Is it normal to get your balls busted at your SA? Forum

[smaug]

Anon maybe your peers care less than you because they are smarter than you and are rationally disinterested.

Keep going with those 16 hour days though. Somewhere a partner is very happy.

[kcdc1]

This simply isn't true. I've worked for people that are perfectionists. I've worked for people who nitpicked every single thing I did. But these were also kind people who knew how to give feedback without making a person feel like shit.

When you turn in subpar work to that sort of supervisor, they'll tell you, "I read your draft. This is what you did right, this is what needs to be fixed. Please take another crack." In that scenario, your supervisor is either (a) being nice to your face, but planning to fire you down the road; or (b) giving you a significant margin for error. If (a), you should be stressed, even if your supervisor is personally pleasant. If (b), you're not being pushed as hard as you could be.

There's an argument that (b) is still preferable for development because you need some margin to experiment and it's damaging to be stressed out all the time. It's probably best to have some supervisors who will give you margin to experiment and take time to teach you, and some other supervisors who hold your feet to the fire and demand perfection the first time.

[smaug]

This simply isn't true. I've worked for people that are perfectionists. I've worked for people who nitpicked every single thing I did. But these were also kind people who knew how to give feedback without making a person feel like shit.

When you turn in subpar work to that sort of supervisor, they'll tell you, "I read your draft. This is what you did right, this is what needs to be fixed. Please take another crack." In that scenario, your supervisor is either (a) being nice to your face, but planning to fire you down the road; or (b) giving you a significant margin for error. If (a), you should be stressed, even if your supervisor is personally pleasant. If (b), you're not being pushed as hard as you could be.

There's an argument that (b) is still preferable for development because you need some margin to experiment and it's damaging to be stressed out all the time. It's probably best to have some supervisors who will give you margin to experiment and take time to teach you, and some other supervisors who hold your feet to the fire and demand perfection the first time.

wut

[BaiAilian2013]

I think what anon is saying is that you learn quickest when you work for someone who demands perfection, and it is inherently stressful to work with for such a person -- even if they're pleasant enough in conversation. Operating with the knowledge that you have no margin for error makes you paranoid, but it also makes your work product better.

This simply isn't true. I've worked for people that are perfectionists. I've worked for people who nitpicked every single thing I did. But these were also kind people who knew how to give feedback without making a person feel like shit.

It's really that simple. You can nitpick every detail. But if you know how to give feedback, you can still be pleasant to work for and get your point across. The people who give a shit will learn. And they'll love you for it.

This idea that you get better work product when you make people stressed, paranoid, and fearful is just ludicrous.

This is 100% true. Some weird-ass psychological shit manifesting ITT.

[smaug]

i guess i'm also just lolling at the notion that this dude thinks he can achieve perfection

maybe your scary partner loves your memos or your drafting now or whatever ever, but i guaranfuckingtee that you could send the same work product to someone else and they'd tear it to shreds for entirely different reasons

[Serett]

OP, testicular torsion is never normal.

[20160810]

Also demanding perfection from SAs is kind of a fools errand

[TLSModBot]

OP, testicular torsion is never normal.

Unless you go to a certain type of law school - then I guess you'd be used to it.

[Serett]

OP, testicular torsion is never normal.

Unless you go to a certain type of law school - then I guess you'd be used to it.

Baylor, Dominance, and Sadomasochism

[JGMotorsport]

Keep a notepad and use it every time a partner starts talking to you. I keep a small one and just write down important words to remind me of what they want.

I then poke a few questions in and see how they respond to determine what exactly they want from me.

The managing partner at my SA is one of the most cryptic people I've ever met. He'll do this (he does it to everybody in the office.

From: Managing Partner
To: Lowly Me
Subject: FWD: Scheduling

need stip extent the order ASAP.


Sent from my iPhone


I usually bug the paralegals so they can get me some info to work with. Attorney's are busy, paralegals can be a good resource.

They help me decode what he wants.

[lavarman84]

This simply isn't true. I've worked for people that are perfectionists. I've worked for people who nitpicked every single thing I did. But these were also kind people who knew how to give feedback without making a person feel like shit.

When you turn in subpar work to that sort of supervisor, they'll tell you, "I read your draft. This is what you did right, this is what needs to be fixed. Please take another crack." In that scenario, your supervisor is either (a) being nice to your face, but planning to fire you down the road; or (b) giving you a significant margin for error. If (a), you should be stressed, even if your supervisor is personally pleasant. If (b), you're not being pushed as hard as you could be.

