When did you start to hate big law? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I would like to out the firm but the other two women still work there and I would be directly outing them as well. I'll just say the firm is not well-liked on this forum & a frequent topic of (negative) discussion for bad quality of life, toxic culture, and sweatshop-like conditions...despite being in the $$$$$$$$$$.

Can you share the office location? Concerned as an incoming woman of color at said firm.

[Definitely Not North]

lmao was this

Pretty uncool to guess when OP said she's trying not to out the firm because the people involved are still there.

[Anonymous User]

lmao was this

Pretty uncool to guess when OP said she's trying not to out the firm because the people involved are still there.

Pretty sure she outted it herself -- "the firm is not well-liked on this forum & a frequent topic of (negative) discussion for bad quality of life, toxic culture, and sweatshop-like conditions...despite being in the $$$$$$$$$$."

[Anonymous User]

If it's a huge shop, they're going to give you all offers anyway. Maybe they'd pull your offer for punching a partner in the face, but not for a typo. On top of all that, the criticism was coming from junior associates, meaning they had virtually no power. Not worth crying about something so inconsequential.

[Anonymous User]

lmao was this

Pretty uncool to guess when OP said she's trying not to out the firm because the people involved are still there.

Pretty sure she outted it herself -- "the firm is not well-liked on this forum & a frequent topic of (negative) discussion for bad quality of life, toxic culture, and sweatshop-like conditions...despite being in the $$$$$$$$$$."

OP. I gave you enough to make a good charades guess and get it right. But reasonable doubt exists for a reason. I'm sure that there are a lot of nasty places that have similar vibes in the money at the moment so buyer beware. I worked in New York.

[Anonymous User]

The whole things sounds like the cycle of abuse - someone probably pulled that kind of move on these associates and they were just itching to take it out on someone else in return, which they’d probably had little opportunity to do. (Like why does a 1st year associate think they’re in a position to discipline summers??)

[nixy]

lmao was this

Pretty uncool to guess when OP said she's trying not to out the firm because the people involved are still there.

Pretty sure she outted it herself -- "the firm is not well-liked on this forum & a frequent topic of (negative) discussion for bad quality of life, toxic culture, and sweatshop-like conditions...despite being in the $$$$$$$$$$."

But the point is to not actually name the name - if the answer is that clear, no need to confirm.

[Anonymous User]

Dude we all know who it is, but just go back and edit your comment to remove the name.

[Anonymous User]

"Everyone knows what it is but you can't say it"

Yep makes sense super logical

[Anonymous User]

"Everyone knows what it is but you can't say it"

Yep makes sense super logical

Yes that what doxxing is. You revealed more information than Elaine OP was comfortable with sharing. Not cool.

If it needs to be explained - it's one thing for the handful of people in this thread to figure it out, it's another thing for it to come up in a Google search for the firm.

[Anonymous User]

K thanks for editing, guess we can go back to whatever this thread was supposed to about.

Singed,
whiny wimp

[Anonymous User]

"Everyone knows what it is but you can't say it"

Yep makes sense super logical

Yes that what doxxing is. You revealed more information than Elaine OP was comfortable with sharing. Not cool.

If it needs to be explained - it's one thing for the handful of people in this thread to figure it out, it's another thing for it to come up in a Google search for the firm.

If someone says "I live on the street between 18th and 20th street and you say "oh you live on 19th street" that's not doxxing.

[Anonymous User]

"Everyone knows what it is but you can't say it"

Yep makes sense super logical

Yes that what doxxing is. You revealed more information than Elaine OP was comfortable with sharing. Not cool.

If it needs to be explained - it's one thing for the handful of people in this thread to figure it out, it's another thing for it to come up in a Google search for the firm.

If someone says "I live on the street between 18th and 20th street and you say "oh you live on 19th street" that's not doxxing.

K but let it go bud

[Definitely Not North]

"Everyone knows what it is but you can't say it"

Yep makes sense super logical

Yes that what doxxing is. You revealed more information than Elaine OP was comfortable with sharing. Not cool.

If it needs to be explained - it's one thing for the handful of people in this thread to figure it out, it's another thing for it to come up in a Google search for the firm.

