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Subject Expert
This is not normal, and it’s bad delegation/management by the partner/senior.
This.
You are the connective tissue between the lead associate (senior) on the deal and the junior associate. As a 4th/5th year, depending on the nature of the deal, you should be actively involved in drafting primary docs and helping the senior and partner think through issues. They may not ask you to do, for example, an issues list if they are handling themselves, but that doesn’t stop you from doing one ahead of time and sharing your thoughts with them anyways. All non primary doc related things are your job to delegate and manage (depending on the complexity of the deal in which case some of that will be done by the senior too). As a manager, your job is quality control of the work streams juniors should be taking ownership of (disclosure schedules, Diligence trackers and memos, org docs, checklists etc). This is where you develop your ability to review another attorney’s work and provide feedback, which is a skill that must be built. My rule of thumb is that you should not be delegating anything you have not already mastered yourself, and vice versa. The tricky part is that you are responsible for knowing everything about their work stream even though they are taking the pen.
If you want the opportunity to review the juniors work first, you have to plan ahead by knowing what’s needs to be done, and delegating to the junior before the senior or partner does. Give the task to the junior and cc the senior or partner with you asking the junior to send to you for review when the task is complete. Once you’ve done that a few times the junior will end up defaulting to you on almost everything and the partner/ senior will begin to expect it.
Long story short, you have to set the tone early in the deal. As a 4th/5th year you are also at a stage where you no longer should have to be told what to (depending on the complexity of the deal) and should start anticipating what needs to be done and creating plans for them to be executed.
These things need to be done especially when your senior/partner suck at managing/delegating themselves.
Subject Expert
Wild that your firm staffs a senior above you and below the partner. Are you only on megadeals?
Subject Expert
Yeah, totally second the comment that practice area matters. I’m in funds (V20 fwiw), and a pretty standard 3-person deal team is partner (junior and/or senior partner), plus a 5th–7th year or counsel, plus a junior associate.