Advice for class of ‘19, ‘20, ‘21 re lack of training Forum

[Anonymous User]

To mid or sr corporate associates, what are the more common things you see with poorly trained juniors due to WFH. Any advice you can share to mitigate the lack of good training?

Concerned that associates who started in ‘19/‘20 (less so ‘21) class years will be tagged/branded as “those classes” that haven’t developed properly due to WFH 2020-2022 (perhaps longer). Thanks.

[Poldy]

Biggest issue I've seen is that many in those classes at my firm seem to think this is a M-F job and send an email every Thursday letting the team know they will be unavailable all weekend. I think not being in the office and seeing how people work has caused them to not understand the realities of the job.

Maybe in 5-10 years those classes will make this job better and more reasonable, but until then all they are doing is making the lives of midlevel associates (more) miserable.

I don't really think there has been a training issue - at least not in the groups I have experience with (general M&A and a specialty corporate practice). Not much training happens face to face.

[TUwave]

Biggest issue I've seen is that many in those classes at my firm seem to think this is a M-F job and send an email every Thursday letting the team know they will be unavailable all weekend. I think not being in the office and seeing how people work has caused them to not understand the realities of the job.

Maybe in 5-10 years those classes will make this job better and more reasonable, but until then all they are doing is making the lives of midlevel associates (more) miserable.

I don't really think there has been a training issue - at least not in the groups I have experience with (general M&A and a specialty corporate practice). Not much training happens face to face.

110% agreed. Waiting on the people to run in here to say "good on them for setting boundaries" and call us "boomer midlevels"

[Anonymous User]

Biggest issue I've seen is that many in those classes at my firm seem to think this is a M-F job and send an email every Thursday letting the team know they will be unavailable all weekend. I think not being in the office and seeing how people work has caused them to not understand the realities of the job.

Maybe in 5-10 years those classes will make this job better and more reasonable, but until then all they are doing is making the lives of midlevel associates (more) miserable.

I don't really think there has been a training issue - at least not in the groups I have experience with (general M&A and a specialty corporate practice). Not much training happens face to face.

110% agreed. Waiting on the people to run in here to say "good on them for setting boundaries" and call us "boomer midlevels"

Good on them for setting boundaries. You sound like a boomer partner, minus the equity.

[Anonymous User]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

[Poldy]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

[Anonymous User]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

You should also take those 4 weekends off. You have more leverage than the juniors.
I think it's time the midlevels learn from the juniors and grow a spine after decades of juniors learning from midlevels and seniors how to lose one.

[Anonymous User]

It’s not just the taking off tons of evenings and weekends, it’s the playing dumb like they had no idea we’d be working on the deals with 250 emails flying around at those times. It’s also the constant delayed responses saying I can jump on this in a few hours, when they know that means the midlevel/senior will have already done it. Being a junior can suck. I felt like I was standing on the sidelines in my pads with my helmet ready, just waiting to check in for a few plays at the least desirable times. That’s awful and not how it should work, but now days the juniors are often nowhere to be found and then are like oh let me tie my cleats, oh where’s my helmet every time you call their number (to take this analogy too too far).

[Anonymous User]

It’s not just the taking off tons of evenings and weekends, it’s the playing dumb like they had no idea we’d be working on the deals with 250 emails flying around at those times. It’s also the constant delayed responses saying I can jump on this in a few hours, when they know that means the midlevel/senior will have already done it. Being a junior can suck. I felt like I was standing on the sidelines in my pads with my helmet ready, just waiting to check in for a few plays at the least desirable times. That’s awful and not how it should work, but now days the juniors are often nowhere to be found and then are like oh let me tie my cleats, oh where’s my helmet every time you call their number (to take this analogy too too far).

These juniors came into big law in a world where weekdays and weekends completely blended together during the pandemic. There has been an excess of work going around and firms are bleeding talent.

These juniors should be commended for taking some small steps towards re-establishing boundaries. Because even with these small push backs, the juniors are still going to bill an obscene amount and help pad that partner’s paychecks. It’s not like they’re losing the firm money at 2000, 2100, or more hours.

[Anonymous User]

Idk if someone says I can do this in a few hours I would assume that they are busy. Or maybe you didn't communicate the urgency. If you're talking about literally first years with under a year experience, I'm going to blame you for lack of management.

[Poldy]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

You should also take those 4 weekends off. You have more leverage than the juniors.
I think it's time the midlevels learn from the juniors and grow a spine after decades of juniors learning from midlevels and seniors how to lose one.

You are delusional. Juniors have close to no skills - we get paid these ridiculous salaries to do things like work weekends to close transactions. You don't want to work weekends, go do a different job and don't try to ruin this for everyone else that wants/needs the money. The model is barely sustainable as it is and would not last a year if everyone refused to work weekends.

