Drowning and unsure what to do Forum

[Sackboy]

Lateral. Ramp up, ramp, down, and then lateral again.

This is the way.

[Anonymous User]

Second year regulatory associate and I'm currently drowning in work. I'm staffed on 12 active matters that are consuming every ounce of me and they are all with the two partners I mainly work with, so I couldn't turn them down. I feel like my work product is really starting to suffer because I'm so burned out that I truly don't care anymore, which sucks because that feeling will obviously change when things eventually slow down. Any advice on how to survive this?

Ugh honestly this is not going to be a popular response, but just deal. In addition to weekends, the additional hours can come from getting 4 hours of sleep every other night. You won’t feel it for a while if you get 7-8 hours the nights in between. Maybe in a different climate I’d suggest otherwise, but I have been there more than once (longest I’ve felt like I was legit drowning was probably a 2.5 month stretch), and it literally always eases up. In this climate, relationships with key partners are just too important. They pay you a ton. You’ll survive. It’ll be fine. When you come up for air, you can decide whether you want go lateral or go in house or govt or whatever. Trust me: when this all dies down in a couple months you’ll be proud of yourself for dealing and you’ll get a ton of implicit leeway to coast.

—senior lit associate v30 large secondary market.

I mean OP should at least talk to his group partners. Any key partner that isn't even open to having a conversation about workload (maybe they just pat op on the back and tell them to do their best in the meantime, in which case it is what it is) without risk of negative consequences or blowback is not a partner worth killing yourself for.

The assumption that op will be proud of themselves after the fact is nuts though, especially coming from a senior. If anything, I've seen more people get burned out of certain groups or biglaw entirely from periods like this, outside of firms like dpw or other sweatshops where you should expect this kind of workload going in unless you're totally unaware or naive.

[objctnyrhnr]

Okay in the (perhaps hypothetical) situation where you’re a lit associate who has gained trust/respect of partners to completely run matters, staff same with juniors, and get the nod to move for court extensions as needed, you probably just need to grin and bear it. These are your matters. Sometimes they’ll all pop at once and it’ll suck, but it’ll pass. You can’t like complain to partners in that situation. After all, it’s not really the partners creating your circumstance; it’s client and/or opposing counsel and/or rules of procedure.

If this is a situation where maybe a more junior associate is being inundated with one-offs, without vision into the entirety of the matter/s, then yeah I mean start saying no to the one offs. Seems simple. Your hours will reflect how swamped you are. It’ll be fine. Try not to say no to the same partner twice in a small period, if possible.

I only know lit, but I can’t really think of a situation that’s not either 1 or 2 or a hybrid of 1 and 2.

I recommend refraining from a whole “poor me” discussion with the partners, however objectively warranted it might be and however close with said partners you might be.

TLDR:

if you have ownership of matters that are all crushing you at once, get extensions and delegate to the extent possible and otherwise just cope.

But if it’s like a million small things then start saying no.

Lot of posters saying like “have a robust sit down with partners and explain that it’s hard,” and I personally just cannot envision a situation where that’s the right move (with the caveat, again, that I only know lit).

[Anonymous User]

Okay in the (perhaps hypothetical) situation where you’re a lit associate who has gained trust/respect of partners to completely run matters, staff same with juniors, and get the nod to move for court extensions as needed, you probably just need to grin and bear it. These are your matters. Sometimes they’ll all pop at once and it’ll suck, but it’ll pass. You can’t like complain to partners in that situation. After all, it’s not really the partners creating your circumstance; it’s client and/or opposing counsel and/or rules of procedure.

If this is a situation where maybe a more junior associate is being inundated with one-offs, without vision into the entirety of the matter/s, then yeah I mean start saying no to the one offs. Seems simple. Your hours will reflect how swamped you are. It’ll be fine. Try not to say no to the same partner twice in a small period, if possible.

I only know lit, but I can’t really think of a situation that’s not either 1 or 2 or a hybrid of 1 and 2.

I recommend refraining from a whole “poor me” discussion with the partners, however objectively warranted it might be and however close with said partners you might be.

TLDR:

if you have ownership of matters that are all crushing you at once, get extensions and delegate to the extent possible and otherwise just cope.

But if it’s like a million small things then start saying no.

Lot of posters saying like “have a robust sit down with partners and explain that it’s hard,” and I personally just cannot envision a situation where that’s the right move (with the caveat, again, that I only know lit).

I assume OP is staffed on a bunch of deal support work (second year regulatory associate with 10+ matters blowing up), which I think is different than being in an ownership position over entire matters as a litigation midlevel/senior or something similar. In my experience, specialist partners are more than willing to push back and protect their associates or staff additional bodies if M&A/PE is overburdening them. Could definitely be wrong though.

[Anonymous User]

Okay in the (perhaps hypothetical) situation where you’re a lit associate who has gained trust/respect of partners to completely run matters, staff same with juniors, and get the nod to move for court extensions as needed, you probably just need to grin and bear it. These are your matters. Sometimes they’ll all pop at once and it’ll suck, but it’ll pass. You can’t like complain to partners in that situation. After all, it’s not really the partners creating your circumstance; it’s client and/or opposing counsel and/or rules of procedure.

