They say the reward for good work is more work. Well, it’s beginning to feel like a punishment because I’m drowning. But I have no idea how to turn down assignments, and I definitely feel like I need to because the quality of my work is declining as I become spread thin. Thoughts on how I can go about managing my workload without ruffling feathers?

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Sorry for the long post but I think it’s worth it. You don’t understand that we are at a generational/technological shift right now that’s changing the nature of our profession. You’re working like you’re a 1970s lawyer lol. You need to be one in the 2020s.

I had a similar story as you. When I just got to the firm I’d literally do anything. If I got an email and I was at the grocery store, I’d leave my cart in the middle of the store, get in my car, and speed home to open up the computer and do the work even if there was no request for immediate action, and then return to the store to start the grocery shopping all over again. I would do that when I was at restaurants, with friends/family, etc. I would work long hours regularly to the point of exhaustion. There were days I was yelling in the car on the way to work in the morning and slapping my thigh as hard as I could because I was afraid I would involuntarily fall asleep and crash on the highway out of exhaustion while driving to the office in the morning, and still my head kept bobbing up and down despite yelling and slapping. Another time I was so exhausted my body was involuntarily falling asleep at work, as in I would just wake up and not realize I fell asleep (i.e my head would smack the key board and wake me up), to the point I reserved 15 minute “recharge” slots in my schedule where I’d give myself 15 minutes of shuteye to recharge just enough to focus for another 3 or 4 hours before falling into exhaustion for another 15 minutes.

One senior associate exploited this so much that she would have me check in about when I went to bed, or took a shower, and basic things cause she was so demanding and needed me to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. My life was so miserable, until I understood what was going on and professionally put my foot down.

There’s a generational shift happening in the legal profession and it’s largely due to technology. Before the tech boom, being a lawyer was much different. Lawyers would never bill more than 1500 hours in a year if you control for productivity levels. Just imagine you had to write a brief back then. There was no westlaw, no lexis, no google, no internet, no computer. You literally had to go to the library and pick up a book that hopefully went over the specific topic you were looking for and mentioned a case that’s relevant that you can follow up on, again in the actual physical caselaw publication. That took ages to do. It’s hard to even imagine. When they did discovery, they again didn’t have much of the software we have now. They had literal boxes of documents they would physically flip through. It took them ages. So they may have billed 2400+ on paper, but their 2400 wasn’t really worth even 1500 of the hours today when you control for productivity. Their hours just weren’t as rushed, pressured, and stressed as they are now. Asking someone to spend 30 minutes on something in 1980s and 1990s was like saying “waste 30 minutes cause I’m sure there won’t be much you can do in that time” whereas now it means “I expect a well researched response with at least 5 cases, with all of them being controlling case law if they were published literally at any time in our history, followed by non-controlling but persuasive cases in the jurisdictions our jurisdiction relies on the most when considering persuasive authority.” Even communication! My God, the communication was the best part! They didn’t have cell phones or email or literally any way to reach you once you physically separated unless they called you on one of those house rotary phones or landline phones or they physically visited you. So you were much less likely to be bothered when you were at home or away from the office (creating a better work life separation than we have now, even if someone did spend 12 hours in the office per day back then).

The unfortunate thing though is that not everyone in our professional has caught on to this. Some especially haven’t cause their early parts of their career happened before the tech boom and now as seniors in the profession they never got into the weeds with the work since they have juniors for that. And when you don’t understand this (including young juniors coming in), your measurement of success is WAY off.

Two mistakes in particular. First, you still prioritize (and worship) the number of hours you worked much more than the quality of your work and efficiency. They still expect lawyers to be able to pull off 2200+ hours every year indefinitely, not realizing that those hours are no longer possible for a human being long term (which is why you get so much turnover in firms now than you had before the tech boom). Second, you don’t understand that, even though we have technology, it doesn’t mean you can do literally anything in 10 seconds. Having a computer doesn’t make us Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Putting these two misunderstandings together gets you basically a bad expectation that lawyers can work 2200+ a year indefinitely and be able to cram in 4000+ of 1980s hours into that 2200, all while not realizing that’s what you’re actually doing.

So here are some tips to get away from that traditional, ineffective working style and make your life easier:

(1) Understand the generational/technological shift I just explained above, and know that it’s ok to be a modern lawyer. There is nothing wrong with it, and is the future. There really is no shame in saying “I billed 8 or 9 hours today. That’s enough.” Maybe don’t say that to the senior but say it to yourself and act on it. If that’s not ok in your firm, trust me, there are other firms and employers who are doing better with the shift, pay just as much if not better, and will take you on. It takes work finding them but they are out there.