[Anonymous User]

Started in 2019 myself, and am setting more and more boundaries. The same is true for many of my colleagues who are more senior. This past weekend we got an e-mail from the banks. I knew this workstream was going to be assigned to me. Was waiting for some overzealous associate to tell me to get on it. Instead, they waited until Monday to assign it to me.

Sometimes you still get some who didn't get the memo (that same week I was asked to work late on something that could have realistically waited another week), but I do think it's not just something that is just junior related.

That being said, I think the above is somewhat off-topic. In terms of training, I've honestly just accepted it is not going to happen. Still to this day, my busiest time as an associate were my first three months. I was really thrown into the mix: calls directly with clients, giving them advice, etc. I really learnt a lot, because whenever I was unsure I just went to the senior who then explained it to me. Then lockdowns occurred and it's never occurred since. I only get grunt work, I don't even get to attend client calls at all anymore (cutting costs) and have not done anything "new" in about 1.5 years. For anyone coming in hot with "you need to be more proactive!" Yeah, I did that. I always ask if I can assist with anything, but honestly, when you're not part of any of the calls with the client, you barely know what is happening in the deal, so you can't even say "hey, I really want to work on workstream X," because you don't even know workstream X is kicking off.

Instead of railing against it, I've just learnt to embrace it. At least there is less responsibility and pressure, right? I just hope to leave within a couple years and go in-house and hopefully there I won't be unmasked as a complete hack.

[Sad248]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

You should also take those 4 weekends off. You have more leverage than the juniors.
I think it's time the midlevels learn from the juniors and grow a spine after decades of juniors learning from midlevels and seniors how to lose one.

You are delusional. Juniors have close to no skills - we get paid these ridiculous salaries to do things like work weekends to close transactions. You don't want to work weekends, go do a different job and don't try to ruin this for everyone else that wants/needs the money. The model is barely sustainable as it is and would not last a year if everyone refused to work weekends.

Relatively junior myself, so not going to laugh at this immediately, but what exactly is this model that everyone NEEDS to work weekends?

From my experience, law is pretty much governed by Parkinson's Law: everything will take as much time as you allow it to take. I've never seen anything where it has been like "ah, we got an unexpected delay! Well we already finished everything so let's take it easy." No, regardless, you always work down the wire and you're left wondering how the hell this transaction was supposed to be finished a week prior. Same is true for weekends: people, from my experience, work weekends because boundaries were never shaped which causes the client to demand everything even though it makes no sense and the lawyer to jump up like a submissive lapdog. I've talked to a few former senior associates who went in-house and they (to their credit) always tell the firms to not work on weekends, because they realize it's never really necessary. Again, relatively junior myself, so I probably don't see the full picture, so happy to hear the other side.

[Anonymous User]

Maybe this is off topic but I think it goes well with that Parkinson law of things taking as long as you have / not stressing about illusionary deadlines.

I'm staffed on a matter that was scheduled to close the week I'm on vacation. I was supposed to get another associate to cover me, but I was slow about it. I do have favors to call in, but I just lazy and frankly annoyed that it's my responsibility to arrange coverage and not the partners.

Anyway, we just got request for an extension. So now I can save my chit for next time.

[Anonymous User]

A lot of things can be solved by good communication, and lots of people are bad at it. That includes midlevels, seniors, and partners. For example, if the junior might need to work late or do a fire drill or work a weekend, you should probably warn them as soon as you know, instead of dropping it on them last minute. Of course, sometimes you don’t know either (which usually means bad communication from the partner or client above you), but come on - you’re definitely not perfect at this, right?

As another example, you can earn a lot of respect and hard work out of a junior by explaining the rationale of your fake deadline. They don’t need to do this mountain of diligence by 3am on Thursday for no reason. It’s because the client needs to see the results by Monday morning, which means the partner needs to be reviewing/fixing it by Sunday morning, which means the seniors need to have it to the partner by Saturday night, which means the midlevels need all of Thursday and Friday to take the results of your (probably sloppy) junior diligence and transform it into something that can go up the chain.

If you explain that, the junior will feel like they’re a respected part of the team and will push to meet that deadline because they know why it matters. If you just insist that they drop everything last minute and kill themselves to hit a clearly fake deadline for what seems like no reason, they will resent you and work more poorly.

[Anonymous User]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

You should also take those 4 weekends off. You have more leverage than the juniors.
I think it's time the midlevels learn from the juniors and grow a spine after decades of juniors learning from midlevels and seniors how to lose one.

See where your spine is when corporate work finally cools back off (which it will), firms aren't as desperate for bodies again and they resume weeding people like this out every year.

