Stub no work from senior associate Forum

[Anonymous User]

Stub year. I am on a team with one senior associate, and the associate does all the work mostly by herself. Am I doing something wrong

[glitched]

She's probably slow and needs hours.

[Best]

Unless you've done bad work for the associate and burned that bridge. But since you're a stub year, that's pretty doubtful. Probably short on hours as the other poster said or might even just be bad at delegating work. It can be hard to delegate work to a first year.

[Anonymous User]

I feel so called out right now. Speaking from experience, she is probably just insanely busy and it’s faster/easier to do stuff herself rather than explain to you and hold your hand while you do it.

[12YrsAnAssociate]

To echo others, this might have nothing to do with you. Sometimes I don't delegate because (1) I know the case so well I can just do the task without including others; (2) delegating will take more time that it would take to just do the task; (3) I have the time so I might as well just do the task; (4) I forget or don't think to delegate.

You could offer to help with anything the person needs, and maybe even identify some specific project you have experience with from another case. E.g., "I wrote motions in limine on X in a case just like this last week, so I could jump in on that if it would help." That would signal that #2 or #4 won't apply with that task. Or you could just chill out because stub year is like the only year of big law where it doesn't matter if you're slow.

[Anonymous User]

Phew; ok I thought it was just me and I must have been absolutely awful

[malibustacy]

I'm on a deal with a stub and it takes like 3 times more effort to assign tasks, supervise, answer questions and fix everything.

I wouldn't take it personally.

[Anonymous User]

Also a stub, and most others in my class are slow. I'm one of 2-3 people who's actively busy, and its only because we're all in specialty groups (think patent, tax, etc).

A lot of associates have said that they're catching up on hours due to the COVID slowdown, and also that at this time of the year it takes too long to train and onboard stubs, especially for transactional groups that need to finish things by Dec. 31. Use this time to do some pro bono work, write an article, or watch videos/do trainings through your firm's resource page.

[TigerIsBack]

Could also be because of the time of year. I know for me in a transactional group, everyone's trying to get deals done by year end so we're usually totally slammed right now. People also want to try to enjoy their holidays, so to the extent I can do something myself to save time and keep momentum going, I certainly will, knowing that in January things inevitably slow down for a couple of months which is a great time to bring in the first years on things and spend more time talking through assignments with them.

Edit: Thought I had some novel new perspective to add, but didn't read the post immediately above.