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AMA about legal employment
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most annoying opposing counsel?

How many hours per day/week/year. Why do you do it.

cookiejar1 wrote:most annoying opposing counsel?

Hmmmm I would have to say so far WLRK and Shearman....granted I've only worked with WLRK on a couple deals and Shearman on one so it might be random bad luck. A lot of local counsel from MN to Cyprus (while not technically opposing) have definitely made my life a lot harder too!

Anonymous User wrote:How many hours per day/week/year. Why do you do it.

Last year I billed between about 2600 and this year will likely be around 2500. Week to week and month to month it varies. One month I billed 50 hrs in the first two weeks and then 190 in the last two weeks. One month I billed 300 hrs and another I billed 110...enjoy those 110 hour months! Come late, leave early and kick back and read a book, go to the gym, etc. You have to do that to be able to get through the crazy times. Some people might say you should seek work during those slower months and sometimes I feel that impulse but my advice is resist it if you care about not getting burnt out (with the caveat that if the reason you're not getting work is that people are avoiding working with you obviously that's a different story and you shouldn't just be kicking back then!) Also, each additional 100 hours over I don't know 2200 or whatever gets harder and harder. I was on pace to bill 3000 in my first year and it felt unmanageable but 2500 is manageable to me although not ideal.

Why do I do it....well I took the job initially because as we all know there isn't much out there at the entry level. Now I'm at the point where I could leave but I'm not planning on it. There is still a lot of experience for me to get no matter what my path (I've been told that if you have two yrs big law experience you can apply for jobs that ask for four yrs experience but if you have four yrs experience you can apply got jobs that ask for ten yrs experience...an exaggeration perhaps but the general pt is sound imo) and frankly I generally like the work...I love drafting and I like negotiating and I work well under pressure. Of course I don't like the hours, chasing people, difficult clients, ridiculous fire drills, etc so I do have those moments where I get frustrated but overall I like the job way more than I expected.

Anonymous User wrote: Hmmmm I would have to say so far WLRK and Shearman....granted I've only worked with WLRK on a couple deals and Shearman on one so it might be random bad luck. A lot of local counsel from MN to Cyprus (while not technically opposing) have definitely made my life a lot harder too

What in particular was difficult about Shearman? Looking at joining there now.

can you please describe your worst/busiest day at work

Can you describe the learning curve and your progression through it? What did you start off working on, and what did you do now?

c/o 2010 V10 Corporate Associate here. can you please turn the schedules by tomorrow AM? after that ill need u to do a cross-ref check in the merger agreement before i send to client by tomorrow EOD. thx

Anonymous User wrote: What in particular was difficult about Shearman? Looking at joining there now.

As I mentioned it was one deal so it's not an indictment of the entire firm and tbh I don't think this should factor into your decision (what are your other choices?) but the people I worked with insisted on doing a lot of things that had no legal significance and they would think of these things all at the last min so everything was always a crazy emergency (true this is like every deal but this was the worst in that regard).

LawBron wrote:can you please describe your worst/busiest day at work

My absolute busiest days have been working the entire day and not going home. ..have had a few 48+ hr stretches, some full wknds in the office. The cause of these 24 hr days is usually someone deciding at the last min that they want to get a deal done really fast although I've also had a 20+ hr day when a closing is approaching because last min issues have come up or (the most annoying thing) because I've realized that someone I thought was on top of their shit getting done with the CPs actually isnt and now we have to get them done super fast. Even a closing where we are on top of things results in like 14+ hour days in the wk leading up to closing. I try to mitigate that craziness by doing everything in my power to get things out of the way ahead of time which does help a lot.

On those crazy days you're working at a frantic pace. While you're doing one thing you're getting emails asking you to do 20 other things. Meanwhile calls are scheduled all day because last min issues are coming up so you're working with a call in the background that you do need to listen to because stuff they're saying will affect the documents you're working on...or if you're unlucky you'll have to go to the partner's office for the calls while all those tasks are piling up. Similarly you need to read every email (including all the ones not addressed to you...) because they will also affect your docs and it is up to you to be on top of the info you have (and having worked with jrs or summers who either don't read emails or don't connect that the info in them is what they need for their task, i know the frustration of having a crazy day and then have someone ask a question s/he has the answer to...no problem with answering a question that the jr really doesn't know of course).

Plus some clients are difficult to work with (with the amount they pay us I guess they get to be however they want)...some are slow to get you the info you need so you're trying to chase them (while still being polite) and some are on top of things but just difficult and unreasonable (cough PE cough). During those crazy days (at least the ones due to doing a deal ridic quickly) the entire team is generally there (I've had partners stay the night multiple times) and the calls and drafting continue over night. If it is crazy approaching closing it is usually just the associates (often just the jrs) who are there because the primary terms have already been hammered out.

This is not standard though as I mentioned lol....

Okay that's a lot. ..will be back later to answer the others. Expecting some of those crazy days in Sept and need to get some stuff done.