Partners in my group 100% know who these people are and the second there's a slowdown, it's not going to be pretty for those folks.

[Anonymous User]

To get this thread a little bit back on track… Junior associates are fools if they believe the tale being woven by senior partners that they would have gotten amazing training if only we could be working in offices instead of at home. That’s pure nonsense to push RTO policies. There was never any training beyond what’s happening now in mark-ups and phone calls; most junior lawyers rarely saw senior associates, let alone partners, face to face, and when they did it was usually for some sort of general status rundown. The way you get trained is by doing your best to internalize the lessons of mark-ups and phone calls from seniors and partners, by making mistakes and learning from them, and by reading all of the emails you get, not only the ones directed to you (this is a major mistake I think a lot of junior associates make). You will never be taught pedagogically; you’re not in school any more.

[Anonymous User]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

You should also take those 4 weekends off. You have more leverage than the juniors.
I think it's time the midlevels learn from the juniors and grow a spine after decades of juniors learning from midlevels and seniors how to lose one.

See where your spine is when corporate work finally cools back off (which it will), firms aren't as desperate for bodies again and they resume weeding people like this out every year.

Partners in my group 100% know who these people are and the second there's a slowdown, it's not going to be pretty for those folks.

I doubt partners notice which associates are taking weekends off unless it affects them personally. If there's less work, why would it matter to them who is willing to work 3000 hours? There won't be 3000 hours of work to do. There's no loyalty in this industry. The ones who stay are the ones who do good work and happen to be in the slightly busier groups.

[Ultramar vistas]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

You should also take those 4 weekends off. You have more leverage than the juniors.
I think it's time the midlevels learn from the juniors and grow a spine after decades of juniors learning from midlevels and seniors how to lose one.

See where your spine is when corporate work finally cools back off (which it will), firms aren't as desperate for bodies again and they resume weeding people like this out every year.

Partners in my group 100% know who these people are and the second there's a slowdown, it's not going to be pretty for those folks.

I doubt partners notice which associates are taking weekends off unless it affects them personally. If there's less work, why would it matter to them who is willing to work 3000 hours? There won't be 3000 hours of work to do. There's no loyalty in this industry. The ones who stay are the ones who do good work and happen to be in the slightly busier groups.

I mean they absolutely do know. Midlevels talk to partners. Whether you care or not is another thing, and whether what’s relayed is accurate is another, but yeah partners know who is not pulling their weight because midlevels bitch upwards.

[Anonymous User]

I honestly don't know any juniors who refuse to work weekends or shut it down at 8. I'm not sure where this myth started. I do try to notify the team when I'm going to be out, and I clear it with partners before. If you seniors don't want me to take vacations ever, take it up with the partners. Or maybe have (a semblance of) a life yourself? Partners didn't make partners by never ever taking off.

It’s not about never taking time off - you can and should take vacations. I have worked with multiple 1st and 2nd year associates that take every other weekend off. That is not an exaggeration - I was on a 6 week transaction last fall where the junior had bachelorette parties 4 of the 6 weekends and refused to work.

You should also take those 4 weekends off. You have more leverage than the juniors.
I think it's time the midlevels learn from the juniors and grow a spine after decades of juniors learning from midlevels and seniors how to lose one.

See where your spine is when corporate work finally cools back off (which it will), firms aren't as desperate for bodies again and they resume weeding people like this out every year.

Partners in my group 100% know who these people are and the second there's a slowdown, it's not going to be pretty for those folks.

I doubt partners notice which associates are taking weekends off unless it affects them personally. If there's less work, why would it matter to them who is willing to work 3000 hours? There won't be 3000 hours of work to do. There's no loyalty in this industry. The ones who stay are the ones who do good work and happen to be in the slightly busier groups.

I mean they absolutely do know. Midlevels talk to partners. Whether you care or not is another thing, and whether what’s relayed is accurate is another, but yeah partners know who is not pulling their weight because midlevels bitch upwards.

I agree that there is some respect to setting some boundaries. However, as coming from a non-V50 firm, I think one of the differences between "you guys" and us is that the reason clients come to you and pay you the rates you command is because they expect deals to get done on a time-crunched schedule. If things are going to take as long as they are going to take, why pay 30% more in fees? You can say, "BuT wE hAvE mOrE sOpHiStiCaTiOn." Mmmk, maybe for like 5% of deals . . . you don't need a degree from a T14 or special V10 training to put together one of the countless matrixes for deals.

Like one of the above commenters posted, you are being paid what you are because you are expected to work (or at least be available on) most weekends. It's effectively hazard pay.

