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What's your biggest struggle as a junior lawyer?
Mentor
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I would start applying now and enjoy the free time before you get the warning.
I was in this boat and left after over a year of being slow. Not for fear of being pushed out, but because I was concerned it was stunting my skills development and career growth.
Mentor
Hard to say as all situations are different. I worked for a (biglaw) firm that was ruthless in cutting associates in downturns. As in, they wouldn’t even wait for your half-yearly review to push you out if you were slow for a few months, and they’d only give you a month before you were out. That firm was on the far end of extreme when it came to cutthroat-ness, but I assume you’d know if you were at a place like that. If you are, jump, don’t wait for the axe.
Others are much more forgiving and your individual circumstances may give you lots of leeway (new office, small practice group, protected by powerful partners, etc.). And when associates do get pushed out, it’s a many-months long process where you can be confident you’ll have enough time to be able to find a new job. At a firm like that, I’d probably advise waiting until you started getting some real signals beyond just generic slowness - signals which should come well before the official warning - and start looking then.
As an aside, firm mentors tend not to be very interested in their mentees. If you work a lot with this partner and really trust them, that’s one thing. But if this is just a random sponsor assigned to you by the firm, I’d take what they have to say with a very healthy dose of skepticism.
Is there a reason why you are really slow? Sometimes teams have down months/years, which is perfectly normal (it’s a cyclical market). Contrary to what paranoid associates in FB post, you don’t just automatically lose your job for being slow.
I talked to my “mentor” who is a partner and I’m told I’m in no way being pushed out, that a lot of people are slow, and I shouldn’t worry. But she wouldn’t be the decision-maker if it came down to it, although she would have influence. I think the reason is the office in my state is relatively new. The partner who runs it moved here from another state so he doesn’t have local contacts. We don’t have a lot of local clients or national clients bringing consistent work to my state.
Mentor
I’d stay, but that’s bc im super burnt out.