Getting Juniors to be responsive Forum

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

Passion and enthusiasm about "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks."? For that salary I'd expect dedication and focus, but passion and enthusiasm is not going to come.

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

Passion and enthusiasm about "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks."? For that salary I'd expect dedication and focus, but passion and enthusiasm is not going to come.

Alternatively, "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks.? And if you do a great job at this task I will give you progressively more challenging and substantively impactful tasks until one day you can be an equity partner spearheading multi-billion dollar transactions that change the face of the U.S. economy and impact tens of millions of lives."

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

LOL @ 32 year old millennials complaining about the Kids These Days

[Prudent_Jurist]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

Passion and enthusiasm about "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks."? For that salary I'd expect dedication and focus, but passion and enthusiasm is not going to come.

Alternatively, "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks.? And if you do a great job at this task I will give you progressively more challenging and substantively impactful tasks until one day you can be an equity partner spearheading multi-billion dollar transactions that change the face of the U.S. economy and impact tens of millions of lives."

Man, why doesn’t anyone ever sell Biglaw like this with a straight face?

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

Passion and enthusiasm about "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks."? For that salary I'd expect dedication and focus, but passion and enthusiasm is not going to come.

Alternatively, "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks.? And if you do a great job at this task I will give you progressively more challenging and substantively impactful tasks until one day you can be an equity partner spearheading multi-billion dollar transactions that change the face of the U.S. economy and impact tens of millions of lives."

I am considered a very good junior, and my god do I hate working for seniors like this. Calm down. We are pushing paper. We are not saving babies. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

I take my job seriously and do a good job, but I am never going to be passionate about it. It’s just a job.

[Dcc617]

If anyone is wondering, the senior on here is a psycho. Avoid working with people like them.

[jotarokujo]

yeah i dont think expecting juniors to just learn from the redline itself (with no comments) is particularly effective. you have to actually explain things so they can do it on their own next time. it's also just inefficient to try to take away long term lessons from unexplained redline. simply adding comments into the document should be sufficient though

[Anonymous User]

You are talking about an industry with like 80% attrition for juniors by year 4. I'm not overly concerned about trying to "help" juniors. I am throwing a life preserver to a drowning man, if he wants to he can save himself, otherwise he is welcome to go under, and I will move on to the next one. Biglaw is merciless and most people aren't cut out for it and are beyond any hope of ever being good enough.

Law students and junior associates should read the above and understand that (1) there are some people like this who you will be working for, so prepare yourself, but also (2) there are many more people who are NOT like this and you should do anything you possibly can to avoid people like OP and get on teams with non-psychopaths. The quality of your management/supervision/mentorship is one of the most important things as a junior; don't let yourself fall behind and get burnt out because you feel like you need to be stuck with someone like OP.

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

Passion and enthusiasm about "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks."? For that salary I'd expect dedication and focus, but passion and enthusiasm is not going to come.

Alternatively, "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks.? And if you do a great job at this task I will give you progressively more challenging and substantively impactful tasks until one day you can be an equity partner spearheading multi-billion dollar transactions that change the face of the U.S. economy and impact tens of millions of lives."

I am considered a very good junior, and my god do I hate working for seniors like this. Calm down. We are pushing paper. We are not saving babies. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

I take my job seriously and do a good job, but I am never going to be passionate about it. It’s just a job.

Go look at how the top equity partners at your firm operate. They are always looking to be a step ahead, to anticipate, to cross-sell, to add value even before being asked, to get new and more business. It is a lot more than just "pushing paper." The just "pushing paper" people are the ones who never get anywhere. The ones who live and breathe every day to more and better work are the guys who get to the top of the pyramid.

[Anonymous User]

yeah i dont think expecting juniors to just learn from the redline itself (with no comments) is particularly effective. you have to actually explain things so they can do it on their own next time. it's also just inefficient to try to take away long term lessons from unexplained redline. simply adding comments into the document should be sufficient though

There isn't much to explain when you wrote the interest rate as 15% when it should have been 4%, when you stupidly and negligently failed to update the parties in the precedent document to reflect the parties in this transaction, when you somehow left many key terms from the term sheet out of your draft, or when you bizzarely wrote an incoherent mess of a document that completely failed to reflect the terms of this deal. The people who make it in this industry are not the ones asking for "explanations" they are the ones who, on their initiative, stay until midnight reviewing and reflecting on every change in the redline and updating their own arsenal of tricks so they will never make the same mistakes again. The truth is that biglaw is a very easy job, but you need to care enough to make yourself good at it, and that is on you not on the joke "mentoring," "training" or "reviews."

