As a junior/mid level associate (I’m a third year) at a V20 firm in New York, what’s the best way to draw boundaries to make this career more sustainable?

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Do you want to make it a long(er) career or just make it 3-5 years? If just 3-5 say you’re not available for weekends or during vacations and in a few years find a new job.

If you want to make it longer, accept early on that you’re entering a service profession where clients pay premium rates for a premium product delivered on often time sensitive deadlines (or frankly whatever deadlines they want to impose). Despite your best efforts, you will likely miss out on vacations (or end up working through them on some level), nights out, holidays, etc etc etc as a result. Very few people, if anyone, will care that you are missing out on things because everyone else is doing the same. Accepting this early makes it easier to deal with it.

Second, absolutely make sure you marry the right person. Life in a law firm can royally suck, but absolutely nothing will make it worse than getting crap from a spouse that doesn’t accept the reality of what he/she is marrying into. That money comes with conditions. Trust me on that.

Beyond that, wherever possible, carve out time for your personal life and guard against intrusions if at all possible. Good luck.

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Your wife is rare. I tell my wife if I could make what I make while doing anything I’d have tried that by now.

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First, understand that unfortunately as client facing high-priced service, the boundaries will not be the same as other jobs.

Second, try to take at least 1 two week vacation every year (in addition to other smaller ones but the 2 week block helps a lot).

Third, ID ppl and lawyers you want to be like, work with, and model yourself. Easier to build relationships and also draw boundaries.

Fourth, help foster other ppl to build boundaries (including with u).

Fifth, perfect saying yes but meaning no - "yes Happy to help but I can start until Wednesday. Does that work with your timeline?"

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Great pointers! Thank you

Are you lit or corporate? I’m a 5th year lit so I cannot speak to whether the below advice works for corporate:

— ask about timing and be very communicative of time you block out. Just because a partner sends you an email at 4pm Friday does not mean it needs to be done that weekend. So ask: “what’s the timing? Is it okay if a turn to this Monday?” - leaving it vague like this means the partner doesn’t know if you just want the weekend off (which is FINE anyway) or are busy with other work.

— communicate block out times. I worked with one associate who gave his busy teams basically a weekend schedule, ie “9-10 available, 10-12 brunch with wife, 12-3 weekend activities, 3-5 available “ etc. This is probably overboard (and I don’t do it personally) but it’s big law, so overboard works.

—I agree with above posts about taking vacation. Communicate it early and often.

— turn down work - or at least soft turn downs. My first two years I turned down nothing, then I realized it’s fine to say: “I’m underwater and if I take this on I may not be able to give it my A focus. Is there anyone else available? If not, I can turn to this ___.”
— and even if you’re billing eight hours a day, which is at capacity but not underwater, you can be protective if you have plans those evenings or weekends: “I am at capacity this week, is it okay if I turn to this next week?”

Anyway. I could go on. I have two kids and a wife who i actually like spending time with, so this issue is important to me.

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I'm still quite junior, but something that's worked wonders for me is building strong relationships with my partners and clients...they should see you as a person that they need to be considerate of, not as an unfeeling cog. I've done excellent work for them, gone out of my way to be responsive when possible, and gotten to know them and banter with them. There are obviously other benefits as well.

Now, if something absolutely needs to get done now, they will still ask and expect me to do it, but no false deadlines! And when I'm not responsive, they know that I'm not just sitting on a beach somewhere ignoring them, since I've built up a reputation for being responsive and reliable.

Also, just getting more experience - -> fewer "false" deadlines. I put false in quotes because these are actually real internal deadlines, set so that if you screw up, there's plenty of room to recover. You're senior enough that you probably already know this, but thought I'd throw that in for the true baby lawyers on here.

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IMO the best way is to do a really, really good job. You have to be a value add. You can be a value add by being the most thoughtful, careful associate who performs above your year level, takes ownership of your matters and manages up as well as down, doesn’t make careless mistakes etc... or you can be a value add by billing a ton of hours (or both).

If you’re trying to be in the first category, you do still have to work late nights and weekends on occasion, whatever it takes to get your deals done and help out your favorite seniors. However, when seniors think of you as the all star they want on their matters, it puts you in a much better position to say no to extra tasks like diligence on someone else’s deals, extra deals when you’re already busy enough but not dying etc. You really want to build up your relationships with your favorite seniors so they can support you in this. When partner you don’t like asks you to do diligence which you COULD get done if you work all weekend, best way to get out of it is first say you’d love to help but don’t have time to get it done in the timeframe required, and if needed to have partner you do like email them and say “hey sorry, junior is really busy on my deals and I need them to be available for XYZ”.

There’s definitely some degree of luck involved with getting these types of partners who actually care about you (they are few and far between) on your side, but when you find them latch on and do whatever it takes to earn and keep their loyalty. This takes years and you have to keep doing it everyday.

At least this is what I did/tried to do. I generally hit my hours but do not go much above and beyond that. V10 with v high expectations. I still get great reviews because whatever I do choose to do I put my full effort into and work nights/weekends etc on, and I’ve worked to make myself substantively excellent. But I am not shy about saying no to bullshit diligence that anyone can do. I refuse to be a warm body to throw at matters for the most part. I was told I don’t have a realistic shot at partner at the v10 but I’m cool with that so long as they’re not pushing me out. YMMV.

To be clear this definitely still leaves me with a non-ideal work life balance, but I feel better about my life than the folks billing 2400 or 3000.

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Thank you for your inputs- very helpful! I’m in corporate- project finance to be specific. Looking to lateral to AmLaw100, heard the billing pressures are comparatively lesser than V10/20. Totally fine with taking a slight haircut especially the lockstep bonus to get some flexibility and my weekends back!

This. The grass is not greener.

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