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What's the firm culture like?
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Sep 7, 2013 03:17
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Right, you ask about it in a roundabout way.
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Sep 7, 2013 03:24
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For me and most of my partners, trying to ask about it in a roundabout way isn't good either. It's not like we're too stupid to understand the intent of the roundabout question, and it all comes back to the same issue - how much do I have to work. I mean ask if you want to, it may not be a deathblow to the interview, but just realize there are plenty of people for whom floating that type of question is going to be a negative. (Of course, the old "maybe you don't want to work at a place where that would be held against you" might apply. Depends on how much you need a job I guess.)
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Sep 7, 2013 04:00
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Staryberry posted:Not Bad: "Can you tell me what your average day is like." "How easy is it to meet the hours requirements?" "I see the firm offers 4 weeks of vacation, do attorneys usually take advantage of that?" Also, does anyone anywhere actually take all their vacation days?
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Sep 7, 2013 06:45
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gvibes posted:Vacation days taken in 2013: 0 If there's no carryover, why wouldn't you?
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Sep 7, 2013 06:53
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gvibes posted:Vacation days taken in 2013: 0 I love being a unionized government employee. I'm on track for 4 weeks and 3 days in 2013.
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Sep 7, 2013 07:33
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I didn't even have vacation days at my last firm. I just did whatever I wanted to do. I probably took like 3 months off my last year.
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Sep 7, 2013 07:57
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mikeraskol posted:They are asking either about the amount of hours I've worked so far in the year, or just straight out ask what the work-life balance at the firm is like. For some reason I think they like asking me that question because I'm a first year as compared to their other interviews which are with senior associates and partners.
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Sep 7, 2013 12:01
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Here's a new one: reporting an attorney to OED because I found out he had been arrested for trying to pick up a 14 year old online when I was googling a phone number for him. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's public outreach at work. So you were going to allow?!?
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Sep 7, 2013 12:41
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Ani posted:When I was doing OCI callbacks I felt very comfortable asking that question to first and second years, and I found their responses to be very helpful and candid. That may have been a terrible idea but I don't think it really hurt my job chances. I don't think it was a bad idea since they don't really have a say in the hiring anyhow.
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Sep 7, 2013 14:34
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gret posted:I don't think it was a bad idea since they don't really have a say in the hiring anyhow. When I was doing OCIs & interviews I was told that people like the 1st years and support staff couldn't make you, but they could break you.
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Sep 7, 2013 14:37
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gvibes posted:Vacation days taken in 2013: 0 11 weeks this year. 5 weeks mandatory legal vacation, 4 weeks in compensation for managers working more than 35 hours weeks, 2 weeks paternity leave (newborn this year) France   (not a lawyer, in house)
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Sep 7, 2013 14:47
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Macnigore posted:11 weeks this year. And I thought California was a lovely place to be an employer...
