How to turn down work Forum

[Anonymous User]

First year that started in the fall in biglaw. Recently, I have been working so much that I barely sleep (if at all), and sometimes, don't even have time to have a proper meal, since I won't have time to prep food, etc. Wondering if there is any way that I can politely turn down some work. I have tried the "I can't get to this now, but can get to it in about 6 hours or so." But then, seniors would call other seniors and say that I have to do their work.

[timeless]

just tell them that's racist

[u]MOD NOTE: USER TIMELESS HAS BEEN OUTED FOR ANON ABUSE. NEXT TIME IS A POSTING VACATION.[/u]

[Anonymous User]

How many hours a day/week are you billing?

[jotarokujo]

honestly it will feel wrong the first times you do it.

Your whole life you probably barely turned down anything. Probably gunned throughout undergrad and went hard in law school, even though it wasn't necessary.

ive found that people who were good at turning down work in law school are typically good at it in biglaw as well

[ClubberLang]

The way you did it is right, but proceed with caution here. Turning down work outright will never be well received. You're basically telling the midlevel or senior to do it himself or find someone else. Even worse is slow rolling something, e.g., "I can get to this in four days."

Really you should focus on getting more efficient. It's a tough job. Learning to turn down work is not the solution.

[Lacepiece23]

First year that started in the fall in biglaw. Recently, I have been working so much that I barely sleep (if at all), and sometimes, don't even have time to have a proper meal, since I won't have time to prep food, etc. Wondering if there is any way that I can politely turn down some work. I have tried the "I can't get to this now, but can get to it in about 6 hours or so." But then, seniors would call other seniors and say that I have to do their work.

I’m no longer in biglaw. I did it for five years. The biggest mistake I made was not turning down work. I always thought that they would never come back, my hours would go down, and I would be screwed.

I was right that some people might not come back. But what I didn’t realize is that those are the people I wouldn’t want to work with. And that was a good thing.

I’d then down the work until you see yourself slowing down. Then, before you’re dead, go back to these people and either ask for a call or go into their office and kiss ass. Seriously, just tell them how great they are, how busy you were, and beg for a shot on the matter.

If they do not work with you after that, fuck em who cares. You just bought yourself longevity and happiness in biglaw.

I never turned down work and then got senior and people started doing it to me. I didn’t want to send them work after but if someone came back and was like dude I was busy, I wouldn’t really care.

Lastly, you might be worrries about the snowball of turning down work, to getting slow, to getting fired.

By time this happens you’ll at least be a second/third year in good lateraling potential. And that’s if this happens. Most likely no one will care if you kiss enough ass.

TL;DR turn down work, follow up after and kiss work assigners ass, profit with nights and weekends off.

[Sporty1911]

The way you did it is right, but proceed with caution here. Turning down work outright will never be well received. You're basically telling the midlevel or senior to do it himself or find someone else. Even worse is slow rolling something, e.g., "I can get to this in four days."

Really you should focus on getting more efficient. It's a tough job. Learning to turn down work is not the solution.

Yeah so this is contrary to all the advice I have ever been given about turning down work, including by senior partners?

Idk, maybe it’s practice dependent though.

[ClubberLang]

The way you did it is right, but proceed with caution here. Turning down work outright will never be well received. You're basically telling the midlevel or senior to do it himself or find someone else. Even worse is slow rolling something, e.g., "I can get to this in four days."

Really you should focus on getting more efficient. It's a tough job. Learning to turn down work is not the solution.

Yeah so this is contrary to all the advice I have ever been given about turning down work, including by senior partners?

Idk, maybe it’s practice dependent though.

Care to share what advice you received, then? Maybe it is practice dependent, my experience is with lit. I'd be surprised if senior partners advised first years to "turn down work" and not focus on being more efficient.

"Turning down work" is a skill. Doing it effectively requires someone to go to bat for you. You get someone to go to bat for you by being a dependable. If you go out and tell people to pound sand whenever you get busy, you'll get a bad reputation.

[Dcc617]

You’ll also get a bad rep if you do bad work because you’re too busy.

OP, feel free to turn down matters if you’re already swamped. The associate or partner will just bump to someone else. Much less flexibility to turn down work for a matter you’re already staffed on.

[Anonymous User]

The way you did it is right, but proceed with caution here. Turning down work outright will never be well received. You're basically telling the midlevel or senior to do it himself or find someone else. Even worse is slow rolling something, e.g., "I can get to this in four days."

Really you should focus on getting more efficient. It's a tough job. Learning to turn down work is not the solution.