There's an argument that (b) is still preferable for development because you need some margin to experiment and it's damaging to be stressed out all the time. It's probably best to have some supervisors who will give you margin to experiment and take time to teach you, and some other supervisors who hold your feet to the fire and demand perfection the first time.

No, not really. You can tell when they're disappointed with your work and you know what you did wrong. The difference is that they find a way to build you back up at the end of the meeting so that you leave both wanting to do better and having confidence that you can do better.

[lavarman84]

I think what anon is saying is that you learn quickest when you work for someone who demands perfection, and it is inherently stressful to work with for such a person -- even if they're pleasant enough in conversation. Operating with the knowledge that you have no margin for error makes you paranoid, but it also makes your work product better.

This simply isn't true. I've worked for people that are perfectionists. I've worked for people who nitpicked every single thing I did. But these were also kind people who knew how to give feedback without making a person feel like shit.

It's really that simple. You can nitpick every detail. But if you know how to give feedback, you can still be pleasant to work for and get your point across. The people who give a shit will learn. And they'll love you for it.

This idea that you get better work product when you make people stressed, paranoid, and fearful is just ludicrous.

I think you're generally wrong and unlikely to succeed with your attitude.

Well, you're wrong. I'll succeed because I understand how to treat people and I understand how to lead. And that will make a big difference for my career.

Whether you give a shit or not has surprisingly little to do with whether you learn or not; most of the people who drop garbage on my desk are trying as hard as they can, and plenty of the best people who worked under me were not really into being lawyers long term. Ability to work like a dog and giving a shit are NOT the same thing because the talent for grueling work is as much a god-given thing as the ability to read fast or sleep less. I can pull a 16 hr day and roll into the office the next day raring to go - that's not effort, it's just how it is.

"Giving a shit" isn't about whether you learn, it's about whether you can build yourself up to a professional standard.

You don't learn if you don't give a shit. A person who doesn't care isn't going to care about feedback. There has to be a minimum level of caring and effort for a person to succeed. Unless they're just ridiculously good at what they do. In that case, more power to them. You seem to misinterpret me saying that a person has to care as me saying that a person will succeed if they care. Not the same thing.

Demanding people give you a model for how you need to treat yourself as a professional. Put different, I've never worked under someone who kicked my ass who wasn't harder on themselves. Rarely do you see hypocrites - when someone makes you rewrite a three line cover email nine times till you get it right (has happened to me) or rakes you over the coals for a single grammatical error in a 35 page document (had happened to me), you know they got where they are by stress dreaming over the same shit.

And as I already told you, you can be demanding and exacting while still being a pleasant person. It's not hard. It's really quite easy.

Frankly, if they made you rewrite something nine times, they probably didn't do a good job of giving feedback the first 8 times.

Most of my clients started as biglaw associates. They are patently as smart as me. They are generally as hard working (the myth of in house no-stress utopia is just that). But they're not PROFESSIONAL like you have to be when someone is paying your firm literally millions of dollars for your output. Even a tiny rattle in a BMW is infuriating.

To bring this back to the point: I have very little to TEACH you in the sense of explaining something complex. You are as smart as me, more or less, otherwise you wouldn't have been hired. You've been taught legal analysis, because you went to law school. You may not know corporate finance or accounting, but to be fair most lawyers, even transactional ones, don't REALLY know it either and we can never teach it as well as a good book. So what am I here for? It's not to coddle your ass and it's not to teach you in the sense of Miss Smith in 1st grade. It's to give you things to practice on that are appropriate for your skill level (you're not going to learn shit drafting a full Asset Purchase Agreement as a summer, but you'll probably get something out of doing a simple cross-receipt), and to give you a model to watch and learn from. Anything else we do is wasting both your time and, more importantly, mine.

What are you here for? To help summers understand how private practice works, to help them become better writers, and to help them become better attorneys. You want to know the best way to do that? Give them assignments, give them a reasonable amount of help along the way (hand-holding isn't necessary but if they're confused by a concept they've never seen, nothing wrong with being willing to answer a question to avoid them turning in shit that you'll have to fix anyways), and give them feedback that alerts them to their errors but allows them to leave the room feeling like they are capable of living up to your expectations on the next assignment.

[DELG]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

[Anonymous User]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

[20160810]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

[JenDarby]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

I worked with an ex Paul Hastings senior associate who described himself as "very, very, very smart." Real sociable guy.

[dixiecupdrinking]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

Seven years and you still sound so content!

