u/ExtremeToucan

I am quite into subtle, near future sci-fis with something to say. I really like ones that follow a semi-ordinary person in a sci fi world where you slowly learn more about the sci fi surroundings as the story marches along. Some ones that I’ve read and liked a lot:

* 1984
* Farenheit 451
* Brave New World
* The Lathe of Heaven
* Never Let Me Go
* I Who Have Never Known Men
* Parable of the Sower and Talents
* Chain Gang All Stars
* The Wall
* The Road
* Slaughterhouse Five

Got any good suggestions? Thanks!

I have decided to leave big law (woo!) and have accepted an offer from a boutique specializing in my field. I need to give two weeks notice to my current firm in the next couple of days. What is considered the best way to do it? Meet with my supervising partners directly? Send them an email with the notice and offer to meet to discuss?

I want to ideally preserve my relationship with the folks at my firm as best I can. I like them and would like to leave on good terms.

Hello! I would like to do some volunteer work and I’m curious if folks can recommend any good orgs to volunteer with in San Francisco?

I am specifically interested in working with animals or on something environmental sustainability or nature related.

I know about some places, like Marine Mammal Protection Center, that require a six month commitment for like a 9 hour shift every week with lots of trainings and ancillary requirements. I have a time consuming full time job and can’t commit quite that much time. I’d love something I could do for like 4 hours on a weekend day 2-4 times per month.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hi BigLaw, hoping for some professional development advice or insight on anything I may be missing here.

I’m a fourth year associate at a big law firm in an environmental practice group. My firm’s environmental group has consistently been losing people, and the only other person in my office is retiring this year. I currently and would in the future be working exclusively with partners in other offices. Not only that, but the work has really dried up and I’ve been way underbilling. I just had my mid year review and got only positive feedback, didn’t even mention hours, but I’d be surprised if I have a long term future at this firm given how slow I have been over the last year. Hours minimum is 1700 at this firm, but bonus is 2050. I have struggled to get enough work the entire time I’ve been at this firm, and it has caused me a lot of stress. Also, due to certain partners leaving the firm, we no longer do much of the type of work I like doing.

New job would be at a regional firm, between 60-80 attorneys across five offices. It pays about 5/6 what I make in big law (so a notable pay cut, but still well-paid). Their primary and biggest practice is environmental law. Their environmental group has also been consistently growing. They also do entirely the type of law that I want to be doing. Hours would be 1850 to be eligible for promotion and 1900 for bonus. I feel that my likelihood to potentially get promoted to partner and bring in clients would be significantly better at this firm. I also liked all the people I interviewed with.

I am thinking I will take the midsize firm job. Is there anything I should be taking into consideration here? Anything I am missing?

Hi Lawyertalk, hoping for some professional development advice or insight on anything I may be missing here.

I’m a fourth year associate at a big law firm in an environmental practice group. My firm’s environmental group has consistently been losing people, and the only other person in my office is retiring this year. I currently and would in the future be working exclusively with partners in other offices. Not only that, but the work has really dried up and I’ve been way underbilling. I just had my mid year review and got only positive feedback, didn’t even mention hours, but I’d be surprised if I have a long term future at this firm given how slow I have been over the last year. Hours minimum is 1700 at this firm, but bonus is 2050. I have struggled to get enough work the entire time I’ve been at this firm, and it has caused me a lot of stress. Also, due to certain partners leaving the firm, we no longer do much of the type of work I like doing.

New job would be at a regional firm, between 60-80 attorneys across five offices. It pays about 5/6 what I make in big law (so a notable pay cut, but still well-paid). Their primary and biggest practice is environmental law. Their environmental group has also been consistently growing. They also do entirely the type of law that I want to be doing. Hours would be 1850 to be eligible for promotion and 1900 for bonus. I feel that my likelihood to potentially get promoted to partner and bring in clients would be significantly better at this firm. I also liked all the people I interviewed with.

I am thinking I will take the midsize firm job. Is there anything I should be taking into consideration here? Anything I am missing?

I am a fourth year. My first three years of practice, I was very motivated to succeed and do well and never had issues locking in to get work done.

Lately, however, it has become clear that my firm does not plan to keep me around until partnership and I just feel like my superiors don’t really care about me and just see me as a paper pusher until they eventually push me out.

I am finding it hard to care, and hard to focus. I feel much slower in getting things done, and I have a hard time getting up the motivation to start projects or lock in to get them done quickly. I do have ADHD, but I feel it is affecting me significantly more now than it used to in this job. I’ve always been a motivated hard worker, so I don’t like this side of myself. Feel simultaneously bad about it, but unable to kick my butt back into gear.

I am considering lateraling to get a new start, but still just in interviews and haven’t secured a lateral job yet.

In the meantime, how can I get motivation back? Any tips for finding motivation when you feel like your job has an expiration date in the next couple of years?

I am okay with any genre. Thanks!

I’ve had a pretty slow last few months for books. I like to get sucked in and tear through books when possible, but lately I’ve read a lot of books that feel slow and like a bit of a slog to get through. I want to read something that will suck me in and keep me hooked throughout.

I am open to any genre, though I have a preference for a female lead. I tend to like character driven stories best.

Thanks for any recommendations!

I have supervised summers on super basic (like fill in the blank level) assignments in the past, but just recently assigned a summer a substantive memo that required research for the first time.

I’m trying to figure out how to review the memo for our summer committee. It was quite bad, but then again they are obviously total beginners so I’m not sure if that’s normal. What quality of work should I be expecting as the bar for a summer associate?

