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Firm is moving to variable hours track where associates are paid based on billable hours tracks. They are selling this as a flexible work approach where people can slow down if they want to still be on partnership track but we all know its their way of saving money and paying less for slower practices. Partners aren't thrilled because they need people working more not less.

Im in a practice that is very busy and slightly specialized but I want to opt into the lower track with the lower salary. Similar to other law firms, we are at capacity in my group so I know that cutting back on 350 hours is not going to go over well.

I need advice on how to approach this situation, especially going into the very busy season of my practice:

• Do I bluntly tell partners who are looking to staff me on a matter that I am on the lower hours track and on pace for my track and therefore don't want to be staffed on new matters?

• Or, do I passive aggressively set boundaries and ambiguously suggest I dont have bandwidth whenever work comes in that is going to put me over hours?

Im not going to not say anything and just take the work and accept the status quo in a sense because I don't care about becoming a partner and I do enough work for a few partners that I know wouldnt let me get fired.

OP here, I also plan to take more vacations/time off with this new reduced hours track, which will help with my "availability" problem, but I know that will also piss people off since everyone's billing their faces off.

This is what makes the variable hours thing seem so difficult to me. Unless there is an assignment coordinator who is on board with variable hours and both willing and able to police the boundaries, I don't see how it would work. In my experience, some partners are more willing to take "I'm at capacity" than others, and for those who aren't, once you say you can't do it and they say do it anyways, I'm not sure what other options there are.....

I would tend to agree with the above, it's simply a matter of saying you don't have the capacity. Having extra hours that could be devoted to a matter does not availability make. This is true for regular hours or reduced hours. With the nod to this job requiring (significantly) more than a 9-5, it's still important to set boundaries with availability. In circumstances where partners don't respect that, their deals (at least those I've said I don't have capacity to handle) fall last in the line of to-do items. At times, the work doesn't get done by the "deadline." I will prioritize family time over reviewing a document for a deal I have specifically said I don't have time to handle.

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Thank you both. I'm interested to see how this will go down with fourth quarter coming upon us.

I have even less incentive to get staffed now because physically/mathematically I couldn't even hit the "tier 1" billable requirement, so I'm working for pocket change bonus at this point.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:57 pm

This is what makes the variable hours thing seem so difficult to me. Unless there is an assignment coordinator who is on board with variable hours and both willing and able to police the boundaries, I don't see how it would work. In my experience, some partners are more willing to take "I'm at capacity" than others, and for those who aren't, once you say you can't do it and they say do it anyways, I'm not sure what other options there are.....

Definitely a tricky way to pay people less. I feel like it's analogous to "unlimited vacation" policies...

I think in this frenzy of work you will have a hard time setting limits.