If someone says "I live on the street between 18th and 20th street and you say "oh you live on 19th street" that's not doxxing.

This post is when I started to hate big law.

[Anonymous User]

Unironically agreed that this type of debate is emblematic of biglaw culture. "just try to be kind to others". "why should I?"

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

Honestly seems like a lot of the suckiness comes from midlevels more than anyone else.

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

Honestly seems like a lot of the suckiness comes from midlevels more than anyone else.

It can, but it's also the shit stream in action. The midlevel may be a tyrant because they work for a tyrant senior associate and they need to be a tyrant to make the senior happy. Or they may be a tyrant working for a completely sane and pleasant senior associate. Same thing with the senior being a tyrant and the partner, and the partner being a tyrant and the client. It's the worst at the junior level because you are subject to all of the people in the chain, whereas as you get more senior, the chain is shrinking so there are less people on the chain who just may be tyrants in their own right. But it's truly exemplary of the shit flows downhill.

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

Honestly seems like a lot of the suckiness comes from midlevels more than anyone else.

Agreed. Probably a lot of burnt out midlevels who aren't cut out for the job or who "put in their time" so they make the juniors' lives hell. To my knowledge, two of the three 'midlevels' from my story have since left biglaw entirely (and I'm still here so HA)

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

Honestly seems like a lot of the suckiness comes from midlevels more than anyone else.

It can, but it's also the shit stream in action. The midlevel may be a tyrant because they work for a tyrant senior associate and they need to be a tyrant to make the senior happy. Or they may be a tyrant working for a completely sane and pleasant senior associate. Same thing with the senior being a tyrant and the partner, and the partner being a tyrant and the client. It's the worst at the junior level because you are subject to all of the people in the chain, whereas as you get more senior, the chain is shrinking so there are less people on the chain who just may be tyrants in their own right. But it's truly exemplary of the shit flows downhill.

The bolded matches my experience as well. It's possible that partners are just really nasty to the mids and seniors and really nice to juniors, but you'd think if that's true they would have a harder time hiding it around us. And partners have asked me to let them know if seniors are being shitty. I would never snitch on principle, but it's nice to know that some partners are aware of the problem and agree it's not acceptable.

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

Honestly seems like a lot of the suckiness comes from midlevels more than anyone else.

It can, but it's also the shit stream in action. The midlevel may be a tyrant because they work for a tyrant senior associate and they need to be a tyrant to make the senior happy. Or they may be a tyrant working for a completely sane and pleasant senior associate. Same thing with the senior being a tyrant and the partner, and the partner being a tyrant and the client. It's the worst at the junior level because you are subject to all of the people in the chain, whereas as you get more senior, the chain is shrinking so there are less people on the chain who just may be tyrants in their own right. But it's truly exemplary of the shit flows downhill.

The bolded matches my experience as well. It's possible that partners are just really nasty to the mids and seniors and really nice to juniors, but you'd think if that's true they would have a harder time hiding it around us. And partners have asked me to let them know if seniors are being shitty. I would never snitch on principle, but it's nice to know that some partners are aware of the problem and agree it's not acceptable.

Yes all of the partners are super sweetie sweethearts who just happened to recruit a few classes of super tyrannical midlevels who they'd love to fire and get off the rolls and stop antagonizing the juniors, but ITE their hands are tied! Sorry, I tried to be nice with the first reply, but this is pure delusion. I'm not opposed to the idea that there are a few midlevels who just choose to be total dicks even though everyone in their work stream is extremely mellow. I'm sure this person exists. But to deny the fact that there is a superfluous amount of biglaw partners whose personality type is "Type A Jagoff who is very very good at appearing at first blush to be relatively mellow and lowkey" is an actual fairy tale. Everyone who is pushed on deadlines will eventually snap, and the nice guy facade that they have around junior associates will dissipate right quick when they start getting "where is purchass agmt draft??????????????" from their clients. I will give you this: there is a band of acceptability that is generally tolerated in biglaw. For the most part, if you're a 5th year associate and you are verbally abusing juniors or actually seen as threatening to them, you'll be asked to take a long walk off a short plank. But there's a lot of bad behavior short of that that is ultimately shrugged off if someone is otherwise doing competent work and liked by the clients. I also want to be clear that I'm not defending tyrannical midlevels, fuck anyone who is needlessly cruel no matter their status or seniority, but it's absolutely bonkers if you think that this is a bug isolated to a certain class year and not a feature of the whole system.

