dingbat wrote:Anonymous User wrote:dingbat wrote:Do you need to constantly be in the office when there's no work, or can you stroll in late, take a long lunch, and leave early? (not in your first week, of course)
Define constantly in the office. If you aren't responding to emails in a very short period of time, I'm talking minutes, between the hours of 9:30 to 8 then certain types of people (let's call them 'lawyers') will grumble or call you directly to get an answer. If you're imagining coming in at 10, taking a two hour lunch outside the office and then leaving at 6:00 then no, that has never happened to me or anyone else I know at my firm (and if I did have a couple days like that it would be concerning). Don't get me wrong, some weeks you only bill 10~20 hours, but that doesn't mean you're free to do whatever you want during the day because you won't be able to predict when they will need you to bill those 10 hours and you'll have to be available. As I said before, they don't pay you 160k a year for nothing, they own all of your time when/if they need it.
I don't mean being unavailable for long stretches of time. I just mean is there an ass-in-seat requirement, or just a "respond within 60 seconds" requirement? At a previous job, I was expected to be available constantly during office hours and to respond reasonably quickly to any and every call/email, at any time. But at the same time, on a slow week it was not a problem if I took a long lunch, or if my colleague strolled in at 10 (or even 11) - just so long as it did not impact work at all.
I think it's a given that when you earn $100k+ (in any profession), that you're at the beck and call of your employer/client
To put it differently, during a slow period, can you get away with not being in the office at all hours, so long as you answer every call and respond to every email within minutes? (assuming that it doesn't impact the quality of your work)
Different anon here. FWIW, I am in corp at a non-Vault firm in a secondary market.
During slow periods I can easily get away with a 10 to 6 schedule with long periods out of my office. There is no ass-in-seat requirement, and there really couldn't be; sometimes you'll be pulled into a meeting, or a phone conference, or some partner wants to talk your ear off. Whatever the case, it's impossible to reliably be sitting in your office. I have found, though, that there is an expectation that you reply to e-mails sent during working hours (say, roughly, 8am to 8pm) promptly. I have responded to such e-mails while lying in bed at home, sitting on the can, or shopping with my girlfriend.
Generally, my firm treats its attorneys like the professionals they are and facetime is not a huge deal. What facetime is valuable for is actually
getting the work, because so many partners, especially when dealing with junior associates, delegate work based on who is in their line of vision.
Again, FWIW, I don't work in NYC. But I make 90k after tax, do corp, and work maybe 50 hours a week. It's a pretty good deal, and I would never trade it for litigation.