Im a third year associate and I’m frequently asked to give presentations (on new case law, legislation, ect.) during a weekly meeting for my section. There’s a first year associate and a law clerk in my section who are never asked to present. Should I push back on this? Would it look bad if I delegate some of the work to the others? I spend a lot of non billable time prepping for these presentations...it seems unfair that I’m the only one who has to do them.

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Next time you get asked to do one I’d respond with “That seems like a great learning experience for x to research and present actually - mind if I work with them on it? I’ll still supervise and make sure the final work product is good.” Maybe add something like “now that I’m becoming a midlevel I want to work on my management/supervision/delegation skills and build my relationship with x”. Might not work but worth a try. Don’t make the proposal if you know x is already v busy at the time.

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Have a conversation with the attorney. I have found that most attorney continue to assign certain tasks to people who they think so a good job and that they like the way they tackle the issue. Maybe pointing out to them that you would also like the opportunity to do some billable work and to give x an opportunity to show case their presentation skills.

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I’m just going to add that the main attorney asking me to do these presentations never gives me billable assignments which adds to my frustration

One thought: For my part, I enjoy doing presentations. As I do them more and more, I learn efficiency and they take less time. I am asked to do them because I’m good at it. (No brag, just fact). In my State also, if one develops a presentation that counts as a CLE, I could get credit towards my mandatory CLE requirement.

Seems like you don't have the billable hour pressure that an Associate has. It's beyond unreasonable to push off non-billable work on somebody who has to spend hours making up the time. Even more so unreasonable if it is a partner who doesn't even provide billable work.

I think there's no issue pushing back because the worse that can happen is the partner will continue to not give you billable work.

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Everything in life is unfair. Figure out who you want to be. My first job in the DA’s office my boss gave me every complex assignment that came across his desk. When I asked him why, he said, “if it were easy, I could anyone to do it.” 25 years later I have 400+ felony jury trials and thousands of bench trials.

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