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I had an attorney that did this. I’d check the calendar, see what was coming up and then send a reminder email that said “I see x deadline is on the calendar, please let me know if I can be of assistance. As a reminder, I leave at 5:30pm so please have any filings to me by 3:30 so I can ensure it is handled before leaving”
This is great advice!
This is hard because not many attorneys respect those boundaries even if you set them. Have a frank conversation, be proactive, send reminders, and share your reasons if necessary. I am lucky enough to have a partner that backs my boundaries, but its a hard lesson for some of our associates to learn.
"I'm not available this evening due to my commitments at home." "If you need help after my regular hours, I would appreciate some advanced notice so that I can make arrangements to be available." "I'm not available this evening, but I can remind you the steps for e-filing a Motion if needed."
Whatever your set hours are, make sure your attorney is aware. Then reinforce that by making yourself unavailable anytime outside of those hours, unless of course in cases of emergencies. Before logging out or leaving for the day, I would suggest calling or sending an email to your attorney saying hey just checking if you need anything as I’ll be leaving at Xpm. Again, this reinforces your boundaries as to your hours. On days where there may be a deadline that you know will be time consuming, work with your attorney to get ahead of it or find ways to start on the task beforehand. So like for MSJs, I ask my attorney to send me the brief or statement of facts that references the exhibits as soon as they’re done with the draft so I can start pulling the exhibits while they finish up on the other parts of the MSJ.
And if you’re checking emails or have access on your phone, don’t let them know or stop doing it.
If you don’t respect your time, they won’t either.
Keep the communication open.
Agree with P1and P2. It’s a little surprising that you weren’t aware of an upcoming MSJ, but regardless, I depend on my calendar for upcoming deadlines (which I manage for team anyway) so I have learned to anticipate what will be coming up so I can ask whoever on my team is in charge of the filing, or if anything comes up that’s not anticipated, most people know to give me at least 48 hour notice before a filing is supposed to happen.
If you have a manager at your firm who isn’t an attorney (like I do), it may be worth having a conversation with them to communicate to attorneys as well. But I would definitely encourage you to set and stick to those boundaries because no one will honor them if you don’t honor them yourself (I learned this the hard way).
Mentor
They all do this
I have SO been there! As long as they show their appreciation with bonus and acknowledgement of your "above and beyond" then it's worth it. If not, then it's not. That behavior is disrespectful of you if it's not a rare occasion. Most of us don't mind stepping if needed and appreciated.
That's BS. I've worked and quit working for lawyers who pull that shit. Yes, sometimes things unexpectedly come up, but there are a lot of attorneys who wait until the last minute because they are poor planners.
Change your hours.
Nonsense.
That's awful. Is that a regular occurrence? If so, you are unlikely to change them. You can try to have a conversation about regular working hours that may help for a little while. Some attorneys are just last minute people because they don't think beyond themselves. You have to decide if you can live with that or not.
Mentor
This actually happens a lot in litigation. What are your hours ? I would let your manage know about this. It happened to me often and quite annoying how I had to explain to management why I had to stay late every time
Thank you everyone, I may have to just look for a new job since this seems to be the way this particular attorney operates. Management is aware of this and has had many talks but unfortunately nothing seems to change.
Lmao did you get over time? Set your boundaries by looking for another job
Apparently he doesn't do time management well
FW