(2) Do not mistake age for working style. Just because someone is young doesn’t mean they have the modern working style, or because someone is older that they have the traditional working style. I’ve met plenty of younger associates who were traditional and plenty of senior partners who are modern. It’s just a working style.

(3) Remember the partners and senior associates who have a modern, efficient working style and those who have the traditional, inefficient working style. Then actively try to get work from the modern, efficient ones and fill up your plate as much as you can with their work. This will give you a good excuse for why you can’t take the traditional attorneys’ work while also making it acceptable (which it is) to set reasonable boundaries at work with the modern attorneys you’re working with (who are more likely to understand those boundaries are reasonable).

(4) Set certain hard-stop parameters. Things that, once you hit them, make you push back right away. For example, write down a hard-stop number of hours billed per day. This can vary depending on the nature of the work. If you’re going into trial, obviously it shouldn’t just be 8 hours. But a reasonable number that works for you where once you hit it, you’ve already told yourself you’ll send that “no more bandwidth email” or “I received your email. I’ll get back to it within X days.” Make sure you have a variety of these hard-stops.

(5) Use vacation. It’s ok. People worth working with won’t think you’re a slacker for it. It could be one of your hard-stops, like “X days of vacation per year that are actual vacation days and not just work from home (or away from office) days.” Since vacations can be tricky, and if there’s too much pressure not to take it, feel free to use sick days instead to “mentally recharge.” (Don’t let someone else’s inability to understand that protecting mental health is just as important as fighting the flu prevent you from taking sick days to recharge). Sick days tend to be more respected than vacation days, even though in our profession the two can essentially be the same at times.

(6) Slowly establish reasonable expectations with seniors. A good technique is to talk to them and find out what off-work activity they really care about. It could be something like visiting Yosemite cause their family used to go there when they were little. Then tie the activity you care about to that. The point is to get them to associate your off-work activity with the one they have a strong connection to, so when you say you’re taking time off to do that activity, they see it as if they were taking time off to do whatever it is they care about, making them more likely to respect that time off. This helps establish your boundaries and set their expectations in a way that doesn’t make you seem like you’re a slacker (which as a default shouldn’t but, again, the shift). Additionally, when setting expectations for work product, don’t be so specific with timing and give yourself a bit of extra time. So don’t say “I’ll have this to you tomorrow morning.” That sets a clear deadline that makes you look bad if you miss. Say “I’ll have it back to you soon,” or if you need to set a specific day add an extra day or two. It’s ok to do that. If there’s a problem with it, they’ll ask for a quicker turnaround, but it’s better to give yourself breathing room and turn in something early than rush and turn in something late.

(7) Make friends with and hang out at work with the modern associates. You’ll find that you can be more open with them and saying what you’ve said on here to them is expected, as opposed to something you feel will make you look bad. You can be yourself essentially. And that makes work a lot better.

(8) Set goals outside of work that make your job less important in life, makes it look like just a means to an end. Many attorneys for example say their goal is to pay off their student loans and once that happens they’re ok leaving their current job and going somewhere else. This helps put things in perspective and gives you a timeline if your job really is intolerable despite your efforts to make it good.

likehelpful

This is excellent advice

For context, I’m a 3rd year associate who lateraled to this firm at the beginning of the year. I let a bad case of imposter syndrome cause me to really push myself, and eventually the word got out that I am extremely thorough and willing to work to the exclusion of sleep, air, and sustenance. So now, the assignments keep coming, which is of course flattering and validating. Maybe even addicting in a way. But it’s getting to the point where I can’t produce work product I’m satisfied with. I’m already billing far more than the other associates (or, frankly, than I probably should considering my salary), and I still feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day (or night or weekend). It’s not in my nature to turn down work or shirk a task and this is not something I’m happy about,
but I think I need to manage my workflow so that I can produce work product of a respectable quality. And I’m really not sure who to go to about this or how to start the conversation. So I would really appreciate any advice or insight.

likehelpful

Tell people you don't have the bandwidth to do something, or tell them that you'll get it to them by x date (you set a date you can achieve), or tell them you're currently working on x/y and how would they like you to prioritize z into the mix?

In the long run, people value the reliability that comes with you being honest about what you can really handle.