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Sep 7, 2013 15:52
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gvibes posted:Vacation days taken in 2013: 0 The correct answer for this (and the one that you should know ahead of time) is that there is no such thing as "weeks of vacation offered." Oh sure, there probably is some official policy somewhere. But you very quickly realize that vacation at a law firm consists of whatever the hell you can get away with while still making sufficient billable hours and meeting client (and while you are an associate, partner) demands. I've taken two weeks in fourteen years. Before anyone thinks that I'm trying to sound all hard core, I realized fairly early on that I would much rather have fifty nights where I come home at 6:30 instead of 7:30 than one week of vacation. But that's just my personal preference. EDIT: What Mongeese said.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:01
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Ani posted:When I was doing OCI callbacks I felt very comfortable asking that question to first and second years, and I found their responses to be very helpful and candid. That may have been a terrible idea but I don't think it really hurt my job chances. I think you are probably right. Really the only way that an interview with me is going to impact their job chances is if they do something outrageously stupid. I don't have the power yet to get someone an offer on my own, but I can sure as hell make sure they don't get one. As for vacation days, with the reputation my firm had I thought nobody would ever take vacation. But in August the office was a ghost town, everybody takes vacation. It was a pretty good month compared to the 3000 hour pace I was working before it.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:07
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At my old firm I tried to take vacation twice. One time I got called back in because a paralegal put 3 AC briefs on my task pad without telling me and I missed the deadline. The other time I was called in because our only other work comp attorney quit. I got a raise out if the deal the second time at least.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:31
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At my firm (which has outrageous billable expectations and a crazy work culture), everyone takes all of their vacation. It doesn't get cashed out if you don't take it, so it'd be pretty insane not to take it all. We're encouraged to take it in large chunks and coordinate to ensure there's coverage. In my experience, you might have to answer a few emails or something on vacation, but it's unlikely you'll have to do a lot of work.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:35
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I'll probably have taken just over 130 hours of time off this year total including half-days of personal time taken when I get bored on slow Fridays and stuff. I woke for the state.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:52
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At my dad's firm, partners get a 3 month paid sabbatical every x number of years (I want to say 5 years). You are expected to take it. Apparently, this wasn't uncommon back when he started working. Oh and of course, some younger partners are wondering why they have this. Why did we have to destroy everything in pursuit of money? We're professionals goddamn it, we're not supposed to kill ourselves with work all the time.
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Sep 7, 2013 17:40
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All this talk about vacation is destroying the economy. Work is sending me to Japan next week. I accidentally booked my flight so I have a few days to be a tourist. This is the closest thing to a vacation I'll get this year.
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Sep 7, 2013 18:30
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Ani posted:At my firm (which has outrageous billable expectations and a crazy work culture), everyone takes all of their vacation. It doesn't get cashed out if you don't take it, so it'd be pretty insane not to take it all. We're encouraged to take it in large chunks and coordinate to ensure there's coverage. In my experience, you might have to answer a few emails or something on vacation, but it's unlikely you'll have to do a lot of work. So you actually have "vacation?" Like there are weeks of time that you are "given" each year? That just doesn't seem to be the norm around where I am. Basically, if you can squeeze in time, that's great. No one is going to say, "You were only entitled to two weeks this year, but you took three." If I decide to leave for a day, I'm not writing anything down, filling out some form with HR, etc. I just leave. (Obviously if you disappear for two months, something bad will happen.)
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Sep 7, 2013 22:21
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SlyFrog posted:(Obviously if you disappear for two months, something bad will happen.)
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Sep 7, 2013 22:33
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Green Crayons posted:This is your cue to figure out how close to that two month line you can get before the something bads start happening. That would be pretty funny. I guess I just really don't get the "vacation" thing. This is a job that routinely has me in the office at 10:00 at night, on the weekends, etc. The notion of a "work day" and a "work week" is essentially non-existent for the job. So I don't see (and think most of my colleagues also don't see, but perhaps we're abnormal) why I would apply similar work day and work week like concepts to vacation. Bascially, if I get a reasonable number of billable hours in for the year, and clients aren't bitching that I'm unavailable too often, what does it matter when and how often I'm gone? It just seems like an outmoded concept for law firm life to me. Now I do understand enforcing the right to minimum away time, especially for associates. Otherwise, you'd have too many rear end in a top hat partners insisting that associates never have the right to take a week off during the year. But I usually see that handled different than an HR policy granting X weeks a year. But if that's what you're talking about, then I understand it a bit better.
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Sep 7, 2013 23:14
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wacko_- posted:The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's public outreach at work. Trying to process an abandonment for failure to respond by six month date, no customer number on file, and apparently we're supposed to call the applicant to make sure they didn't file and the paperwork got lost on our end somehow before we process the abandonment.
