Top Law Schools

I'm an associate in NYC that just accepted a lateral offer to move to a firm in LA for family reasons. The LA firm will begin clearing conflicts and running a background check this week. What do people do between the time they accept an offer and before they give notice? My current group isn't slammed, but I'm not sure if I can just chill on the billing or if I should keep my hours up until everything is fully confirmed.

Congrats on the lateral offer!

My advice would be to completely stop hustling for new work, but to the extent seniors seek you out, still continue to accept (reasonable amounts of) assignments*. There's a small but nonzero chance of a conflicts issue, so I wouldn't recommend just peacing out and rejecting all incoming work (plus, law's a small world anyway, so you never want to give other lawyers a reason to hold a grudge against you if at all reasonably possible).

(*To be clear, I recommend rejecting work to the extent that accepting that work would result in you being slammed. I just don't think it'd be a good look for you to reject incoming work while sitting in your office twiddling your thumbs**. So long as you're already reasonably busy, no need to say yes to everything!)

(**Of course, if you're sitting in your office twiddling your thumbs but no one seeks you out to give you new work, enjoy it! No need to try to hustle for work at this stage in the game.)

So I guess in a nutshell, try to coast a bit, but still do good work and remain fully committed to the projects you're assigned to.

Don't take on any new work, but do a good job on the matters you're already staffed on.