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I’m in the second week of my summer at a V10. It seems impossible to get a chunk of time to get work done with the avalanche of emails and phone calls all day. What tips do you guys have for balancing work with being responsive to clients, partners, fellow associates, etc?

I worked in 1 hour blocks and responded on the 55th minute of every hour unless something is so urgent it needs to be handled right away. For stuff that requires many hours of concentration I just do it out of the office during the weekend or middle of the night.

Having been in biglaw for 6 years now I can tell you that this is something you will get better at over time. When I am trying to get something out I generally keep outlook up on a second screen (or ipad) and glance up occasionally to make sure there are no time bombs. Otherwise I finish whatever I view as my highest priority item before digging deeper into the constant string of emails. Very few emails actually need an instant response, and the majority of emails do not necessarily require your attention as a summer (or junior). It is hard to ignore them, but you will learn to do so pretty quickly.

I would also say enjoy the present - it only gets more obnoxious as you get more senior. My typical day now involves calls and emails all day and documents all night. Best time of every day is around 5:30 when clients start to head home and I can start getting real work done.

This is something I struggled with as well. Like the above poster said - block out time to do actual work. Getting distracted by emails or phone calls means that something that will ordinarily take 30 minutes of sustained concentration will likely take more time than that (the actual task itself) since your mind can't ever enter a stage of focused attention on that one task.

I also find writing a to-do list at night before going to bed or in the morning with my coffee as well as estimating the amount of time I'll need for each matter help keeps me "on track" for the day, and if I finish each task early it's like a little reward. Since I find it difficult to remember what is happening on each of my matters, I group my daily tasks by matter, so that if I need to call someone, view documents, respond to emails, I am doing it on a single matter all at once and get a benefit to efficiency.

There are also just certain people who have a practice of calling you multiple times (often in a row) whenever they have a thought that pops in their head. I do not find these calls productive since I often have no idea what these people are talking about and if important they will just send an email, so I'll usually have my assistant screen them. Same with people who just want to gossip.

Another thing is that I'll often line up emails and send them all at certain times, especially early in the morning. Trying to stem the tide of emails often just prompts more responses.

You get better as time goes on. Things that seem impossible right now become doable in hours. When you work all day and night at a job, you get much better.


Don’t worry about this right now though. Enjoy your summer.

Agree with the above, you first priority should be to enjoy your summer.

Once you actually start working you quickly develop a feel (or should explicitly ask) for how pressing certain things are. If something is pressing, I'm not answering my phone and only responding to absolutely critical emails to kick the can down the road.

One thing you really cant do in a busy practice is procrastinate. If you have time before a deadline, yes, you can procrastinate, but if things are humming you have to crank.

I was in your position last summer and found that I sometimes came in a bit early or stayed an hour or two later to get an assignment done or polished. Or, I would work an hour (or so) from home in the morning before arriving at the office. Sometimes this was just necessary, not because the work was too much or burdensome, but because there were a lot of fun activities going on that cut into the work day and working through lunch was not an option. While it is important to have fun and enjoy your summer, it is also important to meet the few deadlines you have and submit good work product for partners to evaluate you.