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Sep 8, 2013 04:40
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SlyFrog posted:That would be pretty funny. I would have understood and maybe agreed with this during my short time as a lawyer. From the POV of a European outside of law (or even in a law firm that isn't exactly the London branch of a Magic Circle) this is a pretty insane post. I've got 25 vacation days I am mandated to take 20 of + "whenever you're sick" sick time + "whenever you want" work from home. Now, the work still has to get done, so this does mean I check my email on weekends and will probably log in a few times during my trips out of town, but we do have directors taking three weeks of leave with no email access all the time too. This is seen as normal and nothing implodes over it because everyone's crosstrained and the understudies understand this will happen/can easily take over and vice versa. This approach works fine in most of the civilized world. It only breaks down in the US legal hierarchy because everyone is John Galt and if you aren't the cheetah you're the gazelle.
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Sep 8, 2013 11:27
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I move we all move to Europe.
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Sep 8, 2013 13:29
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The difference I'm reading in SlyFrog's and Adar's descriptions of the working world is to what degree they experienced a mandatory "don't show your face here" policy. Like, a difference in degree, not in kind. With SlyFrog, it's a "I'm not going to show my face when I feel most comfortable for as long as I feel most comfortable considering my work load, project statuses, etc." With Adar, it's a "I'm not going to show my face when I feel most comfortable for as long as X-days because it's what the higher ups tell me." Now, I'm going to guess that based on the type of personalities that go into the business, SlyFrog's model will probably result in most folks taking less time off than when a strict minimum of days off is enforced. But, conceptually, I'm not seeing an enormous gulf between the two points. Am I missing something?
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Sep 8, 2013 13:50
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Green Crayons posted:The difference I'm reading in SlyFrog's and Adar's descriptions of the working world is to what degree they experienced a mandatory "don't show your face here" policy. Like, a difference in degree, not in kind. SlyFrog has taken two weeks in 14 years. Adar takes no less than four weeks every year. That seems like an enormous gulf to me.
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Sep 8, 2013 15:23
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In fairness, we're a large multinational with offices on four continents so working remotely/scheduling around various national holidays is a thing we already have to do - and make no mistake, this is a really nice place to work even by Euro standards - but there's just no comparison with a law firm. The culture is vastly different. Green Crayons posted:The difference I'm reading in SlyFrog's and Adar's descriptions of the working world is to what degree they experienced a mandatory "don't show your face here" policy. Like, a difference in degree, not in kind. Imagine what would happen in a law firm if the lead associate on a key case with an outside client said "hey, can we postpone this for a week and a half because I'm back in 10 days tia". This is happening to my team right now and while it's not ideal it's definitely a thing I'm really grateful for when it's my turn. What's more, while we lose that productivity up front, we get it all back and then some because there's very little turnover and nobody needs to hold some new guy's hand for six months every year.
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Sep 8, 2013 16:59
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Yes, I would never suggest that our policy leads to more vacation time overall. About the only thing it has going for it is greater flexibility in just saying, "gently caress it, I'm a bit light this afternoon, I'm leaving for the day." I do not have to "schedule" my vacations with anyone. If I want to be gone, I just need to tell the people for whom I'm currently doing work. It is the one real advantage that I have seen to being in a law firm partnership. There is no actual clock to punch such that you have to be in your chair from 9:00-5:00. Of course the reality is, no one takes advantage of it on a more than isolated basis. In working with a lot of in-house counsel, it is the one area of my job that I think I enjoy more than them. As a partner, I don't have anyone up the chain of command to whom I have to explain my time in and out of office. They often seem to have that. SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 17:11
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SlyFrog posted:Yes, I would never suggest that our policy leads to more vacation time overall. About the only thing it has going for it is greater flexibility in just saying, "gently caress it, I'm a bit light this afternoon, I'm leaving for the day." I do not have to "schedule" my vacations with anyone. If I want to be gone, I just need to tell the people for whom I'm currently doing work. That may be true for partners, but I bet associates at firms have it worse than in-house counsel. I've sent 5 or 6 work emails during this trip, and each time they've told me to switch off and enjoy my vacation.