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Att 1,

I hear you. But perhaps my history is an aberration, but honesty is not as workable in the context of “tell people you don’t have the bandwidth.”

In part because memory is short and from what I have seen there is little of a culture of “Firm first” and more of a culture of “me first.” Rainmaker power overrides centralization. Lower level attorneys are fungible units — and (perhaps a bit of hyperbole), reliability is expected already, and any hint of reliability being an issue is entirely attributed to the cog, and another cog waiting in the wings will be put in and the “defective” cog removed.

Telling people that you are working on x/y and asking how to prioritize z is a great way to handle this type of situation.

You could also phrase it as “ I am happy to help with x, but I want to make sure that I deliver a high-quality product. Is there any flexibility in terms of timing?”

At the end of the day, if you are not able to take care of yourself then you will not be in a good position to tackle anything. This profession can be draining so make sure that you are taking steps now to put yourself in a place where you can do your best work over the long haul where it is not at the expense of sleep, meals, exercise, etc. on a regular basis.

People tend to respect someone more (especially in this profession) if they push back a little bit. No one can argue with you wanting to deliver a high-quality product for the client.

likehelpful

Att 2,

Thank you for suggestions. I have always been mindful of both expectations and bandwidth, so your suggestions resonate with me.

That being said, I often experience a couple of particular pushbacks. For a superior with multiple conflicting projects, the rather unhelpful answer of “I want them all.” For a mix of projects from different superiors, the rather unhelpful answer of each wanting theirs as top priority, unwilling to take a lower priority (with one partner pulling me aside and ‘helpfully’ instructing me that if I wanted to get ahead I would not be such a naysayer and just figure out a creative way to get it all done).

Mind you, this is not my first career, and I have been through similar dealings in other professional capacities. I was an engineering manager in charge of a centralized engineering cost center across six business units, with demands from six business unit leaders who were only interested in their own numbers, and who very much had a mindset of “screw everyone else.”

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Hey OP. Are there any more senior associates, or associates that have been in the group longer than you that you would feel comfortable with? If so, I would suggest talking to one of them to one of them to see if they can offer you guidance on the best person in the group to approach from a work coordination aspect, and the best way to approach. I know that in my group, it’s common for certain partners to get overly excited about their own projects, and lose sight of what else is going on, especially in this environment. I’ve taken on a bit of a role of work coordination for younger folks for that reason. They come to me when they are overwhelmed, and I can intervene on their behalf without rocking the boat or disrupting things much.

helpful

If you say you are underwater and that taking on another matter will result in the quality of your work suffering then no one should hold it against you. This is a marathon. Not a sprint. I’ve seen way too many associates who were apparent rockstars run for the doors out of nowhere.

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Super interested in your questions.

Unfortunately, I don’t have ready-implementable answers.

The thought that occurs to me is that having a metric of efficiency would be helpful.

You personally have the sense of being pressed into an inefficient state.

From what I have seen though (and this is merely anecdotal), any metric of what you feel is attenuated and very much time delayed. Perhaps I am in error, but the metric that I might associate with your “instant” feeling is a ratio of fees collected per fees billed.

So many problems with that though, from conflating factors, to delays (just last week I was responding to a partner that had finally billed work that I had done last September), to the larger sense that this metric is not one within one’s control, and is thus an unfair metric to be used to measure the individual.

My apologies for providing only more facets of a problem rather than answers - and I would love to hear from more seasoned and experienced professionals on this topic.

First, how many hours billed are we talking about? In my experience, the BigLaw firm I worked at always had a “work coordinator” to avoid that very problem with junior attorneys. It worked to varying degrees. I think it’s harder to say no to not work from a project/case you’re already in that all of a sudden explodes. But new projects should be turned down. You’re not helping anyone by doing subpar work and partners should understand that. Short of that go to HR. That’s literally their job.

Talking with* sorry!

At some point feathers have to be ruffled. After exhausting the above suggestions, consider the following:

1) Identify who are the most important partners are in terms of you advancing. Prioritize their work. Make sure at least one of them are willing to go to bat for you.

2) Turn down new projects from the other partners. It's better to turn down a new file then turn down work on a file you are already on.

3) Before you start each task, consider how comprehensive your work should be. You need to figure out what the lawyer will be using your work for. Being more comprehensive beyond what is necessary should be reserved only for the most critical tasks.

4) Most deadlines are flexible. Some are not. Figure out what is flexible and take advantage of that.

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