Oh sure, you can do that. But doing that every now and then isn't going to affect your total hours all that much. Someone one your team has to do the work, after all. And if the team is headed for a 300 hour month, it's not like you can practically get away with doing 200 because you're pacing yourself to hit 2,300 for the year. YMMV, I guess.JusticeJackson wrote:If you're 100% swamped, and you'll 100% definitely be there past midnight as it is, you can't say that to the guy? If he says "everyone else is slammed too," then I'd take the work, but I have no problem letting people know I'm already at full capacity. Does that not work at other firms? I'll still hit 2200-2400 this year, so it's not like I'm slacking.rayiner wrote:You'll have at least a couple each year. Its hard to say. You don't have much control over your hours. You can't turn down assignments. If you get on a busy string of cases, then you do a 2,700 hour year, and it's not because you planned to.ChardPennington wrote:Are 300 hour months commonplace? That seems absurd.rayiner wrote:200 hours a month averaged over a year is more than solid in big law. But you will have 300 hour months and your efficiency will probably go down.
At my firm, they told us at the beginning that nobody really cares about your hours as long as you do the assigned work. And I didn't believe them. Obviously they care about hours! That's how they make their money! But I realized that nobody really does care about your hours, at least not on any short time scale. They staff you on teams based on your estimated workload, and you do the tasks you're given (with some reasonable accommodation to make sure load is distributed fairly among the team). And if your cases get really busy, you have a string of 300 hour months, and if they're not, you have a string of 130 hour months. And at the end, whatever your total hours are doesn't matter all that much (at least at a lockstep firm).
