I have about 120 cases right now. 105 of them are labor and employment cases, and 15 are miscellaneous. I am located in Chicago and I make $77k with a 1750 hour billing requirement. I am feeling a bit overworked and underpaid right now, but I don’t know if it’s just my own failure to manage my caseload.
I’m an attorney seeking to lateral and, before this experience, I had never worked with recruiters. This company encouraged me to provide a blanket authorization allowing them to submit my resume to firms on a mass basis without fully explaining the consequences.
What I did not understand, and what I believe should have been clearly disclosed, is that once a recruiter submits you to a firm, you can effectively be “locked out” from reapplying or being submitted through another recruiter to that same firm for six months.
I was not informed of these risks, and as a result, my resume was submitted to well over 100 firms, many of which I can no longer independently pursue at this time. The experience has been incredibly frustrating and disappointing, and now my options in the market have been wiped out for half a year.
In my opinion, this approach is misleading and raises serious ethical concerns. I would strongly encourage everyone to never work with this company. They do not advocate for you nor work with you - just another resume to be blindly submitted and hope someone wants you so that they can collect their fee. Avoid BCG/Harrison Barnes at all costs.
I am so bewildered by any attorney who supports Trump (even back to 2016). I try to shake this off, but it really eats at me. I can excuse an Alabama hs drop out for supporting him, but someone who went to law school and studied, not so much. Am I alone in the attorney hate on this? He’s just so sad, none of us would ever negotiate in the way he does and pretty much everything we do is a negotiation. I’m just looking for some confirmation on this because I feel like I’m in the twilight zone when any attorney talks anything Pro-Trump.
I’m a second-year associate who recently joined a solo practitioner. My salary is $120k plus benefits, and my minimum billable requirement is only 1,000 hours/year. My workday is basically 9–5, and there’s no bonus structure.
Doing the math, 1,000 billables comes out to roughly 3.8 billable hours/day. Even accounting for admin time, slow days, and vacations, that still seems very low for private practice.
Am I missing something? If my boss expects me to work significantly more than that, wouldn’t the billable requirement be higher? Or is this just how some solo/small firm practices operate? I want to do well and stay with this firm, but I also don’t want to work more than I need to if there’s no bonus incentive.
New lawyer. I got an offer for 70,000 a year, 1800 billable hours, and discretionary bonus every year. I have 3 years of experience as a law clerk, maybe that doesn't matter. Is this reasonable?
I say current because I am sure worse things could happen...
As a new attorney (less than 3 years), my biggest fear is being in a trial, opposing counsel objects, and I don't know what to say (the rules of evidence are hard). Then, I ask for a recess and the court says no, and in my panic and frustration I start to cry.
To me, it would be so humiliating I would have to quit. Has anyone ever experienced this, or something similar? I know there is so much I don't know as a new attorney, which makes me feel vastly unprepared going into a trial...
I am not sure I’ve ever started a post here though I’ve commented on a few. I’ve seen quite a posts by new lawyers and many others at all career stages expressing anxiety, frustration, being exhausted, and looking for advice or solace or just some kind of communion with other lawyers. Let me be bold and just say something really simple. The LEAST we can do is be just decent to each other. We are the social lubricant that allows a somewhat civil and seemingly increasingly contentious, depressed,and distraught society continue to function. It’s not an easy gig for all the reasons: law school isn’t great training, firms work people to the point they have do not have the time for the serendipities and ah-ha moments that come only after you’ve given your brain a rest, judges are unpredictable, the law is often unintuitive, opposing counsels are sometimes unnecessarily contentious, the rules can be vague, our colleagues may be difficult, and we are in an anxious society. In sum, be nice to each other if possible. It’s really not hard to be nice. Doesn’t mean being saccharine or avoiding the difficult lessons most of us have learned and passing them on forthrightly. But please consider being just a tad nicer, kinder, and generally be the person we all hope we would find in our professional lives. As someone might say, thank for your attention to this matter. : )
Anyone have some word hacks that helped you save tons of time you swear by?
One thing I've been trying to figure out is having Word automatically change numbers, like Special Interrogatory No. X. It's a bitch going in to change 100 SROGs because you added a few more in the middle or took some out and now they're all misnumbered.
Hi everyone,
I’m a junior lawyer working under my boss, who is also the senior lawyer and owner of the firm.
Today we were in the middle of settling a case and everything was very rushed. My boss had a separate appointment and asked me to handle a call with the client in her absence. There was a small outstanding point the client wasn’t really agreeing with, but we had a very tight deadline to finalize and send the settlement agreement.
During the call, I explained the situation and tried to move things forward. The client ended up agreeing to the settlement, but honestly I had the impression from his tone that he wasn’t fully comfortable and didn’t really want to accept, even though he ultimately said yes.
Now I can’t stop thinking about it and I feel uneasy, like I may have pushed too hard or didn’t properly ensure he was actually okay with the decision, even though I was just trying to follow instructions and manage the situation as best as I could.
My anxiety is killing me. Everything feels so high stakes and I’m really nervous about making a big mistake. I’m even having heart palpitations wake me up at night just thinking about some of my cases 😔
Sooo how are you guys doing?
Does this impact anyone here or do you know anyone in the field this impacts (don't out yourself saying you have an active case with the DOJ).
I've just never seen or heard of anything remotely like this but these are insane times.
I'm trying to think of other analogous situations where the Court said, "Always assume party X is acting in bad faith and your first order of business should be filing to quash because I'll just grant it by default."
I'm imagining perhaps a court where they say, "Local PD are a bunch of liars so I'm going to toss out every single traffic ticket by default if you ask them to provide dashcam footage of the event because I know they just lie about everything and write bogus tickets."
