Obsession with Responsiveness/Availability? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Why do you think they’ve never worked in biglaw? I’m pretty sure from their other posts that they have.

Because no one who worked in biglaw would actually think that the partners care whether an individual associate billed 2400 hours v. 2000 hours. That is what people who never worked in biglaw think, but when you are actually there you realize that the partners don't focus on that level of granularity. Rather, the focus is on having associates that produce quality work product that allow the partners to do their jobs well.

It may be rational to say partners care just as much or possibly more about a significant work quality variance than a 400 hour discrepancy but to say partners do not care if you are billing 2400 vs 2000 is absolutely moronic. It's a take as bad as associates don't care if they get market pay because they have the honor of working with the heavy hitter partners at Cravath

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Why do you think they’ve never worked in biglaw? I’m pretty sure from their other posts that they have.

Because no one who worked in biglaw would actually think that the partners care whether an individual associate billed 2400 hours v. 2000 hours. That is what people who never worked in biglaw think, but when you are actually there you realize that the partners don't focus on that level of granularity. Rather, the focus is on having associates that produce quality work product that allow the partners to do their jobs well.

Senior associate here. Quantity is considered way more important than quality and partners care a lot about associate hours.

[Anonymous User]

Why do you think they’ve never worked in biglaw? I’m pretty sure from their other posts that they have.

Because no one who worked in biglaw would actually think that the partners care whether an individual associate billed 2400 hours v. 2000 hours. That is what people who never worked in biglaw think, but when you are actually there you realize that the partners don't focus on that level of granularity. Rather, the focus is on having associates that produce quality work product that allow the partners to do their jobs well.

Senior associate here. Quantity is considered way more important than quality and partners care a lot about associate hours.

There are associates at DPW/Cravath who regularly bill 1900 hours a year, but do fantastic work, and are treated like gold (though obviously never going to make partner) and then associates who bill 2300 hours a hour, make mistakes, and are soon told that they have no long term future in biglaw and should think about next steps (and then with enough mistakes hours go down too).

There is literally no one who cares on an individual associate basis whether an associate billed 2400 rather than 2000. Now, in a partnership year, with the amount of worked piled on 2400 might just be required to get it done, but if somehow you were super-efficient and did it all in 2000 hours, the powers that be would be thrilled.

If anything, partners operate on a project-by-project basis, and their fear is inefficient associates that balloon the bill and require write offs, not fantastic efficient associates who actually get the project down under anticipated cost.

[Anonymous User]

Why do you think they’ve never worked in biglaw? I’m pretty sure from their other posts that they have.

Because no one who worked in biglaw would actually think that the partners care whether an individual associate billed 2400 hours v. 2000 hours. That is what people who never worked in biglaw think, but when you are actually there you realize that the partners don't focus on that level of granularity. Rather, the focus is on having associates that produce quality work product that allow the partners to do their jobs well.

Senior associate here. Quantity is considered way more important than quality and partners care a lot about associate hours.

There are associates at DPW/Cravath who regularly bill 1900 hours a year, but do fantastic work, and are treated like gold (though obviously never going to make partner) and then associates who bill 2300 hours a hour, make mistakes, and are soon told that they have no long term future in biglaw and should think about next steps (and then with enough mistakes hours go down too).

There is literally no one who cares on an individual associate basis whether an associate billed 2400 rather than 2000. Now, in a partnership year, with the amount of worked piled on 2400 might just be required to get it done, but if somehow you were super-efficient and did it all in 2000 hours, the powers that be would be thrilled.

If anything, partners operate on a project-by-project basis, and their fear is inefficient associates that balloon the bill and require write offs, not fantastic efficient associates who actually get the project down under anticipated cost.

A 5th year M&A associate here. This is accurate.

[Anonymous User]

90% of V100 firms have hours requirements but if you turn in really efficient work 30 hours below the threshold they'll be sure to give you a pat on the back and a handshake because these are the things that matter more than getting paid

[Anonymous User]

90% of V100 firms have hours requirements but if you turn in really efficient work 30 hours below the threshold they'll be sure to give you a pat on the back and a handshake because these are the things that matter more than getting paid

The expectation is that you do a shit ton of work efficiently. The prize for being efficient is even more work. They treat like gold those associates that bill less hours per deal but do quality work so that they can staff them on even more deals.

[Anonymous User]

90% of V100 firms have hours requirements but if you turn in really efficient work 30 hours below the threshold they'll be sure to give you a pat on the back and a handshake because these are the things that matter more than getting paid

Lots of firms will give you a significant bonus if you are 30 hours under 2k. But what about if you bill 2700 hours? How many bills are giving you a pro rata bonus bump to compensate for those 700 extra hours? Zero you say? Maybe because the firms don't really care about 2400 v. 2000 relative to the quality of work you are performing and whether you are making clients happy so they will give the firm more work?

[Anonymous User]

I think a law firm is going to want everything - quality, quantity and efficiency. But this basically bumps up against the old adage of "pick two - cheap, fast or good."

