Fellow Big Law colleagues, need help on how to hansle a situation (that shouldn’t even be happening imo).
I used to work for Partner A in project financing and made the internal switch to work in Investment Funds team.
One case with Partner A remained, and though I stayed on, it was mostly to advise in Investment Funds, as he had been looping in another associate from his team.
This week I had to send an e-mail about InvF, and he complained to me that he hadn’t seen the draft…how do I respond?

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Ask the partner or senior who is now responsible for you how to proceed. This seems odd but then again I am a senior funds associate and one of our finance partners out of the blue decided that I was responsible to lead a fund financing (the other fund partners were mildly unamused to horrified).

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Don’t overthink it. “Sorry about that. Happy to run by you first next time”. Reply all on it. If it’s his deal, he’s not being unreasonable wanting to control communications with the client. I’m having a little trouble following, but are you saying you’re now in more of a specialist (investment funds) role on this project financing matter? I would be annoyed if my specialists emailed the client directly without making sure with me/my team it’s ok. E.g., not every tax comment is worth raising to client/other side, you want the client/other side to feel like they have their go-to persons and it’s not a never ending whackamole of endless expensive attorneys etc. It’s not that I think I know better than the specialists what tax law is, but I know what my clients care about.

If it’s a joint matter between the two departments and your investment fund partners told you to send the email then tell them you’re not sure how to respond and ask for their advice, that sounds like some between the partners arm wrestling you should stay out of.

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To clarify, I now work with a completey different team and set of partners, and my current team is cc’d in the e-mail I sent to the client…

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I would explain the same as you did above. I would then offer, moving forward, to involve him more on things you feel would be of interest to him even though you don’t report to him in this area. It seems like a misunderstanding. He probably forgot you were not on his team. Or he’s trying to flex. How do you tell the difference? If he cc’d others he is trying to flex. If he only emailed you then I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. You don’t want to burn any bridges unless it’s merited. Hope this helps!

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I just read your response that your new team was cc’d. This is bad. Get some space from this partner as he will hurt your career. Some people are nasty like this and knowing who they are is good so you can keep a distance.

I mean, if you’re an associate on the matter, I think you’ll be expected to make sure the work gets done even if your specialty has shifted.

If it was very clear the other associate was primarily responsible for the draft, I’d respond along the lines of “my understanding was that I will provide X and Y once an initial draft has been circulated.” But if that wasn’t exceedingly clear, I would just work together with the other associate to get a draft developed.

The workstreams aren’t always completely neat on matters—- and that’s especially true in your case when you have the experience to pitch in on the project. Tread lightly.

Ooh thanks. I misunderstood. Yeah, just let them review the draft if it’s their deal/their client relationship.

Thank you KPMG1 and A2! Just had a talk with Partner A, and well…it was clear he was trying to flex because he made a huge deal out of a standard issue e-mail. I just nodded politely and made a report on what we flagged and why so he could understand our e-mail better. Moving forward though I will be cc’ing my current partner so that he doesn’t get to do this again.

Just to elaborate on what he said, he went as far as trying to threaten my job, and then immediately 180’d to talk about life and sports and family…so yeah…my partner will be cc’d on everything…

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