*Paraphrasing obviously but regardless
I work in a small town firm that does pretty much every type of law and since I started here a year ago, we have had multiple clients come in to either consults or just regular meetings, and try to use AI to tell us what to do in some way or another.
Some folks come in with chat gpt generated "agendas" or "courses of action." Some generate reports from all their inputs that tells them what legal action they should file, and they ask us about it. One had AI generate an "overall home health report" with line graphs, bar graphs, candlestick charts, and God knows what else. It was supposed to show us that his marriage was falling apart and he needed to get custody of the children.
When I was in law school, we used AI heavily in legal research and I am all for AI advancing the profession. But it never occurred to me that clients would be trying to tell us how to do our job because an AI chat bot gave them some convincing verbiage with some pin cites sprinkled in. Is anyone else having this issue with clients using AI in an annoying fashion?
We went to school for law and you paid us for law. Let us do our thing man.
If I had to start a solo practice from scratch again, i will spend more and more time protecting my own attention and not go for building a perfect firm.
When I first went solo, I thought the hard part would be legal work. But i realized nonstop fragmentation was even more difficuot. Emails, scheduling, intake, follow-ups, billing, random client calls, documents coming in incomplete, opposing counsel deciding every issue is suddenly urgent at 4:52 PM on a Friday.
I also wasted an embarrassing amount of time researching software. I convinced myself that if I found the perfect combination of tools, workflows and automations, the practice would somehow run smoothly on its own. In reality, most of it was procrastination disguised as optimization.
But things that mattered early on were painfully boring. Returning calls quickly. Having a consistent intake process. Organizing deadlines. Sending invoices on time. Following up when I said I would. Making clients feel like their matter was under control even when everything behind the scenes felt chaotic.
I also underestimated how exhausting communication overhead becomes once you’re managing multiple matters at once. Status updates, scheduling chains, document requests, internal coordination, “just checking in” emails, trying to remember who said what. None of it feels significant individually, but together it eats your entire day.
If I were starting over today, I’d simplify aggressively. Fewer tools and fewer attempts to create the world’s most optimized law practice before there’s even stable revenue coming in.
I would also document decisions much earlier. At the start, everything lives in your head. How you onboard clients, how you communicate timelines, what gets delegated, what needs review, how you handle difficult clients, how you organize files. It feels manageable until another person joins the practice. Then you realize the entire operation depends on memory and improvisation.
The biggest thing I’ve learned is that what slowly wears people down is operational friction and the constant switching and admin drag. The feeling that you worked all day but moved nothing important forward.
That’s the part nobody really warns you about before you go solo.
I’ve done solely litigation for the last six years working Plaintiffs side, consumer protection (primarily FCRA cases) and I want OUT. I like my firm and my colleagues, and honestly I’m good at it, but I’m so sick of fighting with opposing counsel and the stress that comes with it. I’m a softy deep down.
I’m a managing attorney (not partner), have trial experience, argued before federal appellate courts etc. I mention it in case the experience is transferable outside of litigation.
How do I get out of this hell? Most people say go in house, but with my experience, I feel like I’d have to work for a consumer reporting agency, which I don’t want to do.
I don’t need to be loaded but I really don’t want to make less than $200k a year.
I’m extremely burnt out and don’t know where to start because I’m too busy fighting OC every day so any advice on next steps or ideas is highly appreciated!
Since the early 1970s my practice area, technically litigation, resolves with informal agreements between attorneys or a few hearings 99% of the time. I've handled hundreds of these cases and never been to trial.
But, the rules changed last year, and we think trials will become much more common going forward. Any advice? I can read through our court rules like anyone else, but most of us practitioners seem lost.
EDIT: I'm talking about full-blown jury trials. We attorneys down this way can handle hearings and court filings no problem. Proper trials are so uncommon there are no model instructions, and I don't think anyone even has templates for motions in limine, for example.
Hi all,
I’ve signed on as an adjunct to teach a 1L writing course next year at my local law school. I want to equip the students with the real-world skills needed for early practice.
In your day-to-day work with newer attorneys, which writing skills do you think are lacking? Which writing-related skills do you wish students learned in law school? Which writing advice do you find yourself regularly repeating? From formal brief writing to informal emails, communications with chambers vs. clients vs. colleagues, etc.
Thanks for your insight, all!!
Edit: sorry for the repetitive title—I was hastily putting this together while boarding a train 🤪 & thanks for the excellent responses!! Keep ‘em coming!
I asked for a raise because I do exceptional work and go above and beyond. My case load has increased greatly. I asked for a proportionate raise, as this would require me to spend much more time to accommodate the caseload - I genuinely care about my clients, so if I am handed a caseload, I'd rather spend the time required, rather than rushing through each case. My manager told me that it's not likely I'll get the raise, but that she would have to check. This was a few weeks ago.
After having been told that and waiting without a response, I decided to take my PTO days because I had a feeling they would not give me the raise and I'm mentally checking out at this firm.
I'm beginning to feel like I was undervalued and not appreciated. I do not want to continue working. I'm going through something called "corporate burnout," which I recently read about and I have all the signs, it seems. The thought of work increases my anxiety and I hate my job. A big cause of this feeling was increasing the workload on me exponentially without increasing my raise, which I feel is a reasonable expectation.
So, I'm mentally done here. I can either continue pushing for a raise, but even if I do, I don't know if I want to work with them anymore. OR I can just quit without a back-up (I do not need the money because my partner is the breadwinner and financially supportive). May I have some advice on what is the best way forward?