I’m a 2nd year with 3 attys above me who I draft work for. How normal is it that 2/3 of the attorneys never use my drafts? They’ll launch from it and use some chunks verbatim but it’s clear they spend a day redoing it. I have no ego on the fact that I’m learning and expect edits. But also, the other partner often uses my work with few edits, so I can tell I’m not doing awful work. Just trying to get a pulse bc it shakes my confidence. Will some attys just always want to rewrite things their way?

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Yes, and they are incentivized by the system to bill time. If they don’t edit then they have less to bill.

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I think it’s dependent on the person. When in doubt, I would simply ask. “Hi XYZ, I noticed the filed motion had some differences than what I submitted. Do you have time to give me some feedback? Did I miss the mark on this assignment?”

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Completely normal. As someone else suggested, if I were you I’d just check to see if these attorneys made substantive edits or if it was all stylistic.

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If it’s just writing style I won’t get to stressed. Is the legal analysis is sound and intact just ask for feedback after everything is done to discuss changes. You’ll eventually get used to their style and eventually write more consistently to their style

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Giving a senior person good raw material (eg on point docs and legal cases) is very valuable. You are likely contributing a lot more than you think.

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Writing is subjective. It will always happen.

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Attorneys like to make changes just to put their mark on it. Could be perfectly fine work but they’ll make revisions just to do it

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You'll learn later that some supervisors edit for the sake of billing

Plaintiff’s firm - We don’t bill 🙃

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You are adding value so please don’t worry about that. But you should know that the holy grail is when the partner makes few changes or only looks for punctuation or grammatical errors because you write concisely, articulately, and persuasively while included all relevant facts and issues that will help assess the case. You’re going great! If they keep giving you work, you’re good. But also, I hear you. It does hurt the ego. You went to law school, you stomp around in your suit, you advocate for clients… only to be reduced to what feels like an assistant. I’m a 7th year and I still feel that way. Look at it this way though, learn from the parters in the cases in which you’re assisting. You’ll eventually get cases to handle completely on your own, and that will be your time to make your mark on how YOU want to practice.

They can’t bill to revise your work. They can bill to draft the doc using your work.

It's sorta firm specific actually. Depending on how you negotiated. My old firm with same client I can't but current firm I can

In my experience, attorneys differ widely in how much they will revise subordinates work - some are very particular about they way they want work to be, some review to make sure it is good enough to accomplish the job. Their level of revisions doesn’t necessarily indicate whether the original work was good or bad.

Please read the first few paragraphs of this: https://judicialstudies.duke.edu/sites/default/files/centers/judicialstudies/judicature/judicature_101-1_clement.pdf

It helps me temper my temptation of reading too deeply into edits from our bosses.

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