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

Honestly seems like a lot of the suckiness comes from midlevels more than anyone else.

It can, but it's also the shit stream in action. The midlevel may be a tyrant because they work for a tyrant senior associate and they need to be a tyrant to make the senior happy. Or they may be a tyrant working for a completely sane and pleasant senior associate. Same thing with the senior being a tyrant and the partner, and the partner being a tyrant and the client. It's the worst at the junior level because you are subject to all of the people in the chain, whereas as you get more senior, the chain is shrinking so there are less people on the chain who just may be tyrants in their own right. But it's truly exemplary of the shit flows downhill.

The bolded matches my experience as well. It's possible that partners are just really nasty to the mids and seniors and really nice to juniors, but you'd think if that's true they would have a harder time hiding it around us. And partners have asked me to let them know if seniors are being shitty. I would never snitch on principle, but it's nice to know that some partners are aware of the problem and agree it's not acceptable.

Yes all of the partners are super sweetie sweethearts who just happened to recruit a few classes of super tyrannical midlevels who they'd love to fire and get off the rolls and stop antagonizing the juniors, but ITE their hands are tied! Sorry, I tried to be nice with the first reply, but this is pure delusion. I'm not opposed to the idea that there are a few midlevels who just choose to be total dicks even though everyone in their work stream is extremely mellow. I'm sure this person exists. But to deny the fact that there is a superfluous amount of biglaw partners whose personality type is "Type A Jagoff who is very very good at appearing at first blush to be relatively mellow and lowkey" is an actual fairy tale. Everyone who is pushed on deadlines will eventually snap, and the nice guy facade that they have around junior associates will dissipate right quick when they start getting "where is purchass agmt draft??????????????" from their clients. I will give you this: there is a band of acceptability that is generally tolerated in biglaw. For the most part, if you're a 5th year associate and you are verbally abusing juniors or actually seen as threatening to them, you'll be asked to take a long walk off a short plank. But there's a lot of bad behavior short of that that is ultimately shrugged off if someone is otherwise doing competent work and liked by the clients. I also want to be clear that I'm not defending tyrannical midlevels, fuck anyone who is needlessly cruel no matter their status or seniority, but it's absolutely bonkers if you think that this is a bug isolated to a certain class year and not a feature of the whole system.

Yeah logically you have to be right, there's no way it's in isolation and the "mellow" partners were probably tyrannical 5th years a few years ago. And yet, it seems to be a common trends that the worst experiences are with this band, so it's coming from somewhere. If it's because more senior people are better at masking until they snap under pressure, I guess it's still better than just general assholery?

Also some of the behavior is not upstream type stuff. It's not about deadlines and stuff, it's about blame and throwing under the bus.

And with so much lateral movement lately, they were not trained by the people they currently report to. There's a reason they drop partners off the nastier emails. Bottom line, even if the partners are assholes too, I think they understand the importance of retention and that influences their behavior.

[Anonymous User]

Years ago when I was a first year. During my training period three third years dropped the ball in delegating urgent client facing tasks to the two first years (duplicated one task and failed to assign a second task). The other first year said "Sorry I'm just not going to do any of these tasks until you guys figure out who is doing what". I quickly followed up with "I agree, I'm not sure what is going on, please advise"

They proceeded to separately meet with the two of us and yell at me and tell me that when they say "jump" I say "how high". All three quit within the next two years and my life was infinitely better. It's not the job, it's the people.

Honestly seems like a lot of the suckiness comes from midlevels more than anyone else.

It can, but it's also the shit stream in action. The midlevel may be a tyrant because they work for a tyrant senior associate and they need to be a tyrant to make the senior happy. Or they may be a tyrant working for a completely sane and pleasant senior associate. Same thing with the senior being a tyrant and the partner, and the partner being a tyrant and the client. It's the worst at the junior level because you are subject to all of the people in the chain, whereas as you get more senior, the chain is shrinking so there are less people on the chain who just may be tyrants in their own right. But it's truly exemplary of the shit flows downhill.

