Just needed to rant - had a pre-call with the male partner & male junior assoc to discuss the issues list hastily put tgt by said assoc and it was decided that I was to lead. Read more in comments....

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Obviously this isn't all your fault, but just some thoughts. Why was the junior's work not reviewed and fixed before it went to the client? If time pressure, sounds like there might be room to reflect on the delegation side of things so you make sure you give yourself enough time to review and understand the issues yourself. If it wasn't delegated from you, I'd still think about how you as the senior can work your way into this. Just because it doesn't come from you, doesn't mean you can't check in it.
As a former junior, and on behalf of all junior's out there, please go back and talk to him and explain to him what he did wrong on the issues list and why it didn't work. Without doing this he's now forming bad habits and skills and will continue to do this type of stuff going forward. Plus if he fixes it, next time around you'll have a better product and less issues for yourself.

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Thanks attorney 5. All well noted - I was harsh on him but he didn’t learn; partner doesn’t care cos hey the work still gets done. At this point in time I’m done - why train someone who doesn’t reciprocate w a good attitude to learn and every time I complain spend 1 hour thinking about whether I was too harsh, am I the bully who bitches about others and will my reputation suffer the worse from it. I was even harsher before but held back since he clearly didn’t take it well and I was worried about him spreading shit about me although the comments above have given me second thoughts - just fk it. I once let the ball drop - simply fed up with chasing him for his work product and suffered the worse from it. I have also once specifically told him that I was relying on him to take a particular work stream forward and to let me know if any questions - nothing was done, asked again because I refused to do the work myself. Just suffered more stress from worrying that nothing was done. Also tried to clearly establish work streams he’s responsible for (even tho obvs I will still be on top of the file) and somehow all the work streams ended up back to me since I’m the “senior”. Partner didn’t step in even when I changed approach and copied the partner in all emails with him. I wanna move but staying cos of the branding of the firm and also it’s really not so simple to pack up and leave for a better firm. Thanks for hearing me rant!! Much appreciated.

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I just have to say that it’s not an either or situation with respect to being cheerful and putting your head down and ignoring it. I’m cheerful and friendly and well-liked. But if you mess with my career, I will take you down. Not today. But slowly. Quietly. I will give you so much rope you will hang yourself. I’m super political and I honestly think it’s the only way to get ahead. Really strategize the situation like a chess game. This is where we, as women, have an advantage using our intuition and people skills.  men are overt, like what this junior associate did to OP. But revenge and assertiveness can be nuanced. You can be likable, but firm. You can outsmart the junior associate and set him up to fail. We are not victims in all of this unless we choose to be.

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You can see it how you want. I have nearly 20 years of practicing law under my belt and have not had any negative repercussions yet. I live by the motto of if you don’t start none and there won’t be none. If you’re cool with me and you do good work and you aren’t underhanded then we won’t have a problem. But if you start pulling bullshit and making me look bad to my supervisor, we will have a problem. If you try to sneak clients out from under me, we will have a problem. If you set me up to look bad to a client, we will have a problem. I don’t go around trying to take anyone down, but I’m not gonna let anyone take me down either.. I am all for raising women up. Many female lawyers that I’ve mentored are now partners. I’ve been nothing but a resource to them. But I won’t stand by  and let somebody play games and get ahead when they aren’t deserving. So yes, I will do everything in my power to let their true colors show. I don’t see any problem with that.

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How can you plot to throw that junior associate under the bus. Long game. I have a similar problem and I’m a partner. It never ends. I would send an email right away “thanking him” for raising your issue on the call and demand he consider resolutions to the following list of issues. Make him sweat.

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I like this approach! It is passive aggressive (in a good way), effective and solves an issue for her

I haven't had this issue with an associate yet (thank goodness). But I did have this issue with an assistant, which is just as ridiculous as it sounds. I had a male assistant who was assigned to three or so attorneys (including me). He just didn't do work I assigned to him, saying he had other urgent things to do for another attorney - who he wasn't even assigned to. That attorney had his own assistant. He did a bunch of random shit that I basically put into a list to keep a record of. He affirmatively told partners I hadn't shown up for work. One of them yelled at him because he knew I was in the office since 7am. He wouldn't enter my time despite that being basically his primary responsibility. At the time, I was the only female attorney in the office. I went to the managing partner. I was pissed, heavily pregnant, and just overall not someone you want to fuck with at the time. I went to the managing partner to get advice and to make sure he'd be aware of and OK with however I decided to handle it.

