First year associates: what one thing could your firm do to ease the anxiety many of you are experiencing and make your day to day work more satisfying?

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Not a first year, but a junior.

Get the partners to coordinate on how they assign work to associates. Also, say “thanks for your hard work” every once in a while.

likehelpful

Promote remote working and mandatory vacation time use. Also, more templates and examples of legal docs. Plus making sure the legal assistants actually assist the associates and not just the partners with a good attitude when you ask them for something.

likehelpful

This is great generally, but I don’t think remote working is good for development as a first/ second year. There is a lot to be said for learning to osmosis. That is not to say that junior associates should be FaceTiming when they have no work.

smart

Have it be easier to ask questions/seek mentoring. I know partners are busy but “look up the law and figure it out” is a bit counter productive as opposed to “X is a good starting point”. Also, morale boosting things like ordering in lunch, drinks on Fridays make a big difference.

likehelpful

Create an associates’ committee if you don’t already have one and appoint partner liaison to hold regular meetings with the committee. Make sure that any associates can attend the meeting or field their comments and questions through a representative

likehelpful

Please be open to having an actual conversation and listen to your associates. Don’t burden a junior with having ‘not enough hours’ without talking about work allocation and taking some responsibility for the lack of work yourself. Don’t play favorites, no one wants to be back in high school. And, as some of the folks have said above, be respectful of your associates and be appreciative of their work. We may seem like babies who don’t count for you but we are adults and no one likes being treated like you don’t matter.

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“Facts” is the Gen Z equivalent of “true that” for Gen X and millennials.

funnylikehelpful

Small thing compared to the others above, but not being copied on emails really pisses me off.

likehelpful

I used to hate this as as a first year. As a midlevel, I try to make sure the junior on the deal is on copy or is forwarded emails as FYI.

likeuplifting

Include vacation time in the year end billables for bonus eligibility so we don’t feel like shit taking a vacation.

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Thank you all for taking the time to answer my question thoughtfully. The associates at my firm will benefit from what you shared.

likeuplifting

Also, recognize that all the nonbillable activities you require us to do literally eat into the “vacation time” (annualized hours above target) we’ve accrued.

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Echoing Attorney 1– try not to play favorites, especially this early. That shit raises anxiety big time. If it’s true that you can only trust one associate to do your work, maybe have a talk with the recruiting department?

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Also not keeping the “team” in the loop

likehelpful

For every “major project” (defined as seen fit by the firm), require supervising attorneys to give written feedback to first years so we know how we’re doing. We just want to work hard and please the attorneys we work for, but we have a lot of anxiety about whether we’re on the right track or not.

likehelpful

Written is important, preferably written responses to standardized questions, because it provides documentation for the associate and because otherwise lazy supervising attorneys might just stop by and say “great job” to check the box without any substantive feedback.

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