Has anyone dealt with a male junior attorney who doesn’t respect your authority (I’m a midlevel)? At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt (he’s new), but he keeps failing to follow directions and meet expectations, and his emails to me come off as very condescending. I just don’t know what to do to instill in him that he does actually need to do what I say.

Call them and politely tell them that if they continue to fail to follow instructions, you will have to ask for them to be removed from the matter (or whatever credible threat you can come up with). Then tell them you would rather avoid doing something that could negatively affect their career. Ask if they will be able to work with you going forward or if you should prepare to get a senior attorney involved.

Do this by phone so you can have a nice but firm tone, so they don’t feel like you’re making a paper trail, and so they can’t tattle.

Next time they fail to follow instructions, “as we discussed, you need to follow my directions. Please correct this now.”

And never ever let them off the hook for an assignment if they are lazy about it unless you absolutely have to. Make them fix it until it’s done even if it’s an evening, weekend, whatever.

This is almost all male juniors with some but not much variance on respect

I’ve had this experience many times with junior males, especially if they are a year or two below me. I just ignored it because I didn’t have to always work with them, but curious how others handle!

Keep your tone curt and CC partners on all emails with him. No direct messaging

Wow, Assoc 3, what’s going on there??
OP, twenty plus years of work experience, many, many experiences with male colleagues, junior to me, peers and direct reports, where this occurs. One junior male colleague hired to support two more senior women attorneys very stupidly shared with a male colleague of mine that he “doesn’t take direction from or listen to women”. Needless to say, he was moved on. I’ve also seen and experienced it with female colleagues, including someone junior in my reporting chain who told me (after trying to undercut me in a meeting) that she has to prioritize her relationship with her male peers (also junior to me). I think the generalization is that: due to the way many people are socialized to think about women, many people have difficulty with women in authority positions. It sucks. It’s unnecessary exhausting and it can wear you down, but I do think we are chipping away at this.

If the behavior is persistent and ongoing, you will want to start to address and document and not wait for a mid year or annual performance review. I think you talk to him and then put it in email. Don’t tolerate this nonsense.

So many of them come in thinking they're god's gift to the law and that they're smarter than everyone else. They literally go to law school so that they can dominate other people and self sooth their low self-esteem.

I recently dealt with a female junior who literally would not take my or the partner's direction. Would refuse to send docs when we begged her to... challenged us on everything. I lost 7 lbs dealing with her in two weeks.

Make sure you tell a partner you trust/who's on the client right away so this doesn't blow back on you. Find a differential way to say that he's not performing and not being cooperative.

Yikes. I had this junior, but I kept being brought in by the partner to oversee him. Fortunately he lateraled before I had to address it. Found out he was doing virtual nothing and relying on the paralegals to get by.

Now I have to see him at an event we’re both speaking at. 🫠

Yes. The only solution I found was to stop working with them. After 2-3 unsuccessful attempts to get the work that’s needed, I gave the work to someone else.

In most cases, the associate eventually left the firm.

In one instance, the associate made partner, because he was prioritizing the work of male partners over mine.

I have dealt with this for all genders…. The worst was a female paralegal who was younger than me and believed she could practice law better 🫠

Oh, we’re making sweeping gender studies out of mid-level grievances now? Fascinating. Maybe the issue is just a junior not respecting a mid-level, but if BigLaw associates have cracked the gender dynamics code between redlines, I’d love to see the Harvard Business Review write-up.

I dealt with something similar with a male paralegal and it turned out that we really just had different communication styles and he was feeling overwhelmed. I had a heart to heart with him about my expectations and boundaries, and it got way better after that. Maybe your guy is totally different, I have no idea, but that worked for me!