I’ve so far spent my entire career in a niche practice group at a large law firm, with a small contingent in my group at the office I work out of. Slowly, the people I work with have moved away or left the firm. Currently, there’s just me and one partner left in the group in this office.

I’ve recently been informed that that partner is retiring in a few months. I’ve already been struggling to fill my plate with work (frequently contacting the other offices for work), and I’m worried about what will happen to me when the partner retires.

I’m thinking of leaving the firm and have even got a probable position lined up at a new firm (have finished four rounds of interviews at a mid-size regional firm), but I do generally like my current firm and am reluctant to leave. I’ve thought about asking about my future at my current firm, but I’m scared to ask—like, what do I say? “Um sir, are you going to fire me?”

Has anyone else been in this situation? What’s the move? Should I move to the other firm?

Hey hockey players, I’m curious if any of y’all have had this issue and what you did to get feeling better?

Basically, last game I took an elbow to the helmet and then a stick to the helmet later in the game. Both felt tweaky on my neck. I think my head is fine but I’ve had pretty unpleasant pain basically all through the right side of my trapezius muscle (upper back, lower neck, traps). I skated today and felt alright while I was skating, but it stiffened up a lot worse after skating. I think I might have whiplashed my neck a bit from the head contact.

I have a bunch of games scheduled for this weekend and would like to be feeling good. Anyone else had this? What did you do to get your neck loosened back up?

I’m honestly baffled by this. I’ve played women’s league for quite a while and decided to try out coed in addition to women’s league to get more reps in.

I have been shocked to discover that the team I joined for the coed league apparently deprioritizes female players ice time? For example, with five players playing D, they stack the three female players on one side and two male players on the other rather than doing a rotation. The explanation was that “the guys are faster so we’ll stack the girls so we don’t have two girls out at once.”

Additionally, there are two guys who play center and the center will be the absolute last position to get staffed with a third person. I have never seen them play a woman as a center, even though we have four women on our team.

I get it if we were competing for something, but this is rec D league… we all are paying an equal amount for ice time. Why should some players always get to play more than others?

Has anyone else had this situation? Any advice? I’ve already paid dues and we have about 13 games left in the season.

I’ve been skating about 8 months, but have been doing a ton of skating during that time. I’ve got all of the basics, like crossovers, C-cuts, hockey stops, etc down cold.

Some things I’ve been working on lately with a skating coach include backward crossovers, punch turns, Mohawks and transitions—basically edge work in tight spaces. They’ve also had me do some physicality drills like keeping my feet when I’m receiving contact.

On my own at stick and puck, I’ve been practicing crossover starts, v-starts, and sprinting on the ice.

I was thinking of stopping the skating lessons soon and continuing on my own to save some funds now that I have the basics down. I will, of course, keep refining the skills I’ve learned.

Based on where I’m at now, what would be the next round of skating skills to focus on learning?

Hoping for some thoughts on evaluating my situation and what next step to take.

I am a fourth year at my firm in a slow practice group. Basically, the group was already a bit slow and then one of our main partners lateraled elsewhere and took a bunch of clients with him. Also, though I started with three partners in my group in my office, I am now down to one partner in my office and that partner is winding down to retire at the end of this year. Everyone is slow, but I don’t know exactly how slow everyone is in relation to me. I have billed maybe 80 hours/month in 2026, and that is with regularly asking for work and picking up substantial assignments from other practice groups.

I applied for jobs over the last few months because I was worried I was going to get fired. I ended up with two cool exit opportunities—one boutique firm that’s pretty much right in my goal practice area, and one in-house offer on a small GC team with a company whose mission I really believe in. I need to decide on these offers by next week.

Both would involve a huge pay cut, down to less than half what I currently make for the in-house job, and almost 1/3 of what I currently make for the boutique firm. Both supposedly have way better WLB, though (the firm is only 1600 billables annually).

Meanwhile, partners at my current firm have told me that everyone’s slow and they know I need more work and they are working on it. So that’s reassuring, but I still don’t know if that’ll get me through this slow spell in my group. I’d love to leave before getting let go.

Basically, I’m trying to decide what to do. Is it safe to assume that I’m going to be on my way out the door soon at my current firm anyways? Anything I should be aware of when trading in a big law job for smaller, less well-paid shops? Which would be better as a fourth year, assuming both the boutique and in house job are directly in my areas of interest?

(I am okay with taking a big pay cut, but I am a little concerned about COL in my area. I currently have no debt, do not own a home, and was able to save a lot in my big law job these past few years)

I’m interested in books that follow athletes or sports. Can be fiction or nonfiction. Ideally a good story to it and not boring or overly informative/slow.

My stepdad (55M) and I (28F) have had a rocky relationship for past several years that really came to a head this past Christmas.

My mom (61F) and stepdad are both heavy drinkers and my stepdad is seemingly unable to get through an hour with me without saying harsh things to me (mostly once he starts drinking, which is any time I’m around them).

The last time I spoke to him was last Christmas time. We went to this party with some extended family and he told a story about the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in front of everyone, leaving me feeling deeply humiliated. I didn’t speak to him for the remainder of the trip and haven’t spoken to him since. I haven’t spoken to my mom much either, just a few phone calls.

I’m going to visit tomorrow, staying with my dad through the weekend and spending a night at my mom’s. I’m so anxious about spending the evening with them that I can’t sleep.

I’m hoping for some advice on how to approach this visit?