It's really more a matter of trade offs and having the judgment and discretion to figure out what the client/partner wants for a particular transaction and adjusting accordingly. It's going to be different for each transaction and there will also be differences among partners. Small transactions with lower stakes are going to lean towards quantity + efficiency over quality. Larger transactions with high stakes are going to lean towards quantity + quality over efficiency. Then, there's the murky middle that makes up 95% of transactions.

[Tokyo_Rose]

Not sure if the most obvious answer has yet been provided, but, at the level of the V50, only rarely can clients tell the difference between A+ and B+ legal work, but nearly ubiquitously can clients tell the difference between A+ and B+ service.

Said another way, the deliverables in our business are sufficiently substitutable to most clients (and the billing rates for such deliverables are sufficiently comparable) such that the only meaningful distinction most law firms can compete on is responsiveness and availability.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure if the most obvious answer has yet been provided, but, at the level of the V50, only rarely can clients tell the difference between A+ and B+ legal work, but nearly ubiquitously can clients tell the difference between A+ and B+ service.

Said another way, the deliverables in our business are sufficiently substitutable to most clients (and the billing rates for such deliverables are sufficiently comparable) such that the only meaningful distinction most law firms can compete on is responsiveness and availability.

Is this actually true. If the lazy in house counsel, many of whom did time at top firms, actually cared enough to really dig into documents and follow up with hard hitting questions, wouldn't they be able to figure out how good the work product actually is? I mean at some point there is a reason you pay a big premium to use CSM and not DLA.

[Anonymous User]

Why do you think they’ve never worked in biglaw? I’m pretty sure from their other posts that they have.

Because no one who worked in biglaw would actually think that the partners care whether an individual associate billed 2400 hours v. 2000 hours. That is what people who never worked in biglaw think, but when you are actually there you realize that the partners don't focus on that level of granularity. Rather, the focus is on having associates that produce quality work product that allow the partners to do their jobs well.

Senior associate here. Quantity is considered way more important than quality and partners care a lot about associate hours.

There are associates at DPW/Cravath who regularly bill 1900 hours a year, but do fantastic work, and are treated like gold (though obviously never going to make partner) and then associates who bill 2300 hours a hour, make mistakes, and are soon told that they have no long term future in biglaw and should think about next steps (and then with enough mistakes hours go down too).

There is literally no one who cares on an individual associate basis whether an associate billed 2400 rather than 2000. Now, in a partnership year, with the amount of worked piled on 2400 might just be required to get it done, but if somehow you were super-efficient and did it all in 2000 hours, the powers that be would be thrilled.

If anything, partners operate on a project-by-project basis, and their fear is inefficient associates that balloon the bill and require write offs, not fantastic efficient associates who actually get the project down under anticipated cost.

A 5th year M&A associate here. This is accurate.

Litigation partner here. The partnership as a whole--including the committees determining your compensation, evaluating you for partnership, etc.--cares about your hours, though I still think that good hours (and 2000-2200 hours is "good," to be clear) plus consistently great work trumps super-high hours and OK work (especially as you get more senior). But I certainly agree that individual partners, for the most part, really don't care about the total number of hours any given associate is billing and care much more about the quality of the work.

[Anonymous User]

90% of V100 firms have hours requirements but if you turn in really efficient work 30 hours below the threshold they'll be sure to give you a pat on the back and a handshake because these are the things that matter more than getting paid

Lots of firms will give you a significant bonus if you are 30 hours under 2k. But what about if you bill 2700 hours? How many bills are giving you a pro rata bonus bump to compensate for those 700 extra hours? Zero you say? Maybe because the firms don't really care about 2400 v. 2000 relative to the quality of work you are performing and whether you are making clients happy so they will give the firm more work?

This was me; i work at a big law firm with tiered bonus structure, did 300 hours above top tier, brought in a significant client that the firm collected $300k on in last 3 months of the year (am class of 2014-2016, so near that part of my career where it starts to matter), was summer associate coordinator in my office, and lots of other soft achievements - and my bonus was 5% above what I received the year prior and the same as someone in my office with 400 less hours, no client, etc. So I'm just dead to all of this now.

[Anonymous User]

Why are some (most?) partners obsessed with responsiveness and availability to the point that they’d rather have C level work within 1 day than B+ level (or even A level) work within 2-3 days? Is working faster/more “efficiently” really seen as better than doing good work? I’m a midlevel who does good work when there’s enough time, but some of my work has been sloppy because of these insane timelines partners are placing on us.

It’s just crazy because we are taught that perfection is something to strive for in law school, and that doesn’t seem to be the case in practice.

You need to work on A level work on a fast timeline. There is no reason you can’t have both.

Just came to say that A level work on a fast timeline becomes physically impossible after a sustained period of endless work, and I hate that partners (suspect a partner wrote the quoted comment) can’t see that

[glitched]

The most important aspect of responsiveness is that you know the person is on it. Otherwise, the delegator is going to worry it's not being taken care of. That's why you should always say "will do" or something like that ("Received" or whatever) as soon as possible. Once that's in, you should take as much time to get the assignment right or work on it when it works with your schedule.

The exception is when it's a real fire drill, which the senior/partner should tell you or you should be able to figure out based on the context. Then you gotta get it out fast and the senior/partner should understand that the quality won't be as good.