Basically I was all over him. If he said he had to do something for another attorney, I was like, "Well I'll tell that attorney to give that to his assistant, or you can stay late. Your choice." I would ask him for a complete printout of my time every few days, since I was sure he wasn't entering it, so he'd be forced to actually enter it.

If I had a junior associate who treated me like shit, I'd probably take the same approach.

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I’m frankly just tired of being told to “keep my head down” and “focus on myself”, as if to ensure that male associate insubordination never comes to light. We must endure near constant condescension, with grace and silence. Every managing partner who ignores this issues is perpetuating the problem. Today it’s a small project, tomorrow the client thinks the freeloading makes associate is the key to the client relationship mistakenly because that perception has been fostered, next year the male associate is handed the client relationship. This happens frankly too often for me to let another woman endure this. Ok, now I’m done.

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I was fine with that given that I’m more senior even tho I pushed back since this issues list was poorly put tgt and not something of my standard and I actually didn’t have a full grasp of the issues given it was produced late leaving me little time to prepare. During the call with the client, the partner started off with the main point that I raised and came up w a solution for (fine) then male junior associate jumped in to talk about second key issue offering a solution I came up with, leaving me to talk about the other issues which we had no firm answers for and which I actually didn’t have a full grasp of. Feeling really annoyed with said junior associate, especially since his issues list was so poorly done and wasn’t researched properly. Felt like a fool in front of the client. Anyone been in this situation? What can I do the next time?

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Honestly, I think you are/were entitled to say to the partner that you can't work with this associate or take responsibility for their work again unless you get a commitment from the associate (in front of you and the partner) to do better including but not limited to getting work back on time, error free and well researched because it's inefficient for you to always have to fix their work (which goes beyond "quality check" into actual supervision) and is getting into malpractice territory. In addition, you are totally entitled to make it clear that if you are going to continue to do this work for the partner that you are going to be the bad guy if the partner won't and that the partner needs to back you up including but not limited to supporting your criticism and pressuring the associate to make changes. Otherwise, the associate's behavior (including taking credit for others work, poor work product, and really problematic personal issues dealing with criticism) is going to continue and negatively impact your ability to do your job and serve the client and that's not acceptable. In terms of actually preventing the same outcome in the future, I think the response above is pretty good, but with respect to the first point, if the associate is going to rant about you on social media, I am not sure the direct approach of telling them to fall in line will work. However, if they are going to "offer" to cover the easy issues but not the hard ones, they should do the hard ones too. Like frankly it's petty and is probably not going to look good in front of a client but this person sounds entitled and kind of terrible and maybe the only thing to put him in check is to let him fail miserably. Not sure how to do that safely or in controlled circumstances, but they sound hopeless otherwise. Also the taking the bad associate to a client dinner is not a good sign that there's any hope to change the partner, so I think you're justified in walking away from this situation entirely.

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You raised earlier that you didn’t want to escalate and others would come to see. He likely doesn’t pull this garbage with others. He’s likely compliant and timely with the partners he wants to impress. This, his true two-faced character may never come out unless forced. Think about if it would disgust you a year from now to find out he’s being lauded and promoted (and likely already makes more than you). It would disgust me, but everyone is different.

Thats true - clearly the partner doesn’t see him in such a poor light as I do or he’s too busy to deal with associate problems as he’s busy bringing in work as he says. Doesn’t it annoy you when partners start off a call with you complaining how busy they are - to me if you keep saying that, busyness sometimes just comes across as an excuse for overlooking the elephant in the room. Granted, I honestly can’t say I know what he’s going through in this highly competitive market. Now i realise i’m off topic...

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