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Sep 8, 2013 17:33
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10-8 posted:SlyFrog has taken two weeks in 14 years. Adar takes no less than four weeks every year. That seems like an enormous gulf to me. Alrighty, I see more clearly now.
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Sep 8, 2013 17:46
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mulls posted:That may be true for partners, but I bet associates at firms have it worse than in-house counsel. Depends on the firm. Perhaps at BigLaw. Here at the wonderful world of BigLaw but secretly MidLaw, the associates in my section are routinely gone for long weekends, etc., as long as they get their poo poo done. Remember, thought the two weeks in 14 years thing is bad, I do it in large part because I don't want to "make up the time" that comes from taking a vacation. Two weeks of vacation is one extra billable hour you need to make up 100 nights of the year. I'd rather have the 100 nights.
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Sep 8, 2013 17:58
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Trying to process an abandonment for failure to respond by six month date, no customer number on file, and apparently we're supposed to call the applicant to make sure they didn't file and the paperwork got lost on our end somehow before we process the abandonment. I can't wait for a deranged blog post from the attorney saying the PTO is out to deprive inventors and their attorneys of their rights.
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Sep 8, 2013 19:19
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wacko_- posted:I can't wait for a deranged blog post from the attorney saying the PTO is out to deprive inventors and their attorneys of their rights. Well I'm sure he has state bar issues too, so I'm not too concerned.
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Sep 8, 2013 20:30
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Petey posted:I move we all move to Europe. When I took comparative law (hahaha), whenever this was suggested all the foreign LLMs would say, "Well, but you can make so much more money here!"
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Sep 9, 2013 14:21
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SlyFrog posted:Depends on the firm. Perhaps at BigLaw. Here at the wonderful world of BigLaw but secretly MidLaw, the associates in my section are routinely gone for long weekends, etc., as long as they get their poo poo done. I think this might partially be you being a partner. As an associate, there's long stretches of time where my schedule is dictated entirely by the people I'm reporting to: it doesn't matter if I'd like to get my 2000 hours evenly over the year when fact discovery ends in three months and there are 40 depositions to prep and people are asking me how well I deal with not sleeping. So when I'm out of those stretches, a vacation makes sense.
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Sep 9, 2013 14:37
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Hey guys so how's everyone's fantasy football team doing?
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Sep 9, 2013 15:37
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CmdrSmirnoff posted:Hey guys so how's everyone's fantasy football team doing? I don't want to talk about it.
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Sep 9, 2013 15:41
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| # ? May 19, 2024 03:14 |
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evilweasel posted:I think this might partially be you being a partner. As an associate, there's long stretches of time where my schedule is dictated entirely by the people I'm reporting to: it doesn't matter if I'd like to get my 2000 hours evenly over the year when fact discovery ends in three months and there are 40 depositions to prep and people are asking me how well I deal with not sleeping. So when I'm out of those stretches, a vacation makes sense. This is a problem with legal practice in general, and it doesn't stop. You always have to try to take advantage of downtime, and rarely know when exactly it will be. But you also have to have some boundaries - everyone sets them, even the hard workers. (Otherwise, as I said, we could all literally be working 16 hour days seven days a week - we all set boundaries, it's just a matter of where they are for each person). I choose to set my boundaries such that on average, I'm getting out of there an hour earlier for a third of the year. I can't guarantee that is going to happen on a daily basis, but I try pretty hard to make sure it is happening on an overall basis. Just another funny thing with regard to the practice of law (well, really any business where you are an owner/responsible for generating and having work). When things are busy, you don't have time to be away from the office. When things are slow, you feel like you shouldn't be away from the office, because how are you going to generate work if you're not there? Or as another one of my esteemed colleagues once said, there are three constants with respect to the practice of law, two of which are in effect at any given time: (i) you have too much work; (ii) you have too little work; and (iii) you've just committed malpractice.
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Sep 9, 2013 16:16
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