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Honestly, WFH has been GREAT for my development. Partners are far more willing to “take me with” on zoom meetings than they ever were to in person things. I’ve had more client exposure during Covid than I ever had before. Same with depositions. Before if there were three depositions in a week that required travel, the partner just did all of them so there was only one plane/hotel bill. During covid because of zoom partners have been willing to throw me one. Same with meetings with the government for investigations, etc.
I’m relatively junior (4th year). Maybe they mean first years, but I’m a millennial lawyer and I was definitely a junior when this whole thing started. It’s been almost 18 months since we went home. This whole thing is overwrought. WFH has been a good thing for a lot of people.
This is a very underappreciated point. I’m at the same level as you and feel exactly the same way. At the beginning of COVID, I thought everything was going fine because I already knew my case teams, and worried about what would happen next. But in the months since, I’ve worked on totally new cases with partners I’ve never or barely met in person, and it’s actually gone great.
I also find a lot of the anxiety about not being in the office, to the extent it’s not emanating from partners and those associates (usually up for partnership or close) trying to parrot them, comes from very junior associates who have been WFH since they started. This is totally understandable (very disorienting for them I’m sure) but their expectations that there will be a ton more hands-on mentorship or client contact once everyone is in-person are not realistic.
Honestly I kind of agree, I’ve picked up a lot of tips and tricks just from senior associates stopping by my office and quickly showing me something. Not to mention late nights at the office when a partner buys everyone dinner and chats with the associates who stuck around.
And I feel like I’ve developed much slower in the last 18 months than I did in my first 3 years of practice. Plus, it’s harder to form relationships with more senior people.
Behind a paywall, TLDR?
"As remote work becomes popular among younger lawyers and the rise in COVID-19 cases cause firms to redraft office reopening plans, firm leaders are worried about a growing group of lawyers who have missed out on in-person mentorship from senior partners and may create a dearth of future firm leaders."
Concern over lost in-person mentoring is a legitimate issue. However, it’s not like this is gone completely or forever. Remote work has improved work-life balance, and everyone has to figure out what that means for office communications. People who say a “lost generation” of lawyers lack vision and creativity for the future legal/working landscape.
I think it’s a mindset issue with certain partners rather than a structural issue. It is just as easy to pick up the phone/IM someone as it is to walk to someone’s office. The only difference is intentionality - you have to make an affirmative effort rather than walking past someone’s office and remembering some thing you wanted to tell them. I’ve worked with some partners/seniors that I’ve never met but we have a great working relationship and I’ve learned a lot from them. These partners/seniors make an effort to reach out and teach me, which is better (for me) than haphazard office visits that may be really disruptive to work flow.
Tbh it takes like 12-18 months for senior partners to pay attention to junior associates enough to start mentoring them anyway. The downside of wfh is partners can't walk the hall and give work to the first associate they find so yeah they are relying on their favorites but when those pet associates get jammed up then maybe partners need a new way of passing out work (email the group, first come first serve)