[20160810]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

I worked with an ex Paul Hastings senior associate who described himself as "very, very, very smart." Real sociable guy.

Ron Paul Hastings 08 End the Fed

[gk101]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

no one is denying that you can be an asshole and still succeed in biglaw. In fact, those are the people more likely to stick around forever. People are pointing out that you can be nice to juniors while still advancing

[PvblivsScipio]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

no one is denying that you can be an asshole and still succeed in biglaw. In fact, those are the people more likely to stick around forever. People are pointing out that you can be nice to juniors while still advancing

But why? It doesn't increase my bonus or advance my career. Nobody brings it up come review time. Won't help me make partner. Who gives a fuck?

[gk101]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

no one is denying that you can be an asshole and still succeed in biglaw. In fact, those are the people more likely to stick around forever. People are pointing out that you can be nice to juniors while still advancing

But why? It doesn't increase my bonus or advance my career. Nobody brings it up come review time. Won't help me make partner. Who gives a fuck?

how you interact with others and your reputation within the firm is definitely discussed as you progress through the firm if you are not a rainmaker. It also makes for a better work environment when everyone you assign work to doesn't actively hate you

[HonestAdvice]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

no one is denying that you can be an asshole and still succeed in biglaw. In fact, those are the people more likely to stick around forever. People are pointing out that you can be nice to juniors while still advancing

But why? It doesn't increase my bonus or advance my career. Nobody brings it up come review time. Won't help me make partner. Who gives a fuck?

I don't think that most people have the ability to be an asshole one second and nice the next on the basis of a teency weency bit of stimuli. On a day to day basis, you would have to be processing your world as "I know this person - they are junior to me. Fuck them," and a fraction of a second later change gears, "This person is senior to me. Okay be nice, smile on 3. One, two, three."

I'm sure it exists, but the person would need to be very quick on their feet, and capable of keeping the shtick up for years, which would require them to be very sociopathic. I feel like 99% of people would slip up at some point, and be a jerk to the wrong people or be overheard being a jerk. If someone could pull it off for 9 years, good for them. They're enough of an evil genius that they probably deserve to rise to the top. I also don't know how someone would bring in business if they were this way - clients are more apt at seeing through the bullshit than socially awkward attorneys, but this probably goes back to the evil genius point I made earlier.

[kcdc1]

Pretty sure dude was being facetious and making fun of 7th year rich and angry associate.

[20160810]

I find the suggestion that socially maladjusted autists can thrive in the law firm setting to be JUST SHOCKING

[lavarman84]

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

Three years and a handshake won't bother me a bit if I went about it the right way. I'm not even certain I'll pursue the biglaw path. In fact, this thread gives a couple of the reasons why I'm not so into it.

Hey, good on you for getting seven years. I can only hope that you don't grow a conscience one day. Because that will be one hell of a painful day if it ever comes.

This thread is really highlighting some of the reasons firm work sucks. And much more than it has to.

I don't know, man. Y'all are telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I've made it a long time at a very, very good firm. If doing it my way gets you at least seven years and tons of offers if I ever wanted to step off the firm track, and doing it the "right" way gets you three years, a firm handshake, and $175K/yr, then . . .

no one is denying that you can be an asshole and still succeed in biglaw. In fact, those are the people more likely to stick around forever. People are pointing out that you can be nice to juniors while still advancing

But why? It doesn't increase my bonus or advance my career. Nobody brings it up come review time. Won't help me make partner. Who gives a fuck?

I don't think that most people have the ability to be an asshole one second and nice the next on the basis of a teency weency bit of stimuli. On a day to day basis, you would have to be processing your world as "I know this person - they are junior to me. Fuck them," and a fraction of a second later change gears, "This person is senior to me. Okay be nice, smile on 3. One, two, three."

I'm sure it exists, but the person would need to be very quick on their feet, and capable of keeping the shtick up for years, which would require them to be very sociopathic. I feel like 99% of people would slip up at some point, and be a jerk to the wrong people or be overheard being a jerk. If someone could pull it off for 9 years, good for them. They're enough of an evil genius that they probably deserve to rise to the top. I also don't know how someone would bring in business if they were this way - clients are more apt at seeing through the bullshit than socially awkward attorneys, but this probably goes back to the evil genius point I made earlier.

I think that's exactly what some people can do, with ease. There are plenty of people in this world who treat people that they feel don't offer them anything like crap. These are the sorts of people who will incessantly kiss partner's asses while simultaneously treating the people who work under them like they're nothing. Unfortunately, these people can be successful.