Seeking advice regarding partner who is unorganized and does not delegate in an efficient or coherent manner. Is there anything I can do? Litigation defense firm and I am working under one partner. Any insight would be helpful.

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You can try to take charge and organize the matter yourself. A disorganized partner is probably successful only because of associates that do this kind of thing.

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Honestly, no. They’ve likely been that way for many years now and are stuck in their ways. The best thing you can do is keep a paper trail. I had a boss exactly like that and he’d always try to blame me for things, but the fact that I had a paper trail to show that I really tried to work with him/contact him made his disorganization his problem rather than mine. I don’t buy the “manage the manager” approach because I’m busy af and simply don’t have the time to chase people down.

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Agree with Associate 1. Leave a paper trail, always CYA. Best advice is to take initiative and ownership as much as you can of the case to give some control and structure back to you (plus is great practice in any event). Think through all tasks that need to get done for a project and make sure they’re covered and have clear deadlines (use a projects list that you update weekly, talk with other associates, etc.) then follow up with the partner. Use negative notice emails where you can (“Unless you say otherwise, I will do/send X at/by Y time”), giving the partner a reasonable amount of time to respond. I’ve also had experience with partners like this who just prefer to talk on phone rather than email and was the quicker way to get answers, so consider that too.

I worked with a partner just like that. I turned it into a great opportunity. I took care of everything. I kept his calendar and made sure that he got to his appointments. This would involve reminding him of the appointment the week before, the day before and one hour before, because he would forget all of my reminders. I sent those reminders by email to cover my back side but also verbally talked to him about the reminders.

I kept track of all of his cases on a daily basis and did all written work for him. Usually he just sent the email that I composed for him. Usually he just signed the pleadings that I would prepare.

I reviewed all of his invoices to clients every month, edited them and mailed them out. Left to his own devices he never would have sent out a bill.

It became well known in my firm that I was doing all of this and it benefited me within the firm.

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