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Hi everyone, hoping for some insight.

Just stared as a first year in September, and while my hours were pretty intense 2L summer and rough up until now, 90% of the work was substantive and fairly interesting.

Don't think I've had any major screw ups- asked for clarification twice, and misunderstood directions once which led to about five hours of wasted time (my time, but partner wasn't exactly pleased), but other than that I think I've fared pretty well.

Just informed that I'll be on a doc review assignment for the next 11 weeks- I was told she HAD to provide someone, so I was the one.

Two questions- how bad is it REALLY? And should I be worried that my performance is poor? Or did I jut draw the short straw?

Honestly. I love it. Easy hours and mindless so I could just marathon episodes of the Office. I haven't gotten to do doc review since my first year and I miss it a lot.

I'd honestly love a job with just doc review if I werent worreid about career progression.

Probably a combination of short straw, early screw-up, and new person AKA low man on the totem pole.

A day of doc review is a break.

A week of doc review is easy billables.

Three weeks of doc review made me want to shoot myself in the face.

Take that for whatever it's worth. Mindless work is fine for a little while, but it turns terrible in relatively short order.

MarkinKansasCity wrote:Probably a combination of short straw, early screw-up, and new person AKA low man on the totem pole.

A day of doc review is a break.

A week of doc review is easy billables.

Three weeks of doc review made me want to shoot myself in the face.

Take that for whatever it's worth. Mindless work is fine for a little while, but it turns terrible in relatively short order.

This is pretty spot on, except I don't even like a week of doc review. A day or two is all I can handle before I start going insane.

Anonymous User wrote:Hi everyone, hoping for some insight.

Just stared as a first year in September, and while my hours were pretty intense 2L summer and rough up until now, 90% of the work was substantive and fairly interesting.

Don't think I've had any major screw ups- asked for clarification twice, and misunderstood directions once which led to about five hours of wasted time (my time, but partner wasn't exactly pleased), but other than that I think I've fared pretty well.

Just informed that I'll be on a doc review assignment for the next 11 weeks- I was told she HAD to provide someone, so I was the one.

Two questions- how bad is it REALLY? And should I be worried that my performance is poor? Or did I jut draw the short straw?

Is this "do 4 hours a day for three months" doc review or "lock you in a windowless conference room for 3 months" doc review? The former is manageable and can even be interesting, depending on the assigned matter. The latter is a special kind of hell, but one that most junior associates will suffer through at one point or another.

deepseapartners wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Hi everyone, hoping for some insight.

Just stared as a first year in September, and while my hours were pretty intense 2L summer and rough up until now, 90% of the work was substantive and fairly interesting.

Don't think I've had any major screw ups- asked for clarification twice, and misunderstood directions once which led to about five hours of wasted time (my time, but partner wasn't exactly pleased), but other than that I think I've fared pretty well.

Just informed that I'll be on a doc review assignment for the next 11 weeks- I was told she HAD to provide someone, so I was the one.

Two questions- how bad is it REALLY? And should I be worried that my performance is poor? Or did I jut draw the short straw?

Is this "do 4 hours a day for three months" doc review or "lock you in a windowless conference room for 3 months" doc review? The former is manageable and can even be interesting, depending on the assigned matter. The latter is a special kind of hell, but one that most junior associates will suffer through at one point or another.

OP here, I think this will be my only project I'm staffed on. Thanks for all the feedback so far!

Like diligence, I found it very easy and stress free. It might be the easiest hours you will ever bill at a biglaw firm.

11weeks is a lot. Would've been nicer after you'd had like 6 or 7 hard months.

If I could get paid 180k to do doc review for 10 hours each day, I would take that job in a heartbeat over my current 3rd year Big Law job.

BayCat24 wrote:If I could get paid 180k to do doc review for 10 hours each day, I would take that job in a heartbeat over my current 3rd year Big Law job.