[Joachim2017]

This is one of those times where I wish we did enforce the no-anonymous posting rule, so that we can identify this one comically deluded senior associate posting such hot mess and then auto-ignore/skip any of his/her future posts on this site.

[Anonymous User]

This is one of those times where I wish we did enforce the no-anonymous posting rule, so that we can identify this one comically deluded senior associate posting such hot mess and then auto-ignore/skip any of his/her future posts on this site.

I bet it's also like a 4th year not really a senior.

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

LOL @ 32 year old millennials complaining about the Kids These Days

Yes, texting/ADD has absolutely increased since this senior was a junior. /eyeroll

The whole take is bizarre.

[Anonymous User]

Everyone always thinks the juniors that come after them are worse than they used to be. And the people who stick it out to senior levels are probably more committed to/better at the job than the people who leave earlier, so not representative of all previous juniors. Besides, ranting about people showing up to pay off loans and not committed to the job seems to ignore everything about law school/the legal profession that incentivizes people to do that.

The whole texting/ADD generation has definitely reduced quality across the board.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

Passion and enthusiasm about "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks."? For that salary I'd expect dedication and focus, but passion and enthusiasm is not going to come.

Alternatively, "hey, can you check this 300 page doc for punctuation? thanks.? And if you do a great job at this task I will give you progressively more challenging and substantively impactful tasks until one day you can be an equity partner spearheading multi-billion dollar transactions that change the face of the U.S. economy and impact tens of millions of lives."

I am considered a very good junior, and my god do I hate working for seniors like this. Calm down. We are pushing paper. We are not saving babies. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

I take my job seriously and do a good job, but I am never going to be passionate about it. It’s just a job.

For context, and not as a brag (it’s anonymous anyway), I am also a very good junior. Multiple partners on multiple deals have gone out their way email the partners in charge of my office to tell them how awesome I was. Numerous people have referred to me as the “rockstar” in my class. I am already being trusted with tasks above my year and am trusted to advise clients directly.

I do not share any of the opinions of this psycho senior nor do I act the way that they are suggesting is necessary to succeed. If a senior above me was behaving this way, I would go well out of my way to avoid them and would warn all my fellow juniors to avoid them. I would also give them only the bare minimum quality and effort. When I got to the firm, people above me gave similar warnings about terrible mid levels and seniors, and I have avoided ever working for them.

Perhaps this person is getting bad juniors because all the good juniors are smart enough to avoid them and have enough work from others to do so. Or, maybe the juniors are delivering poor work because this person is an asshole. Maybe both.

The lack of managerial skills in this profession is staggering.

[RedNewJersey]

So, Redline Senior seems to have a bad attitude on this thread (ADD generation, they all suck, merciless, blah blah blah), but I don't really understand the "he's a psycho and no wonder everyone he works with hates him." All he said was he sends redlines and is alarmed that juniors are not embarrassed by their embarrassing mistakes.

Dunno, sounds ... legit? I always check what edits are made to my work (even if people don't go to the effort of sending a redline--I often check filings, drafts on a document management system, etc.). And if I saw something that was an actual error (rather than just something I couldn't be expected to know), I would feel bad and--if the error was bad enough--would apologize. Recognizing when your work is bad is an important professional skill. From Redline Senior's perspective, I sort of get the idea of "the error is so bad that I would feel mean to actually write an email explaining 'the price should be correct next time, thanks.'" There's nothing psycho about that. Granted, it assumes a baseline level of GAF, but, well, thus the senior's complaint.

My theory, though, is not that juniors are generally bad. It's that juniors vary widely in skill, and neither law students nor juniors themselves recognize that. Redline Senior was, in all likelihood, a 90th+ percentile junior, and thought he was median. He needs to recalibrate.

[Joachim2017]

So, Redline Senior seems to have a bad attitude on this thread (ADD generation, they all suck, merciless, blah blah blah), but I don't really understand the "he's a psycho and no wonder everyone he works with hates him." All he said was he sends redlines and is alarmed that juniors are not embarrassed by their embarrassing mistakes.

Dunno, sounds ... legit? I always check what edits are made to my work (even if people don't go to the effort of sending a redline--I often check filings, drafts on a document management system, etc.). And if I saw something that was an actual error (rather than just something I couldn't be expected to know), I would feel bad and--if the error was bad enough--would apologize. Recognizing when your work is bad is an important professional skill. From Redline Senior's perspective, I sort of get the idea of "the error is so bad that I would feel mean to actually write an email explaining 'the price should be correct next time, thanks.'" There's nothing psycho about that. Granted, it assumes a baseline level of GAF, but, well, thus the senior's complaint.