[Anonymous User]

Biggest issue I've seen is that many in those classes at my firm seem to think this is a M-F job and send an email every Thursday letting the team know they will be unavailable all weekend. I think not being in the office and seeing how people work has caused them to not understand the realities of the job.

Maybe in 5-10 years those classes will make this job better and more reasonable, but until then all they are doing is making the lives of midlevel associates (more) miserable.

I don't really think there has been a training issue - at least not in the groups I have experience with (general M&A and a specialty corporate practice). Not much training happens face to face.

Everyday at my V10.

[Anonymous User]

A lot of things can be solved by good communication, and lots of people are bad at it. That includes midlevels, seniors, and partners. For example, if the junior might need to work late or do a fire drill or work a weekend, you should probably warn them as soon as you know, instead of dropping it on them last minute. Of course, sometimes you don’t know either (which usually means bad communication from the partner or client above you), but come on - you’re definitely not perfect at this, right?

As another example, you can earn a lot of respect and hard work out of a junior by explaining the rationale of your fake deadline. They don’t need to do this mountain of diligence by 3am on Thursday for no reason. It’s because the client needs to see the results by Monday morning, which means the partner needs to be reviewing/fixing it by Sunday morning, which means the seniors need to have it to the partner by Saturday night, which means the midlevels need all of Thursday and Friday to take the results of your (probably sloppy) junior diligence and transform it into something that can go up the chain.

If you explain that, the junior will feel like they’re a respected part of the team and will push to meet that deadline because they know why it matters. If you just insist that they drop everything last minute and kill themselves to hit a clearly fake deadline for what seems like no reason, they will resent you and work more poorly.

Everyone else in this thread is just projecting their own internal BS. This comment is the actual important one to take in.

Communication is everything in this job. If a senior associate or partner comes to you as a junior associate with a project, you might have no idea why it is important or when they need it/want it, etc. You have no way of knowing if they need it truly asap so you stay up all night or if it can be okay to put it down in the evening and pick it up again tomorrow. Juniors need to ask questions. Partners and senior associates won't just sit you down and explain everything to you, you need to ask the questions to learn.

To all the senior associates on this thread who seem like they are getting really irked at juniors, ask yourself if you have been communicating clearly to the juniors at all, and not just the "well they should have known to do xyz". Juniors don't know anything and communication is a two way street.

All of the shittiest partners and senior associates I have ever worked with have had terrible communication skills on explaining projects, project deadlines, etc. The more you get juniors engaged and understanding overall process the better work you'll get.

[Anonymous User]

I doubt partners notice which associates are taking weekends off unless it affects them personally. If there's less work, why would it matter to them who is willing to work 3000 hours? There won't be 3000 hours of work to do. There's no loyalty in this industry. The ones who stay are the ones who do good work and happen to be in the slightly busier groups.

Because if/when the work comes back they'd rather still have the people who have shown they'll work 3,000 hours.

[LBJ's Hair]

I doubt partners notice which associates are taking weekends off unless it affects them personally. If there's less work, why would it matter to them who is willing to work 3000 hours? There won't be 3000 hours of work to do. There's no loyalty in this industry. The ones who stay are the ones who do good work and happen to be in the slightly busier groups.

b/c they know they're not gonna get an email saying "sorry we didn't get you that draft of the proxy, I have a [my fourth in six months] bachelor party this weekend and Jeremy needs to take his dog to the chiropractor." it's just gonna get done

if you're like the group head or w/e then sure, but if you're a partner w/any level of involvement in day-to-day work this is constantly on your mind - what sort of resources do I have, how much do I have to micromanage for this to get done

[legalpotato]

It’s not just the taking off tons of evenings and weekends, it’s the playing dumb like they had no idea we’d be working on the deals with 250 emails flying around at those times. It’s also the constant delayed responses saying I can jump on this in a few hours, when they know that means the midlevel/senior will have already done it. Being a junior can suck. I felt like I was standing on the sidelines in my pads with my helmet ready, just waiting to check in for a few plays at the least desirable times. That’s awful and not how it should work, but now days the juniors are often nowhere to be found and then are like oh let me tie my cleats, oh where’s my helmet every time you call their number (to take this analogy too too far).

These juniors came into big law in a world where weekdays and weekends completely blended together during the pandemic. There has been an excess of work going around and firms are bleeding talent.

These juniors should be commended for taking some small steps towards re-establishing boundaries. Because even with these small push backs, the juniors are still going to bill an obscene amount and help pad that partner’s paychecks. It’s not like they’re losing the firm money at 2000, 2100, or more hours.

Yeah, except them "establishing boundaries" means the burden falls on the mid and senior associates above them. You aren't "sticking it to the man", you are hurting your "fellow man".