What are some things you do to boost your overall efficiency?

As a V10 corporate associate - if I ever billed 2600 hours, that would be for sure the end of biglaw for me.....how do you do it?

Anonymous User wrote:As a V10 corporate associate - if I ever billed 2600 hours, that would be for sure the end of biglaw for me.....how do you do it?

he pads.

Old Gregg wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:As a V10 corporate associate - if I ever billed 2600 hours, that would be for sure the end of biglaw for me.....how do you do it?

he pads.

Haha....no. I actually tend toward underbilling and i know plenty of people at my firm are billing at least as much. I think it is the result of hiring two years in advance (when I was hired in 2011 the economy was still pretty shaky and firms were still being conservative in their hiring but fast forward two years when I arrived in 2013 all the transactional groups were slammed especially the ones I was/am in). We'll see how the fall is...I would be miserable for the next four months if I were to reach 2600 this year.

Old Gregg wrote:c/o 2010 V10 Corporate Associate here. can you please turn the schedules by tomorrow AM? after that ill need u to do a cross-ref check in the merger agreement before i send to client by tomorrow EOD. thx

Since I'm answering your other post.....hahaha.

Anonymous User wrote:

Old Gregg wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:As a V10 corporate associate - if I ever billed 2600 hours, that would be for sure the end of biglaw for me.....how do you do it?

he pads.

Haha....no. I actually tend toward underbilling and i know plenty of people at my firm are billing at least as much. I think it is the result of hiring two years in advance (when I was hired in 2011 the economy was still pretty shaky and firms were still being conservative in their hiring but fast forward two years when I arrived in 2013 all the transactional groups were slammed especially the ones I was/am in). We'll see how the fall is...I would be miserable for the next four months if I were to reach 2600 this year.

Old Gregg wrote:c/o 2010 V10 Corporate Associate here. can you please turn the schedules by tomorrow AM? after that ill need u to do a cross-ref check in the merger agreement before i send to client by tomorrow EOD. thx

Since I'm answering your other post.....hahaha.

ok, so how do you do it? 2600 seems completely unsustainable, I can't do that pace for 2 months straight, let alone a year and a half. Please explain.

$$$$$$ wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

Old Gregg wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:As a V10 corporate associate - if I ever billed 2600 hours, that would be for sure the end of biglaw for me.....how do you do it?

he pads.

Haha....no. I actually tend toward underbilling and i know plenty of people at my firm are billing at least as much. I think it is the result of hiring two years in advance (when I was hired in 2011 the economy was still pretty shaky and firms were still being conservative in their hiring but fast forward two years when I arrived in 2013 all the transactional groups were slammed especially the ones I was/am in). We'll see how the fall is...I would be miserable for the next four months if I were to reach 2600 this year.

Old Gregg wrote:c/o 2010 V10 Corporate Associate here. can you please turn the schedules by tomorrow AM? after that ill need u to do a cross-ref check in the merger agreement before i send to client by tomorrow EOD. thx

Since I'm answering your other post.....hahaha.

ok, so how do you do it? 2600 seems completely unsustainable, I can't do that pace for 2 months straight, let alone a year and a half. Please explain.

wrong profession for you then, friend

Anonymous User wrote:Can you describe the learning curve and your progression through it? What did you start off working on, and what did you do now?

When I started things were a little screwy because a lot of the tx departments were understaffed (this has been mitigated a lot as far as jr associates go in the subsequent classes) so a lot of times jr associates ended up with more substantive work than expected. It hasn't been a linear progression: I sometimes ran the primary documents in my first year and I sometimes do diligence and CPs (conditions precedent. ...certificates, etc usually very straightforward) now.

That being said as a first year I spent a lot of time on drafting resolutions, opinions, the various certs mentioned above, checklists and doing diligence, backup, sig pages, putting together executed docs, doing form checks. Spent a decent amount of time drafting or revising (frequently other people's changes to be accurate) primary agreements/documents, drafting disclosure...went to some org meetings/drafting sessions. The highlights (from a responsibility perspective anyway) were doing a pretty difficult deal with just me and a partner and also attending a drafting session that lasted a couple days alone (obv wasn't the original plan and at first I was worried but it turned out well).

As a second year, I still do most of what I described above but the proportion is changing...less of the certificates, checklists and diligence and more substantive stuff, including doing the primary drafting work (drafting the document laying out the terms of the final agreement and also turning the agreed upon terms into the agreement itself....sorry I prefer to be vague about the subspecialty I am in although I think people probably can narrow it down to a few) as well as doing some negotiation. I've also a couple more deals where I was the only associate. The other thing I'm doing more is working with a junior associate.

In terms of learning curve I would say it took me at least a few months to have a semblance of an idea of what I was doing but by the time I was about six months in I was a lot more comfortable..I think once you understand the structure and parts of a deal you start to learn about everything else a lot more quickly.