(1/2) As my first full year of practice comes to a close, it looks like my pre-tax salary for this fiscal year year will be just short of $400k — after year end bonuses are distributed next month (the 400k figure also includes my low base, but 75% of it reflects bonus). As of now, before my bonus has come in, I’ve got 193k student loans, 60k in investments, and 20k in savings. How much of the bonus should I use to pay student loans, and how much should I contribute to my investment portfolio?
Do you have a minimum billing requirement? If I were asked to do these types of things, I’d immediately ask how I’m supposed to bill for it. Why would the firm want to waste attorney time/resources on non-billable tasks? Do you have sufficient staff to take care of these assignments?
I end up delegating a lot of it to my assistant, but they intend for me to do it. They have their own assistants and paralegals. It shouldn’t be sent to me period. I’m not so much worried about the time aspect. I’m pissed that these things are being given to me in the first place. These “assignments” are NEVER given to my male counterparts. In the time it takes the partners to e-mail or call me about it, they could just ask their own assistants to do it. And that’s what should be happening.
1. Delegate what you can.
2. If it’s something you don’t feel you can delegate, do the task plus add real value.
They ask you to set up a call? You prep for the call and ask them if you can join. Every. Single. Time. (If they say yes, start to ask if you can lead the call.)
They ask you to check for typos? You make recommendations in comment bubbles for more effective arguments, supporting facts, etc.
They’ll either begin to understand your worth or get so annoyed that you’re not just doing things exactly as they ask that they’ll consider asking someone else. This is not without risk, but I’ve done this. It’s worth the the risk, in my experience.
Great tips. Don’t ask them to join, just add yourself and put them through the pain of telling you you’re not invited. Then ask why you were told to organize if you’re not on it.
Yes. My firm does this to me all the time. Even the female partner. Makes me feel unseen. It’s ridiculous
Yes! I’ve had female partners do this too. Blows my mind! I graduated in 2012 and just cannot believe this is still happening to me.
What kind if assignments? Bates stamping? Data entry? Putting exhibits together?
OP what you’re describing is literally my entire job as an “associate”...for a female partner. It’s soul crushing to feel like I’m wasting my degree to be a glorified assistant.
All. The. Time. And when I would push back or delegate these tasks to my personal paralegal, the managing partner would tell me I was too demanding and getting complaints that I was too aggressive. Weird that all the other attorneys (all male) never got those complaints and they literally had their paralegals ordering them coffee and picking up dry cleaning. Yet, how dare I have the audacity to ask my paralegal to file briefs and schedule depositions.
This is just insane. Sorry you had to go through all that.
A senior associate at my last firm did this constantly to me. Some of the highlights were requesting copies of his MPRE score and bar info, creating a username and password for a website, filling out his pro hac form (for a case I was not on), requesting checks (which had to go through assistants anyways so I was an extra added step in the process), and generally just downloading, printing, and bringing things to his office. It was infuriating. Thankful not to have experienced anything like that at my new firm so far.
Wow. That’s ridiculous. Glad things are going better at the new place!
Yes
Yes. I had a partner with whom this got way out of hand. Im rolling my eyes just remembering. Everything. Formatting, scheduling, ALL of his tech support issues (he wasn’t even that old. Like late 40s early 50s. No excuse). He couldn’t figure out how to listen a voicemail sent by email attachment. Once. I was working from home and he literally forwarded to me a voicemail and asked me to tell him what the guy said. I was furious. I ignored that.
I did push back a little—when he asked me to coordinate with OC to schedule a call or dep or something (that he was doing), I wrote back saying ok I’ll do it, but I’m just gonna have to ask you whether you’re free for every suggested date. I got out of that one. But it depends on the personality as to how they might take pushback.
It also depends on how well the firm is staffed. The place I used to work was a very poorly staffed insurance defense firm. The staff we did have didn’t know how to operate Microsoft word. Like page numbering, formatting... basic stuff. It was never going to change. Now I’m at a commercial lit firm and the sitch is better, but we still “run lean” and my assistant has 3 other attys. A lot of partners do their own filing (their choice). I still get asked to do this kind of stuff but my sense is that this is only when someone wants something done right, or to let me see what the edits are that are being made, or when it’s part of a bigger assignment and I have the choice to delegate whatever to my assistant/a paralegal/our word processing team, so I don’t mind. I bill it obv.
I have been a paralegal for 19 years. Attorneys shouldn’t be doing any non-billable secretarial work.
Sometimes, associates may get assigned work that can be done by paralegals, but that’s still billable, and common.
I’m a PD with many court appearances so I don’t experience this in the same way. But I’ve noticed that my male coworkers have gotten to take on a more challenging case load, earlier, even if their work has less attention to detail or they basically just plea the clients out...
And now I’ve literally just been asked to fill out applications for myself and two other attorneys to waive into another state. This literally cannot be real life.
I've done that kind of stuff for myself. But never for another attorney. Jeeez.
Chief
My boss has me schedule her meetings and jokes I’m her assistant 😒
That is just not ok. I had a boss who did that to our team assistant, and after a while she just stopped coming. Not cool.
In my experience, when a partner assigns a paralegal/assistant task sometimes the intent is that you delegate it to your assistant/paralegal. However, if the firm is small and the staff can’t do it then I do it and try to bill it in a way that won’t get cut as a paralegal/assistant task. This is something that happens to the male associates as well. Sometimes partners just email the first person they can think of, usually the associate, it’s up to you to assign it to the right person.
Agreed. I also feel like if I tried to raise the issue, that would be the partner’s excuse/defense- oh I just intended for her to pass it along to an assistant/paralegal.