The only thing worse than having too much work is having not enough work. A friend of mine in the environmental compliance group is sweating a little bit. When there's not enough work the partners keep what there is for themselves and the associates start sweating. You can only drag out research projects for so long. Everyone thinks this work is nonstop all kinds of hours and that's usually true. So you'd think when our workload eases up it would feel good and we'd just go take some time off or start hitting the gym again and be happy about it. But we're not normal people. We're lawyers. You worry, because you know your billables are low, and you can't do work if you don't have any, but you don't want to leave the office in case work comes in and you're not there to get it and someone else gets it instead. And you know those low billables are going to look bad at the end of the month, and you start to sweat and you wonder if your practice group is getting a bad reputation or if your rainmakers aren't that good, and if your bonus is going to suck and the managing partner is going to cut back the department. We had a couple of months of slow time my fourth year and it was scary. We all thought we were going to be fired. People think it sucks when it's busy. Well, it does. But it sucks, it really sucks, when it's slow. My friend in environmental is talking to other firms.
- posted by Blogger @ 9:53 AM