I’m a second year junior at a boutique firm. There is a male first year (who has been here longer than me bc I lateraled, he is not yet admitted to practice) also on the team. The female senior associate consistently assigns me the “grunt work” of note taking, updating the calendar etc. I wouldn’t have a problem doing this, I expect to a bit, but she always says it’s “the junior on the teams job.” Again, I don’t mind helping, but I’m not the junior on the team! He is! How do I handle this?

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Ask her what you can delegate to him.

Could be that she doesn’t trust him. Is he also working on the exact same deals or cases? If so, what kind of work is he doing for them? This would not be weird at all if you were the only junior (yes, you are still a junior) on these particular deals/cases and he’s just assigned to different matters. But if he’s doing substantive stuff you think you should be doing, by all means ask her how you can get that experience too and share the load/delegate.

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We both do substantive work on this case as well, but I find she actually trusts him more,and seems to like him more in general (he gets thanked more often and more positive feedback that’s circulated to the wider team) whereas I find her to be very cold to me. I know I’m also a junior and I expected to also do this work, it’s just the lack of “sharing” that bothers me

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Ugh, I had this but didn’t lateral. I was actually there longer than him, but I have a better attention to detail and there are things he just won’t do (proofread being the big one).

I have no solutions.

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That's really frustrating. Sorry that's happening.

Sometimes I'm paranoid that I'm the same senior associate you describe. I do delegate based on skills and development, but in my office the male junior happens to be a bit more academic and has better writing skills than the female junior, so I use him more for time sensitive research and writing. Female junior had way more client and hearing advocacy experience so I'm more inclined to give her those tasks. It's not gender based or personal, but I totally get how that could be perceived (and I do assign research and drafting to both juniors, I just have to leave more time for revisions depending on who is doing it).

Assuming the senior knows it's important to train a well rounded junior as this is an important investment for the firm, it's ok to talk to her and say, hey, I'm really interested in developing my (insert research/fact gathering/drafting/advocacy) skills, this file is really interesting, can you maybe give me a chance to help with X? And see what she says. Hopefully if you get the chance to demonstrate solid work product and make a business case for your better use, that will help improve things.

If you have a chance to get to know her better at lunch or a firm social time, that can help too.

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