Yeah so this is contrary to all the advice I have ever been given about turning down work, including by senior partners?

Idk, maybe it’s practice dependent though.

Care to share what advice you received, then? Maybe it is practice dependent, my experience is with lit. I'd be surprised if senior partners advised first years to "turn down work" and not focus on being more efficient.

"Turning down work" is a skill. Doing it effectively requires someone to go to bat for you. You get someone to go to bat for you by being a dependable. If you go out and tell people to pound sand whenever you get busy, you'll get a bad reputation.

From this lit mid-level's perspective, your second post is more reasonable than your first. It's definitely true that turning down work without burning bridges requires some skill and diplomacy, but often it's as simple as "I'd really love to join this team / do this project / etc., but I have X and Y deadlines coming up this month and don't have the bandwidth to add Z project," and then if pushed to do what you say: "Okay, let me talk to A and B partner/senior/etc and see which project they'd like me to focus on." From the perspective of someone asking for work, unless I really need you in particular for something (like, if you're the only person who knows the facts because you're already on a particular matter) such that I'm willing to say "we really need Associate for this," at that point I will probably just say it's fine and go ask elsewhere.

Just speaking personally, and obviously different midlevels and seniors and partners have idiosyncratic preferences, I care a whole lot less about whether you turned my work down than whether you did a good job on it. Nothing worse than getting work product close to a deadline, and realizing it sucks and that I'll have to redo everything on a much shorter timescale than if I just did it myself in the first place.

[Goceltics25]

Does it make a difference whether your firm is open-market or assignment system? Is anyone able to give some color about turning down work from a central coordinator vs open market? I'd assume they'd be vastly different, but I'm also probably naive since not yet in biglaw

[Anonymous User]

Sometimes it is literally impossible to finish work, and it is overwhelming in terms of the amount that I am getting. Just when I think things are getting crazy, they staff me on new deals. And there are times when I feel that it is impossible to finish all of the things asked, so that there really is no way to finish it all unless you tell someone no or give someone a head's up that they won't get the most polished work product

[Anonymous User]

The way you did it is right, but proceed with caution here. Turning down work outright will never be well received. You're basically telling the midlevel or senior to do it himself or find someone else. Even worse is slow rolling something, e.g., "I can get to this in four days."

Really you should focus on getting more efficient. It's a tough job. Learning to turn down work is not the solution.

No. Screw the senior associate, they absolutely should find someone else to do the work or do it themselves. As a senior associate, I slow roll partners for 3 weeks, what are they going to do? That's when I'm free, hire more people.

Asking people if they "have time" is an objectively idiotic staffing mechanism and you should push back if you are billing enough hours. It's the one solid benefit of billing time, you can push back when you are busy.

[Sporty1911]

The way you did it is right, but proceed with caution here. Turning down work outright will never be well received. You're basically telling the midlevel or senior to do it himself or find someone else. Even worse is slow rolling something, e.g., "I can get to this in four days."

Really you should focus on getting more efficient. It's a tough job. Learning to turn down work is not the solution.

Yeah so this is contrary to all the advice I have ever been given about turning down work, including by senior partners?

Idk, maybe it’s practice dependent though.

Care to share what advice you received, then? Maybe it is practice dependent, my experience is with lit. I'd be surprised if senior partners advised first years to "turn down work" and not focus on being more efficient.

"Turning down work" is a skill. Doing it effectively requires someone to go to bat for you. You get someone to go to bat for you by being a dependable. If you go out and tell people to pound sand whenever you get busy, you'll get a bad reputation.

It’s been answered by others above, but I’ve been told that if I’m overwhelmed/have competing deadlines, to tell the assigning partner that “I am happy to work on this, but have X and Y due on Wednesday for ____ partners. Would it be okay if I got it to you on Thursday?”

Something like that. Their reasoning behind this advice was that it’s way worse to blow a deadline, even internal, or turn in shoddy work because you’re overloaded.

[Anonymous User]

The key question here is whether you are actually too busy based on how your firm defines "busy" or "too busy." If I ask a junior associate to do something and they say they're too busy, that's fine if (a) they have deadlines in existing matters that would be a real conflict, or (b) they are at or near capacity based on their hours. But especially in the last year I have increasingly heard from other partners and senior associates flagging associates who say they are too busy when they're not--there's just a disconnect between what they expect and what the firm expects.

If your firm culture is like mine, there is an approximate number of hours/month that is generally considered enough that you can say "I'm too busy" without getting any flak, and a higher number of hours/month where you probably should not be taking on new matters, even if you want to. Midlevel/senior associates should be able to clue you in as to where those numbers are.

