Should I be worried? Forum

[Anonymous User]

First year associate at V30 firm with very little work to do. I think I’ve billed around 50 or 60 hours total so far in the stub year and feel nervous about this continuing.

[Anonymous User]

No. It takes a while for stubs to get integrated. Hell, I billed under 1,000 my first year.

[Anonymous User]

Also a stub in a similar boat. Not quite that low, but billing something like 15-20 a week. How long until I should start to worry? I've brought this up to mentors and informally to associates, and all of them say "don't worry, it will change." But I have a law school friend one year ahead who was extremely low for more than six months. At what point do I start worrying and asking around again?

[Anonymous User]

It took me like 9 months to get fully integrated and staffed on multiple matters continuously. Spent a lot of days in my stub year billing under an hour or even straight up 0. It’s pretty common, you shouldn’t start to worry until people who are your year in your same group are continuously being staged on different matters and are very busy while you are not getting staffed on anything. But you likely need to have done something to harm your reputation first for that to happen. If you haven’t been staffed on anything yet and just aren’t getting thrown anything it’s probably a result of things already being in full swing (many matters are staffed multiple weeks before they do anything) and people not wanting to have to explain/train you right now.