trusted partners if there are any non-billable things you could do for them that would be helpful, as long as you’re not at capacity with billable work.
What you are describing here is a *very* common kind of anxiety that I think a lot of us deal with (including myself), so what you need to do is learn to deal with that anxiety. This sub will not be much help in that. Many of the other redditors suffer from the same anxiety and will only vindicate it (e.g., “you’re not getting the development experience you need,” blah blah blah). But you need to do that because it will *follow* you, even if you *do* lateral into a position that keeps you so busy that you can’t dwell on your hours.
The way that I have learned to deal with this anxiety is simply to reduce it to asking if the answers to the questions I’m asking would make any difference to my actual actions taken. Am I being frozen out/being encouraged to leave? Well, maybe so, maybe not, what difference will it make to how I work *today* and whether I do a good job *today*? So often I find that I’d rather stick it out for a while with a job that I like and isn’t driving me nuts - due to being slow. Do I want to start all over with a new firm that maybe doesn’t have the same client base or chill WFH policy? Nah.
So that’s why I say - if you like the work, the team, the firm, why leave? If you end up so behind on hours this month that you don't recover by year end, then what? Absolutely worst case then is they say, bye, here's three months web time and some severance. More likely is, let's get the hours up next year. More likely still is that work picks up soon and you'll forget all about this.
This happened to me at my former firm, it seemed like they didn’t even have a game plan for me to work there. Every few months I would rattle the cage and tell partners I’m not getting enough work. After 4 months I started to tell more senior partners about my situation. I recommend doing the same. After a year, I had not been awarded bonuses due to my hours and even though I kept rattling, the partners in charge of my work were too behind on their cases to give me sufficient work. I left that firm.
My next firm gave me sufficient work from my third day and I’ve been there since. The stress of not having enough work hasn’t crossed my mind once and I’m grateful every day, even on the shitty ones. I resonate completely with your situation and I think the best option would be to try and get more work, but after a few times rattling the cage, don’t feel bad leaving. I’m sorry for the stress and general hopelessness. I promise it’ll get better
This sub is so weird. Half the posts are people exaggerating about how biglaw is so inhumane and soul crushing, and the other half are people who take the exaggeration seriously and think because their job is not inhumane and soul crushing they must not be doing it right.
You're fine and your experience is normal. You're getting work. The people claiming they're working 16 hours a day are, generally speaking, full of shit and trying to make themselves sound more important than they actually are. Leaving to find another job where you will get more work for the same pay is stupid.
Yeah, I learned years ago that the question you get on the elevator, “been busy?” is a lot like the question, “how are you?” There’s really only one response and it’s, “yeah, crazy, how about you?” Probably not even true most of the time.
Try to do non billable business development work to take up some time. Do your CLEs too. Ask specific people for work you can do. Just because you fill out a form doesn’t mean people look at it. Keep making noise.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted, it's good advice. The billable biz dev gives you some visibility, and it's better than just sitting around twiddling your thumbs.
Get creative: if you are in a transactional field, start bugging people in other related areas. There’s no rule that says that you can’t knock on the bankruptcy partner’s door and ask him/her for work to do.
I did a fair amount of that when I was a midlevel associate (things were a lot busier than) and wound up with great cross department relationships and learned how to do different types of things that most people in my group didn’t know how to do.
The bankruptcy department is the best place to go when things are slow for everyone else, and it’s countercyclical. It pretty much crosses every practice area and you can add value by using your speciality to help them.
As a bankruptcy associate, I wish more ppl felt this way. We need other departments expertise soooo much in so many things. and unfortunately, most of the other practice groups (at my firm) aren’t interested in doing bankruptcy matters.
I was in the same boat when I started. Slow first few months, so much so that I actually drafted an email saying that I wanted to switch to a busier practice group. I didn't send the email... stayed the course... and then things picked up. Sometimes it just takes time. That said, make sure you are making an effort - reaching out to partners, etc.
