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For fun, anyone want to talk about funniest or most outrageous stories they have heard of attorneys quitting their firms?

Last year in my department we had a foreign attorney from a different firm in Europe come overseas to our New York office. He was gone and back to his old firm 3 weeks later.

This wasn’t necessarily quitting, because s/he got fired. But my coworker kind of stopped showing up to the office and started billing only 10ish hours a week because s/he wanted to get severance. Six months later, s/he was shown the door.

Anonymous User wrote:This wasn’t necessarily quitting, because s/he got fired. But my coworker kind of stopped showing up to the office and started billing only 10ish hours a week because s/he wanted to get severance. Six months later, s/he was shown the door.

If I decided I was done with biglaw and was comfortable burning all of my bridges, I hope I'd have the chutzpah to do this for six months and keep collecting my checks the whole time. A fellow associate talks about the best time/way to avoid detection if you're planning something like this, but even he hasn't plotted it out for half a year.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:This wasn’t necessarily quitting, because s/he got fired. But my coworker kind of stopped showing up to the office and started billing only 10ish hours a week because s/he wanted to get severance. Six months later, s/he was shown the door.

If I decided I was done with biglaw and was comfortable burning all of my bridges, I hope I'd have the chutzpah to do this for six months and keep collecting my checks the whole time. A fellow associate talks about the best time/way to avoid detection if you're planning something like this, but even he hasn't plotted it out for half a year.

Quoted anon. I don’t think my colleague was planning on lasting six months. I think the firm just didn’t even register the low hours until a few months in and then took another few months to fire him/her.

That's pretty ballsy to pull off something like that!

I quit everyday around 4 pm, in my mind, by walking into the next meeting and calmly announcing that I will be taking two weeks of vacation starting now and that my last day will be the day after that. Then I realize that I'll either be homeless or living in my parents house, and so I call or text friends to complain for an hour, and then stay doing a passable job until the work is done, with a low-level hum of absolute panic bubbling just beneath the surface, where it will rise again at about 4 pm the next day.

Anonymous User wrote:I quit everyday around 4 pm, in my mind, by walking into the next meeting and calmly announcing that I will be taking two weeks of vacation starting now and that my last day will be the day after that. Then I realize that I'll either be homeless or living in my parents house, and so I call or text friends to complain for an hour, and then stay doing a passable job until the work is done, with a low-level hum of absolute panic bubbling just beneath the surface, where it will rise again at about 4 pm the next day.

That's a pretty tame quitting fantasy. Mine used to involve an office space/Dave chapelle scenario with a unicorn.

rcharter1978 wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I quit everyday around 4 pm, in my mind, by walking into the next meeting and calmly announcing that I will be taking two weeks of vacation starting now and that my last day will be the day after that. Then I realize that I'll either be homeless or living in my parents house, and so I call or text friends to complain for an hour, and then stay doing a passable job until the work is done, with a low-level hum of absolute panic bubbling just beneath the surface, where it will rise again at about 4 pm the next day.

That's a pretty tame quitting fantasy. Mine used to involve an office space/Dave chapelle scenario with a unicorn.

I always have the mic drop fantasy where you burst into a meeting and say something along the lines of "I'm out *curse word of choice*!" But then I realize that's better for if it were my last day and planning to retire lolz

Anonymous User wrote:I quit everyday around 4 pm, in my mind, by walking into the next meeting and calmly announcing that I will be taking two weeks of vacation starting now and that my last day will be the day after that. Then I realize that I'll either be homeless or living in my parents house, and so I call or text friends to complain for an hour, and then stay doing a passable job until the work is done, with a low-level hum of absolute panic bubbling just beneath the surface, where it will rise again at about 4 pm the next day.

^ this, every time something breaks that shouldn’t or some short deadline appears. The bubbling panic eventually subsides into a dull melancholy, then annoyance at myself for picking this job track, then remembering I suck at math/ science, then more melancholy until some other partner calls with “an emergency.”

Anonymous User wrote:For fun, anyone want to talk about funniest or most outrageous stories they have heard of attorneys quitting their firms?

Well I can tell you I was laid off a few months ago. I actually wanted to quit anyways since the firm was treating me pretty terribly. I won’t go into the details here, but I knew I was going to get the axe when my boss called me into his office with HR present.

They were giving me 3 weeks notice.

I had feelings of resentment etc. but did nothing at the time. I just packed my things and went home for the day.

I missed the next day of work to figure out my life. My boss then told HR to tell me that now today is my last day. So they cheaped me out of any severance etc. Now they pissed me off.... and I then got into a screaming match with HR.

They told me they would mail back my things. I said f*** you don’t touch my things I’m coming in to get them.

I got my things and bounced.

I’m now at a way better firm making around 30k more. They can shove it...