How do you know how much to work without a billable target? My department is so understaffed that I would realistically have to work 90+ hour weeks indefinitely just to keep up. This just seemed like an unusually heavy few months at first, but it’s clear that this is becoming the new normal. Do you actually try to sustain that pace, or just work a standard 40-50 hours regardless? I’m sure the right answer is company-dependent, but I’m curious how others have navigated this kind of culture shift.

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I don’t think you should work 90+ hours to keep up. At a certain point you need to let work fall to the side because that’s how you sure there is a business need to hire additional attorneys. Otherwise they will never hire additional people. It would be a different situation if there was one or two weeks where you had to work crazy hours. Personally, I would work the 40 to 50 hours and prioritize by size of the emergencies.

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My last in house job was kind of like that, though not quite that bad.

My boss was pretty supportive of me establishing boundaries. His position was that if the business didn't feel the sales impact of understaffing the legal dept, there wouldn't be an incentive to hire more people.

So, with the exception of end of quarter (when things were hairy with deal flow) my job was to work the queue and let the business know when I thought I could get back to them. If they wanted to escalate and prioritize, they'd get senior Management approval to jump the line. My biggest challenge was to change mindsets from "I have to get 30 hours of work done in the next 48 hours" to "I have 20 hours of work time available in the next two days. Which projects do I prioritize?" Ultimately, I never fully made this mindset change without taking on a lot of stress and when the company was unwilling to hire more staff, I found a different job. But a lot of people are able to just manage expectations, be protective of their boundaries, and leave the guilt of not completing everything by EOD at the office.

Obviously there will be situations that you won't be able to establish those boundaries. Significant events will happen that require you to work 90 hours a week, but it shouldn't be the norm.

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Talk to your manager and ask.

Some in-house goals are more to strictly triage and handle the most important. Some are woefully unaware. Some want to farm it out to an outside-inside counsel. Some are to get the business to handle some things themselves where they only need your last minute input rather than handholding from cradle to grave.

But really, start with your manager and mention that there's too much work and you need a headcount or to send things out if the goal is 100%, or what the real goal is.

Figure out expectations and go from there.

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I aim for a 40 hour work week. Part of the trade off to coming in house was less money for less work. Do I practice what I preach? No. Did I stay up until midnight yesterday working? Yes. Will I have a long leisurely lunch on Friday in which I leave my computer and don’t check emails for a few hours? Also, yes.

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Let things crash and burn, otherwise you won’t get help

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General rule of thumb for firms without billable target - you’ll want to work about the same amount others in your group are working

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A1’s comment applies to in house as well. If the culture is grind, you need to grind or leave. Ideal case you and other in house lawyers of similar similarity can be intentional about typical work hours outside of emergencies or busy times of year.

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I don’t do work outside business hours (8-5) unless they’re global meeting or it’s something very business critical.

That said, the advice anos is very helpful and good advice. I’ve learned to establish a policy where I have a public to-do list where the two main departments I support have access to everything I’m working on and therefore can help me prioritize if something else comes up. I also try my best to reply within 24 hours with acknowledgement and a realistic picture of when/if I’ll get to it. This probably won’t work for everyone, but putting it out there is very helpful to contextualize to business stakeholders why it’s taking me a while to get back to them.

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There will always be more work you could be doing. The trick to in house is figuring out which work helps the business and helps you look good and ignoring everything else.

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