Similar situation and I think it’s somewhere in the middle of the pendulum of responses. Aka taking it day by day, talking with a recruiter while also asking partners for more work.
> Or you can present the offer to your existing firm and ask for some sort of assurance that your job is safe in exchange for staying at your existing firm. If they won’t give you that assurance, take your offer and move on.
Admittedly, I have never been in this position before, but I have to think that that would not go over well. What "assurance" are you looking for? OP is presumably an at-will employee. Sure, they can give an assurance that OP's job is safe...*for now*. It almost comes across as someone trying to make a power play when they don't have any leverage or real bargaining power.
Your third PS is only true for “official” layoffs. The whole point of “stealth” layoffs is that you are employed, usually with website time and collecting a salary, with the expectation that you will find another job after X amount of time. You can, and should be considering your next move as a “lateral” rather than going from unemployed and fired to a new job.
Are you in a single practice group or are you able to get work from multiple groups? Start door knocking. You need to do more than filling out reports. Your hours as a second year are your problem. And unfortunately lawyers are terrible at giving critical feedback so a lot of them won’t point out issues with your work product but just not staff you on the next thing, and your work product issues become apparent only through billed hours. I’m not telling you to make you panic but to incite you to get to knocking on doors and be sure to give 110% to the assignments you do get. Bad hours are a thing that you can easily bounce back from as soon as you course correct and start getting the hours, but you need to be getting to that point pretty consistently and hopefully soon. Good luck!
If firms fired everyone who didn’t hit hours in a given year, I’d guess that there would be very few associates left
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Fair enough, just seems short sighted
Firm specific. Very very few people in my group made hours and nobody got let go
Lots of posts like this. “If I extrapolate YTD hours, I’m not on track for my target. Should I get a job elsewhere?” The answer is always: if you like your firm and like the people you work with, no. Make more noise about trying to get more work, within whatever systems your firm uses for assignments. If all else fails, ask trusted partners if there are any non-billable things you could do for them that would be helpful, as long as you’re not at capacity with billable work. What you are describing here is a *very* common kind of anxiety that I think a lot of us deal with (including myself), so what you need to do is learn to deal with that anxiety. This sub will not be much help in that. Many of the other redditors suffer from the same anxiety and will only vindicate it (e.g., “you’re not getting the development experience you need,” blah blah blah). But you need to do that because it will *follow* you, even if you *do* lateral into a position that keeps you so busy that you can’t dwell on your hours. The way that I have learned to deal with this anxiety is simply to reduce it to asking if the answers to the questions I’m asking would make any difference to my actual actions taken. Am I being frozen out/being encouraged to leave? Well, maybe so, maybe not, what difference will it make to how I work *today* and whether I do a good job *today*? So often I find that I’d rather stick it out for a while with a job that I like and isn’t driving me nuts - due to being slow. Do I want to start all over with a new firm that maybe doesn’t have the same client base or chill WFH policy? Nah. So that’s why I say - if you like the work, the team, the firm, why leave? If you end up so behind on hours this month that you don't recover by year end, then what? Absolutely worst case then is they say, bye, here's three months web time and some severance. More likely is, let's get the hours up next year. More likely still is that work picks up soon and you'll forget all about this.
This happened to me at my former firm, it seemed like they didn’t even have a game plan for me to work there. Every few months I would rattle the cage and tell partners I’m not getting enough work. After 4 months I started to tell more senior partners about my situation. I recommend doing the same. After a year, I had not been awarded bonuses due to my hours and even though I kept rattling, the partners in charge of my work were too behind on their cases to give me sufficient work. I left that firm. My next firm gave me sufficient work from my third day and I’ve been there since. The stress of not having enough work hasn’t crossed my mind once and I’m grateful every day, even on the shitty ones. I resonate completely with your situation and I think the best option would be to try and get more work, but after a few times rattling the cage, don’t feel bad leaving. I’m sorry for the stress and general hopelessness. I promise it’ll get better
This sub is so weird. Half the posts are people exaggerating about how biglaw is so inhumane and soul crushing, and the other half are people who take the exaggeration seriously and think because their job is not inhumane and soul crushing they must not be doing it right. You're fine and your experience is normal. You're getting work. The people claiming they're working 16 hours a day are, generally speaking, full of shit and trying to make themselves sound more important than they actually are. Leaving to find another job where you will get more work for the same pay is stupid.
