Sr. Associate treats me like secretary Forum

[Anonymous User]

I work in a small firm and sometimes I wonder what's normal in this environment. I have been here about a year and half and I am two years out of law school. Firm has 3 partners, one senior associate, myself and then we have 3 secretaries/office assistants. Sometimes the other associate will have me get something from the printer for her, go look through filing for papers for her, scan things, type a letter, a lot of things that she could ask the secretary to do but she enlists me as well. She constantly makes me come into her office to tell me one sentence that she could drop in an email even tho my boss tends to email and call me about things all the time, she likes me coming into her office even for something minute. I am just curious if these things are typical in small firms where there are unclear boundaries or if my vibes are right and she is just treating me as her assistant to feel powerful. (she's also nasty and curt but that's more of who she is than anything else...)

[toast and bananas]

Can't speak to small firm culture but I would bet that it varies greatly and your experience is not that uncommon. Despite the secretarial-type requests, are you otherwise getting substantive work? Or are you basically a secretary with the title of associate? If the latter, I would start hustling to gtfo.

[Anonymous User]

I am at a smaller firm now. I would say learn to delegate. Sometimes I am given menial tasks and I hand it off to a paralegal to get it done...

[Anonymous User]

I work in a small firm and sometimes I wonder what's normal in this environment. I have been here about a year and half and I am two years out of law school. Firm has 3 partners, one senior associate, myself and then we have 3 secretaries/office assistants. Sometimes the other associate will have me get something from the printer for her, go look through filing for papers for her, scan things, type a letter, a lot of things that she could ask the secretary to do but she enlists me as well. She constantly makes me come into her office to tell me one sentence that she could drop in an email even tho my boss tends to email and call me about things all the time, she likes me coming into her office even for something minute. I am just curious if these things are typical in small firms where there are unclear boundaries or if my vibes are right and she is just treating me as her assistant to feel powerful. (she's also nasty and curt but that's more of who she is than anything else...)

Sounds like she is going on a power trip. If she's involving you unnecessarily in these menial tasks, you may want to consider leaving if you're not getting enough substantive work and the firm rewards/turns a blind eye to her behavior.

[ur_hero]

Honestly, your firm sounds pretty tightly staffed so it's not surprising if you get asked to do these sorts of things. I'm about a year and a half into a big firm, and while I now also have very significant responsibilities, I still have to handle these sorts of things as well fairly regularly - especially when the partners are extremely busy.

Could be that they actually think of you as a secretary. Could be that they feel comfortable asking you because they trust you, think you'll get it done faster, and/or think you're more familiar or involved with whatever they're asking for. Could be that the secretaries are maxed out and they're being respectful by having the junior associate pick up some of the burden. Could be that they haven't given ANY thought to it at all, and are just asking you because they want it done. Senior associates can seriously get VERY VERY busy.

I don't think it's necessarily a power trip, that they hate you, think you're incapable or more. You'll have to gauge that based on your other involvement in substantive matters and how you're otherwise treated.

[bwh8813]

Does she have a dedicated assistant/secretary or are they just for the office generally? I worked with a senior associate that was notorious for having juniors do secretarial tasks even though she was told multiple times by partners to stop. I just started forwarding her emails to her assistant (with her copied) and she stopped after a few times.

[Anonymous User]

If you are a male, you might have a decent sex discrimination claim. Certainly, might be the case if the Sr. associate was a male and you were a female....

[nixy]

If you are a male, you might have a decent sex discrimination claim. Certainly, might be the case if the Sr. associate was a male and you were a female....

Except there's no indication that this has anything to do with gender, or that the OP is getting treated differently than anyone else of a different gender. An employer treating someone like crap alone does not a sex discrimination claim make, and it would likely really fuck the OP's life to make such a claim, so this is kind of an asinine remark.

[Anonymous User]

This behavior is pretty normal at large law firms too. I am a senior associate at a biglaw firm and regularly get partners handing me line edits to enter, asking to schedule calls/get conference rooms/put people in security, draft cover letters, get messengers, etc.

Often the senior person is just handing you stuff handed to them by the partner. The reason is usually some combination of inertia (if you were treated this way when you were a junior) and because you and them have the same ability to do the task, by passing it off to you, they avoid having to think about or keep track of it or answer questions when they have a huge task list of other stuff to do. They don’t really care if you personally are the one to do it as long as you personally are responsible for the outcome. If you think this seems absurd welcome to corporate America.

The best thing to do is to then hand the task off to one of the secretaries/assistants. That way you train yourself not to feel offended every time some senior associate throws an administrative task at you.