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papermateflair
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Re: Lateral Experience Not Going Well
I would talk to the partner that hired you about hours and expectations, and see what he recommends, with the goal of nudging him towards letting you take on work from other groups. Something like "I've been billing ___ hours a month and have been regularly reaching out to xyz partners/senior associates and haven't been getting traction. How do you recommend I increase the amount of work I do? Would the group be open to me doing overflow work in ____ groups if they have a need?" You shouldn't outright ask to leave the group to move into another if you don't *know* the other group will take you, instead I would approach it as more of a brainstorming session where you are working through solutions to you not being busy. What do they want you to do in your spare time - bill for other groups? Or do non-billable work? Watch CLEs about your new practice area? Someone should give you some guidance, and frankly they're likely to prefer you be making money for the firm unless they know that a huge project is coming in that they'll need to staff you on next week or something.
If you can get the partner to agree to you taking on more work from the other practice group you are interested in, then you should be able to let them take up more and more of your time (especially if your current group doesn't have enough work for you!) until you can make the switch official - preferably by having one of the partners in the new group go to your current group and ask for you to switch. No one wants to hear "I really hate the work in this group please move me to another group" so if you can finagle it this way it'll keep everyone from getting mad. But you should also just do what you need to do - if right now you think a partner from the other group would go to bat for you if you wanted to switch, then maybe have a conversation with them and see what they propose.
If you can get the partner to agree to you taking on more work from the other practice group you are interested in, then you should be able to let them take up more and more of your time (especially if your current group doesn't have enough work for you!) until you can make the switch official - preferably by having one of the partners in the new group go to your current group and ask for you to switch. No one wants to hear "I really hate the work in this group please move me to another group" so if you can finagle it this way it'll keep everyone from getting mad. But you should also just do what you need to do - if right now you think a partner from the other group would go to bat for you if you wanted to switch, then maybe have a conversation with them and see what they propose.
