Associates: what do you do in between assignments? Forum

[Tyler_Durden]

What do you do when you're caught up on all your cases? Do you feel comfortable leaving the office for an hour or two (with your firm cell phone for email access), or do you stay in the office and wait to see if anything new pops up?

[s1m4]

If its 9-5 I stay in the office and take a long lunch (2 hours) however recently all i've been doing between assignments is... other assignments...

[SFSpartan]

I'm generally fine peacing out. That said, my firm has a super laid back culture, and I work with partners that do a fair amount of their work from home, so it's not super noticeable if I'm not in the office. I imagine that there are places where this isn't the case, so you'll need to feel out your firm's culture and use your best judgment.

[LockBox]

TLS

[lawhopeful100]

I stay 9-5 usually then head out. I do a lot of work for people in other offices and calls to my work phone go to my cell so usually there is no real difference between being at home and being in the office, I just feel weird leaving before 5 unless I have to fly somewhere or something.

[2013]

Browse the internet and pretend I’m busy.

[Tyler_Durden]

Browse the internet and pretend I’m busy.

This has been my general practice, but I'm wondering if it's cool to leave for a while? Partners could reach me by email easily and I could be back at the office within 10 minutes. On the other hand, it seems like the expectation in our profession is to be ready for battle at all times

[Anonymous User]

Look for other jobs.

[2013]

Additionally, I sometimes take 2-3 hour lunch breaks, meet with friends who work at companies, and bill it to the firm as “business development.”

We talk some business, so it’s not lying.

[NoLongerALurker]

At my firm you need to list a partner sign-off for biz dev charges

[Anonymous User]

Look for other jobs.

Hahaha

[oblig.lawl.ref]

Not a litigator like OP but if it's slow I'm coming in at 10 and leaving at 4:00 if I can and if it's really slow I'll work from home. I don't care about that shit. I get absolutely wrecked on the regular enough, so whatever. It feels like it's been a while since I've had the luxury though.

[shock259]

If it's ordinary course lull, and I know that work will come up in the next little bit, I'll read a bunch of articles on the internet or go chat with a colleague. If there's almost nothing on the horizon for the day, I'll just leave and go "work from home". But that only happens once every couple of months, and I tell the partner that I'm leaving. Not all groups are like this, but he encourages us to leave if there's nothing to do.