My theory, though, is not that juniors are generally bad. It's that juniors vary widely in skill, and neither law students nor juniors themselves recognize that. Redline Senior was, in all likelihood, a 90th+ percentile junior, and thought he was median. He needs to recalibrate.

Well no, it's more because s/he says stuff like this:

I am throwing a life preserver to a drowning man, if he wants to he can save himself, otherwise he is welcome to go under, and I will move on to the next one. Biglaw is merciless and most people aren't cut out for it and are beyond any hope of ever being good enough.

It's a wildly inaccurate and out-of-proportion sense of what Big Law is, how to manage others, and what kind of perspective is needed to be successful long-term. Not to mention the kind of ego needed to think it. I can't imagine working on this person's cases, and I've been in the trenches with some pretty intense partners over the years.

[Anonymous User]

The whole demanding an apology combined with refusing to directly instruct juniors was pretty psycho too. When I get a redline with "let me know if you have any questions", there's no action necessary on my part. Maybe I'll respond "I see I misunderstood x, thanks for pointing that out". If I actually have a question I will ask (and usually get no response lol).

If someone directly points out an error, I say "thank you, I will keep that in mind in the future". No need to grovel. I've been assured by non psycho seniors and partners that this is part of the learning process.

ETA - @ red NJ, cmon man, read through the thread. That was hardly the entirety of their comments. You're cherry picking the least objectionable parts.

[Anonymous User]

“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”

[Anonymous User]

It is shocking to me how immature some of the responses from the soi-disant "life preserver throwers" are. I guess that just proves that being a lawyer does not mean you are also an effective co-worker/manager? Providing clear, express feedback is like good management 101.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Fun thread, really enjoying the mental illness of that one weirdo, hope he comes back.

Crazy to expect people making $250k a year to actually show some passion and enthusiasm, and care at least as much about their job as their next dinner date?

I just wanted to answer you since I'm a sixth year and no one else did directly. Not only is the sum total of every assignment I have ever completed in Biglaw not equal to the importance of my next dinner date, it's not even as important as the dump that will result from that dinner.

[Anonymous User]

"here's a redline, review it and apologize for the error of your ways" is a really bad way to give feedback. Just say "hey FYI, in the future note that the interest rate on this should be consistent with the term sheet" or whatever. Don't expect us to be mind readers.

If you are sent a redline with numerous changes, many of which are to reverse painfully obvious errors, you should feel pretty terrible about yourself, apologize profusely, and step up your game. This isn't 3rd grade, no one is going to sit here holding your hand and spoonfeeding you basic information.

What. an. asshole.

Not the person you're replying to, as I'm in litigation. But if the equivalent happened to me (senior sends redline which makes my errors apparent) I would not read your mind that I need to feel terrible and apologize. And I definitely wouldn't apologize. You're a dick with the attitude that anyone should feel terrible about themselves and obliged to apologize, just because they felt short of your or anyone else's standards.

On the other hand, I have had a senior tell me explicitly "you shouldn't have done X." And in that instance I apologized and said it won't happen again, then got it right the next time. Guess which senior is going to be more effective at eliminating errors? The here's a redline and I hope you feel bad or the one who explicitly states there's an issue and advises against making the mistake, without hoping that the other feels bad.

If you don't have the minimal competence or desire to improve to bother to review a redline, notice your mistakes, and apologize for egregious ones, then maybe this isn't the right job for you. You can go sell cars and not need to worry about precision or being detail oriented.

I can tell you that when I was a junior in biglaw I never made the horrific errors I see juniors today making on a daily basis. And if somehow I did, I would literally be expecting the managing partner of the firm to be marching into my office with a box.

(1) I love the irony of all the weekend posts from a furious senior on a thread dedicated to non-responsive juniors.

(2) Others have covered why this bozo is part of the problem, but let me add some additional perspective. So what if junior are making career ending egregious errors? Even if we accept as fact that juniors are all total shits these days, you're clearly not getting high enough quality work product with your apparently educational redlines. Maybe it's because your changes aren't as clear as you think. Or maybe it's because the junior just didn't read it. Regardless, it's obviously time to do something new like roll up your sleeves, put on your big boy pants, and be a real manager/mentor, for example by using some of the great advice articulated earlier ITT. Be a realist: your management style isn't working and others ITT have given numerous excellent examples of how a different style has yielded much better results than you're getting right now. You think it's not your job to "help" these juniors, but mentoring and training is part of YOUR job description. If you want them to hold up their end of the bargain, maybe you should start holding up yours.