No kidding

jd20132013 wrote:

BayCat24 wrote:If I could get paid 180k to do doc review for 10 hours each day, I would take that job in a heartbeat over my current 3rd year Big Law job.

No kidding

But why are you assuming it's only 10 hours a day?

A little bit of doc review is good because it's not stressful. A full day of doc review is boring. I would not choose 10 hours of doc review over 10 hours of normal 3rd year associate work except maybe for one day to relax at work.

I would try to find something else to do as well. You do not want to spend 11 weeks on nothing but doc review and although you won't be good at anything as a first year, at a certain point you will start to fall behind expectations if you don't get some other experience. It's too early to be too concerned, but being the brand new associate stuck on full time doc review for 3 months is not getting off on the best foot.

This must be associate-dependent, because I can't relate at all to some of these posts. I felt myself legitimately going insane after a few days of doc review; I could not fathom doing it all the time. Time went by soooo slow, and you're not developing at all professionally. But to each their own

See if you can’t pick up work from someone else and then supplement that work with the doc review.

For your sanity.

I hate it and I have probably done less than 20 since starting. I know people who call it bill and chill or whatever but time passes so slow and you gain no skills.

jd20132013 wrote:

BayCat24 wrote:If I could get paid 180k to do doc review for 10 hours each day, I would take that job in a heartbeat over my current 3rd year Big Law job.

No kidding

Same here. Doing doc review is infinitely better than being a midlevel/senior associate in biglaw.

I was being sarcastic

Yeah doc review really isn't that bad if you're also doing other things at the same time. Granted I've only been working for a couple of months, but about 30% of my time rn is spent on doc review and I don't mind it. Easy billable, somewhat interesting - it's a good gap filler when I have nothing urgent to do.

Would probably go crazy if that's all I did for 3 months though.

i would probably distinguish a bit between like

a: doc review where you are a hired gun and some existing team just needs bodies to churn through a zillion documents

b: doc review where you are lowest on the totem pole but you're getting on the team on the ground floor, the database is a manageable quantity, and you can stay on and leverage knowing the facts to become the point person for other, more substantive stuff

thinking all doc review is type a means potentially missing opportunities

...but this one definitely sounds like it, so, sorry op. good luck.

AspiringAspirant wrote:This must be associate-dependent, because I can't relate at all to some of these posts. I felt myself legitimately going insane after a few days of doc review; I could not fathom doing it all the time. Time went by soooo slow, and you're not developing at all professionally. But to each their own

I'm like you, but I think some people would rather just have "easy hours" and don't care about developing professionally as long as they can keep collecting that paycheck.

Mr. Blackacre wrote:Yeah doc review really isn't that bad if you're also doing other things at the same time. Granted I've only been working for a couple of months, but about 30% of my time rn is spent on doc review and I don't mind it. Easy billable, somewhat interesting - it's a good gap filler when I have nothing urgent to do.

Would probably go crazy if that's all I did for 3 months though.

I’m in this category - albeit a bit less than 30% - and it’s great. Absolutely don’t want to be doing this in a year, but it’s been a good way to keep hours up and limit first year stress. Also, in my limited experience, a lot of the more “important” assignments don’t offer much in the way of professional development (esp. as a first year) but are infinitely more stressful.

OP, I think you're fine. It's not unusual to do doc review in a stub year and it is good experience to get (at least for a little while). Someday you might be managing other people doing doc review (either associates or temp reviewers) and it can't hurt to have some experience of what doc review is like.

The truly terrible doc-review-all-the-time jobs are all done by staff attorneys and/or computers these days. Doc review is much less awful for junior associates now than it was twenty, ten or even five years ago.

I'm currently on my first big doc review assignment. I have two weeks to go through 718 documents (about 5,000 pages) and it's been the easiest thing ever to pad my hours. I basically just do other stuff all day and then go over docs from 4:30 until I feel like leaving. I also do it from home while I'm watching soccer/college football.