If this is a situation where maybe a more junior associate is being inundated with one-offs, without vision into the entirety of the matter/s, then yeah I mean start saying no to the one offs. Seems simple. Your hours will reflect how swamped you are. It’ll be fine. Try not to say no to the same partner twice in a small period, if possible.

I only know lit, but I can’t really think of a situation that’s not either 1 or 2 or a hybrid of 1 and 2.

I recommend refraining from a whole “poor me” discussion with the partners, however objectively warranted it might be and however close with said partners you might be.

TLDR:

if you have ownership of matters that are all crushing you at once, get extensions and delegate to the extent possible and otherwise just cope.

But if it’s like a million small things then start saying no.

Lot of posters saying like “have a robust sit down with partners and explain that it’s hard,” and I personally just cannot envision a situation where that’s the right move (with the caveat, again, that I only know lit).

I can attest that I had a conversation like this with one of the partners I was working with in litigation. At the time, I was a 4th year primarily writing briefs staffed on 5 matters that were all blowing up one after another. Had three >250 hour months in a row, and felt an imminent mental breakdown. Had the difficult conversation, and I think the partner respected me more for it. Now, I still have a healthy amount of work (slightly over 2000 hours/year), and partners always ask about whether my workload in manageable.

But I can also see how such a conversation might be a dice roll. But if you're getting so pounded that you can't bear it anymore, then it seems you don't have that much to lose.

[Anonymous User]

I was in a similar position a few months ago. I honestly think the only way to fully address this is to leave biglaw. Other people have given ways to try to manage things and some of those strategies might really help you, but all of that is really just swimming upstream. I had pretty candid conversations with seniors on my deals about my workload and I was more or less told: "I'm underwater too, it sucks but this is the job and you just have to deal with it." Maybe I could've spoken to partners, but I didn't feel comfortable initiating those conversations, nor did I think they'd be beneficial for me.

Biglaw is rotten to the core. These people could literally work you to death and they'd write some BS note to the legal media about how tragic this is, and then they'd go on about the rest of their lives. You gotta look out for yourself.

[Anonymous User]

I'm here for Temp69420's musings on capitalism.

[Anonymous User]

I'm here for Temp69420's musings on capitalism.

+1 I keep coming back for the response to the takedown on the last page but I guess the opinions were only TEMPorary.

[Anonymous User]

I was in a similar position a few months ago. I honestly think the only way to fully address this is to leave biglaw. Other people have given ways to try to manage things and some of those strategies might really help you, but all of that is really just swimming upstream. I had pretty candid conversations with seniors on my deals about my workload and I was more or less told: "I'm underwater too, it sucks but this is the job and you just have to deal with it." Maybe I could've spoken to partners, but I didn't feel comfortable initiating those conversations, nor did I think they'd be beneficial for me.

Biglaw is rotten to the core. These people could literally work you to death and they'd write some BS note to the legal media about how tragic this is, and then they'd go on about the rest of their lives. You gotta look out for yourself.

Remember the pyramid you are currently little bricks within, fellas and gals. If that gives off connotations of pyramid schemes, pun intended. This is all a massive pyramid. When you look up, you can see senior partners who own multiple houses, a yacht, and so on. That life looks enticing, so you sacrifice your health and relationships for the sake of investing multiple years into achieving it. Unfortunately, so is everyone else at the bottom of your pyramid. As a matter of economics and finance, there isn't room for all of you to make it to the next level, much less to the top level. Not only do you face extremely stiff competition to get there, but you will also be asked to sacrifice your medical condition, your marriage, hanging out with your aging parents, properly raising any kids, spending time with your awesome dog, learning how to woodwork or whatever the hell, going to that aging singer you loved so much during high school's last concert tour, and so on.

For what? The odds that you will somehow and probably not survive all of the brutal screening of those pyramid layers and reach the top? Don't be crazy. Work hard but craft an exit strategy.

[Anonymous User]

I'm here for Temp69420's musings on capitalism.

Bump Temp69420 where you at?

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I'm here for Temp69420's musings on capitalism.

The wrongness *is* instructive though, in terms of thinking about law firm management. The Dallas Cowboys functionally own almost no hard assets but have giant income streams (some contractually guaranteed) every year because everyone knows them and watches them. McDonald's (the symbol of capitalism if there ever was one!) owns very few restaurants and could easily own none; either way their bread is just from taking a cut of everyone using its name and standardized processes. Uber/Airbnb have very little beyond IP, servers and offices, but live by taking cuts as a middleman and independent regulator between consumers and providers of (wildly varying) cars/houses. Those are all a little different but the common theme is that their value is almost entirely in their brand and they would be fucked very very quickly if that were to be poisoned. If law firms were allowed to be publicly traded in the U.S., many of them would be valued well into the billions.

Preftigious firms, and individual partners, make money off their relationships with rich companies/people, and while their reputations (as well as their oversight and ability on higher-level issues) are the indispensable value to a client, the bulk of the actual revenue is you, the grunt worker, because what companies mostly need is paper. In that sense, a partner's really value is the middleman between clients and an endless supply of mildly skilled labor churning out an endless supply of slightly changed docs.