Listen, I'm a midlevel gunning for partner and at times I've fallen victim to the "why doesn't everybody work as hard/well as me" trope. But most people don't want to make partner and that's fine. In fact, the biglaw system is built on that - could you imagine what life would be like if everybody stuck around for 10 years in hopes of making partner? But the side effect of that system is that sometimes you have to do some real managing for people who are far less motivated than you are. Trust me, it's really not that bad - I actually find it rewarding when I see a junior grow based on my advice. In the least, I get higher quality work product when I spend time to help juniors (they actually know what to do and my preferences, are motivated to do good work for me, etc.).

[Anonymous User]

Spent my junior years at Davis Polk and now a 6th year at a different V10.

My approach with juniors is largely informed by my own junior experience. I did far better work--higher quality, faster response times, more engaged, more likely to volunteer to do more--when I liked the senior or midlevel. Better yet if i saw them as a mentor or friend. It also gave me more confidence and stamina when dealing with shittier seniors. So I try to instill that in my juniors whenever I can.

DPW is one of those places where you're expected to review the senior's redline and glean your own lessons from it. Ofc seniors are expected to take the time to sit you down and go through the markup/issues, but if they didn't, the onus was still on you as a junior to "proactively engage" with their comments. Obviously if you're a senior, you can adopt this approach but it's very inefficient. Having my senior sit down with me for 15 minutes was usually more effective than me staring at pages of red and blue for 1-2 hours. I could obviously read the words but I didn't have the context or experience to understand the why, when, and how. Now that I'm a senior, I force myself to carve out the time to explain things. It's better for their development and makes MY life easier later. Investing in a junior in the early innings is what enables me to just forward things to them later with simple directions and have them run with it.

Anyway here are some things that might help.

1. When giving an assignment, tell them what the timing is upfront. I always tell them (a) how quickly the partner needs to review it in order to deliver to client and (b) when I'll actually have the time to review it. If it's after 8pm then I let them know if it's a tonight thing or can wait till tomorrow.

2. I tell every junior on our first deal together that it makes my life easier if they reply with a "will do" or some acknowledgment. Don't worry about filling up my inbox and it doesn't mean that the clock starts ticking once you reply (see #1). It just gives me peace of mind that you're on it

3. On Fridays I give them an update on where we are with the deal--they're not on copied on everything i am. And I let them know if I'll have any blackout periods and invite them to tell me the same. Always better if we can live our lives on the weekend. If we need to cancel stuff, well that's just the job sometimes but it's stupid to let simple bad communication be the cause.

4. I'll do "junior" work if my junior is away from a computer and I need something quickly. I've done signature pages on a weekend because I was at my desk anyway and my junior happened to be out. Why would I drag them back to their desk for that? Takes like 10 minutes.

5. Explain why things are happening and let them into the deal dynamics. I also try to introduce them to the junior folks at the client--or at least the investment bankers that are co-advising with us. That's actually the fun part of the job and i'm paid very well to keep our juniors engaged - also, again, makes my own life easier when they're not miserable.

At the end of the day, there's only a few years between me and my juniors. Those gaps don't mean much later. There are partners with 10-to-20-year gaps between them and they're all colleagues and know things that others don't. Everyone's life is a lot better if you view them as colleagues and less like doc grunts.

[BrowsingTLS]

ETA - @ red NJ, cmon man, read through the thread. That was hardly the entirety of their comments. You're cherry picking the least objectionable parts.

Seriously.

There isn't much to explain when you wrote the interest rate as 15% when it should have been 4%, when you stupidly and negligently failed to update the parties in the precedent document to reflect the parties in this transaction, when you somehow left many key terms from the term sheet out of your draft, or when you bizzarely wrote an incoherent mess of a document that completely failed to reflect the terms of this deal. The people who make it in this industry are not the ones asking for "explanations" they are the ones who, on their initiative, stay until midnight reviewing and reflecting on every change in the redline and updating their own arsenal of tricks so they will never make the same mistakes again. The truth is that biglaw is a very easy job, but you need to care enough to make yourself good at it, and that is on you not on the joke "mentoring," "training" or "reviews."

Wew lad. If that's true, I'm not gonna make it bros.