Yeah, I learned years ago that the question you get on the elevator, “been busy?” is a lot like the question, “how are you?” There’s really only one response and it’s, “yeah, crazy, how about you?” Probably not even true most of the time.
I was at midlaw and had like 13 hour days every week and random Sunday night work. Idk guess it depends on the person
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Try to do non billable business development work to take up some time. Do your CLEs too. Ask specific people for work you can do. Just because you fill out a form doesn’t mean people look at it. Keep making noise.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted, it's good advice. The billable biz dev gives you some visibility, and it's better than just sitting around twiddling your thumbs.
Agree with this. I did a conference and wrote a bunch of articles...3- 6 months later, those choices turned into consistent billable work.
What are your hours?
Get creative: if you are in a transactional field, start bugging people in other related areas. There’s no rule that says that you can’t knock on the bankruptcy partner’s door and ask him/her for work to do. I did a fair amount of that when I was a midlevel associate (things were a lot busier than) and wound up with great cross department relationships and learned how to do different types of things that most people in my group didn’t know how to do.
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The bankruptcy department is the best place to go when things are slow for everyone else, and it’s countercyclical. It pretty much crosses every practice area and you can add value by using your speciality to help them.
As a bankruptcy associate, I wish more ppl felt this way. We need other departments expertise soooo much in so many things. and unfortunately, most of the other practice groups (at my firm) aren’t interested in doing bankruptcy matters.
I was in the same boat when I started. Slow first few months, so much so that I actually drafted an email saying that I wanted to switch to a busier practice group. I didn't send the email... stayed the course... and then things picked up. Sometimes it just takes time. That said, make sure you are making an effort - reaching out to partners, etc.
Are you actively reaching out to get work from partners and seniors you want to work with? If not, you should be.
Similar situation and I think it’s somewhere in the middle of the pendulum of responses. Aka taking it day by day, talking with a recruiter while also asking partners for more work.
I needed to read this today.
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> Or you can present the offer to your existing firm and ask for some sort of assurance that your job is safe in exchange for staying at your existing firm. If they won’t give you that assurance, take your offer and move on. Admittedly, I have never been in this position before, but I have to think that that would not go over well. What "assurance" are you looking for? OP is presumably an at-will employee. Sure, they can give an assurance that OP's job is safe...*for now*. It almost comes across as someone trying to make a power play when they don't have any leverage or real bargaining power.
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Leverage to *what*?
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I think you fundamentally misunderstand who has the power in this 'negotiation'.
Your third PS is only true for “official” layoffs. The whole point of “stealth” layoffs is that you are employed, usually with website time and collecting a salary, with the expectation that you will find another job after X amount of time. You can, and should be considering your next move as a “lateral” rather than going from unemployed and fired to a new job.
Hi no advice except I’m in the exact same boat as you, second year lateralled in August feeling same way. Glad I’m not alone!
Are you in a single practice group or are you able to get work from multiple groups? Start door knocking. You need to do more than filling out reports. Your hours as a second year are your problem. And unfortunately lawyers are terrible at giving critical feedback so a lot of them won’t point out issues with your work product but just not staff you on the next thing, and your work product issues become apparent only through billed hours. I’m not telling you to make you panic but to incite you to get to knocking on doors and be sure to give 110% to the assignments you do get. Bad hours are a thing that you can easily bounce back from as soon as you course correct and start getting the hours, but you need to be getting to that point pretty consistently and hopefully soon. Good luck!