Poll for current junior associates: Do you waste a lot of time in the office? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Current junior associate at a DC V20. It's currently almost 5pm and I've only billed around 2 hours today. I've got plenty of stuff to do but not urgent and for some reason I just kinda slacked off today. My day: Long lunch with Law school classmate, surfed FB and instagram, doctor's appointment and took my time to get back, surfed TLS, closed my door and played a MOBA game on my phone. Got a meeting later and then will probably have to work a few hours at home.

Anyways, does this happen to ya'll or nah?

[Anonymous User]

I was literally just wondering this today myself. Same thing happened last Friday. Billed 2 hours and haven't done anything really because my supervising senior partner is in court and some other key players seem to be out as well. No billable hour requirement so I'm not stressing about that really, so long as I keep pumping out quality product.

Might just leave in an hour or so and hit the gym.

[Yea All Right]

Interesting. The poll says "I do have days like this sometimes." How often is sometimes?

[Anonymous User]

Interesting. The poll says "I do have days like this sometimes." How often is sometimes?

OP here. Sometimes is at least one time in your big-law life. AKA, anything other than "never."

[Yea All Right]

Interesting. The poll says "I do have days like this sometimes." How often is sometimes?

OP here. Sometimes is at least one time in your big-law life. AKA, anything other than "never."

You're giving me LSAT flashbacks bro

[Anonymous User]

Interesting. The poll says "I do have days like this sometimes." How often is sometimes?

OP here. Sometimes is at least one time in your big-law life. AKA, anything other than "never."

You're giving me LSAT flashbacks bro

Lol, not my intention at all. Was just trying to clarify.

[Anonymous User]

I was literally just wondering this today myself. Same thing happened last Friday. Billed 2 hours and haven't done anything really because my supervising senior partner is in court and some other key players seem to be out as well. No billable hour requirement so I'm not stressing about that really, so long as I keep pumping out quality product.

Might just leave in an hour or so and hit the gym.

Thanks for the 2 cents dude :cheers:

[Internetdan]

Seems like you could make more than 2 options here, something between "never" and "once in my entire career".

I don't know how junior you are, but it's likely you will encounter many days like this. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Then out of nowhere you will be billing 18 hours a day for a month. It's awesome.

[tyroneslothrop1]

Yeah of course. My work is steady tho so I never do two hours in a day. More like I sit in my chair for four hours and accomplish three hours of work.

[Johann]

3 days out of my last 6 in the office I billed 3 hours or less. Today I'll prolly hit 17ish. Some of it's wasting time; some is not really up to me.

[Pokemon]

I am usually efficient because I always feel like you never know what will come next and try to get things out of the way in advance. However, after I have a rally busy week/few days and then all I have the next day is some 2-hour work project, I get extraordinarily inneficient: as in I will review a doc or write a sentence, make a note for keeping time, and then spend the next two hours reading the most random websites.

[5ky]

i would say 90% of my work needs to get done that day, so i rarely have days where i have a full day's work where i blow it off.

if i have a long term project, though, i do procrastinate on that quite a bit. then of course i have lots of days where i dont have anything to do and bill under 2 hours a day.

[Anonymous User]

Of course. Corporate biglaw is all about forcing yourself to focus on insignificant mind-numbing minutiae, trivial details, literally checking commas, copy and pasting or reviewing someone else's copy and pasting, and generally the most boring tasks imaginable. That's the job. There's no intellectual stimulation, problem-solving, or creative challenges involved, which is probably what most intelligent, ambitious top law school grads were hoping for in a job. Unless you're paranoid and neurotic to a fault, this will only get worse. Any normal person is going to have plenty days like what you described. The job revolves around finding a way to focus on shit that pretty much no one wants to focus on.