If you think you are too busy but your firm doesn't, that's something you have to deal with either by getting used to it, or turning down work at the risk of being tagged as underperforming.

[Anonymous User]

I think you can credibly turn down work if you're nearing the 250/month range, if the additional work will be for a new matter you weren't already staffed on. If the work is for a matter you were already staffed on, chances are you'll just have to suck it up even if you start hitting 300+.

[Excellent117]

I think you can credibly turn down work if you're nearing the 250/month range, if the additional work will be for a new matter you weren't already staffed on. If the work is for a matter you were already staffed on, chances are you'll just have to suck it up even if you start hitting 300+.

No, this is not the threshold at which you can credibly turn down work. It's much lower than that.

[jotarokujo]

a good rule of thumb is this: better to turn down work than to turn in bad work. that should help you psychologically in terms of actually getting yourself to turn stuff down.

what you actually say to the person who wants to give you more work is: "i'm working on XYZ for these people. Can I get back to you after i've completed that?"

my impression from some seniors i've spoken to is that they don't like it when associates try to take on so much work the quality drops. they understand juniors are afraid to turn stuff down, but seniors really want candor sometimes.

seniors don't actually know how much you're working on, they just have to hope you have bandwidth. they are completely prepared to hear "i don't have bandwidth".

[Anonymous User]

I think you can credibly turn down work if you're nearing the 250/month range, if the additional work will be for a new matter you weren't already staffed on. If the work is for a matter you were already staffed on, chances are you'll just have to suck it up even if you start hitting 300+.

No, this is not the threshold at which you can credibly turn down work. It's much lower than that.

I guess maybe this depends on the firm. At my V10 (one typically cited as being particularly grindy), I think the 250 threshold is a good rule of thumb. If you're only hitting 200 or so and turn down work, it'll absolutely look like you're coasting here (sadly).

[Anonymous User]

It's firm-dependent. At my firm (non-NYC litigation) I'd say you can generally turn down work if you're at around 200/month. (Subject to some variance: some partners wouldn't blink an eye if you were at 180 and told them no while others might push for more like 220 since we are busy right now, but 200 is a good benchmark). I would say 250/month is the point where you shouldn't be taking on new work and may need to talk to partners about workload management. 250+ is OK periodically but you're not doing your best work and it's not good in the long run.

[Anonymous User]

Transactional NY V10 associate here. I recall a partner (partner A) chiding me when I was a junior for not taking on his project when I told him I was really underwater for another deal. I then heard from the partner whose deal was putting me underwater (partner B) that A had called him up and complained that I turned down his work, and B emphasized to me that it wasn't smart to ever turn down work as a junior associate. B knew that I was easily billing over 200 and he and I were on generally good terms, so I think that's just the common wisdom that pervades the place.

[Excellent117]

I think you can credibly turn down work if you're nearing the 250/month range, if the additional work will be for a new matter you weren't already staffed on. If the work is for a matter you were already staffed on, chances are you'll just have to suck it up even if you start hitting 300+.

No, this is not the threshold at which you can credibly turn down work. It's much lower than that.

I guess maybe this depends on the firm. At my V10 (one typically cited as being particularly grindy), I think the 250 threshold is a good rule of thumb. If you're only hitting 200 or so and turn down work, it'll absolutely look like you're coasting here (sadly).

I would say it's more goal dependent than firm dependent. If you're not gunning for partner and you deliver good quality work product, you really should have no reservations about turning down work at 200, or really even 180.

[Anonymous User]

I would say it's more goal dependent than firm dependent. If you're not gunning for partner and you deliver good quality work product, you really should have no reservations about turning down work at 200, or really even 180.

I think firm also matters. Go to a firm with an hours minimum and if you are 10% above the threshold, most partners will leave you alone.

[RaceJudicata]

I rarely turned down work during my first fee years. This caused me to get in some jams and worse, nearly make a pretty significant mistake. Big wake up call. I now turn down work all the time whenever I’m around 200 hours (and frankly, sometimes less). Never received any pushback and partners (including those I’ve turned down work from) keep coming back. Just be diplomatic about it and give a good reason.

Also be careful about the “I can’t work on it right now but may be able to turn to it in a few hours”... only play that card if you actually think you can turn to it in a few hours.

I also think there may be a difference between corporate and lit (based on responses here). I’m in a lit practice, and often saying yes to new work means signing up for 2+ years of work