The bolded matches my experience as well. It's possible that partners are just really nasty to the mids and seniors and really nice to juniors, but you'd think if that's true they would have a harder time hiding it around us. And partners have asked me to let them know if seniors are being shitty. I would never snitch on principle, but it's nice to know that some partners are aware of the problem and agree it's not acceptable.

Yes all of the partners are super sweetie sweethearts who just happened to recruit a few classes of super tyrannical midlevels who they'd love to fire and get off the rolls and stop antagonizing the juniors, but ITE their hands are tied! Sorry, I tried to be nice with the first reply, but this is pure delusion. I'm not opposed to the idea that there are a few midlevels who just choose to be total dicks even though everyone in their work stream is extremely mellow. I'm sure this person exists. But to deny the fact that there is a superfluous amount of biglaw partners whose personality type is "Type A Jagoff who is very very good at appearing at first blush to be relatively mellow and lowkey" is an actual fairy tale. Everyone who is pushed on deadlines will eventually snap, and the nice guy facade that they have around junior associates will dissipate right quick when they start getting "where is purchass agmt draft??????????????" from their clients. I will give you this: there is a band of acceptability that is generally tolerated in biglaw. For the most part, if you're a 5th year associate and you are verbally abusing juniors or actually seen as threatening to them, you'll be asked to take a long walk off a short plank. But there's a lot of bad behavior short of that that is ultimately shrugged off if someone is otherwise doing competent work and liked by the clients. I also want to be clear that I'm not defending tyrannical midlevels, fuck anyone who is needlessly cruel no matter their status or seniority, but it's absolutely bonkers if you think that this is a bug isolated to a certain class year and not a feature of the whole system.

Yeah logically you have to be right, there's no way it's in isolation and the "mellow" partners were probably tyrannical 5th years a few years ago. And yet, it seems to be a common trends that the worst experiences are with this band, so it's coming from somewhere. If it's because more senior people are better at masking until they snap under pressure, I guess it's still better than just general assholery?

Also some of the behavior is not upstream type stuff. It's not about deadlines and stuff, it's about blame and throwing under the bus.

And with so much lateral movement lately, they were not trained by the people they currently report to. There's a reason they drop partners off the nastier emails. Bottom line, even if the partners are assholes too, I think they understand the importance of retention and that influences their behavior.

It's a common trend to you because of where you sit in the structure. Senior associates have group chats where they'll rage on partners too. To them, that is common. Everyone only has their experience for what is a "common theme." Your realization of partners being assholes will come. I do agree with the last line -- partners are better than newly minted midlevels at controlling how they come across, 100%. It's a learned skill, as with anything else.

Here's the naked truth: you don't have to let it affect you. Get a nasty email? Tell your SO over dinner and a large pour of wine and laugh about how their life is awful and this midlevel is using their tiny, tiny modicum of power over someone who graduated law school two years after them as a means for self-fulfillment. Rage in the group chat about how so and so is completely off the rails and should due for their pink slip within the month. Or just, let it roll off of you and focus your efforts on your clearly A+ yoga/meditation practice if you're able to accomplish this one without resorting to the others. Midlevels may suck just because they suck, or they may suck because they are trying to run the hamster wheel that the partner has set the MPHs for at much higher than they can run. The open secret about biglaw in a boom economy is that it takes a lot more than pissing off any one person in a multinational firm to cause any sort of lasting damage. If you don't let the nasty emails affect you, you're the one in control. If your "I'll get to this tonight after I get back from receiving a pro bono award for getting 500 refugees out of Afghanistan" email is met with "needed ASAP pls arrange other plans accordingly," then you are the one back in control. "I will respond in the morning" is a complete sentence. The only real, actual impact the midlevel can have is: report this breach to the partner. If it's reasonable, or has questionable reasonableness, it won't break through the partner's orbit of shit he has to care about; or, midlevel won't staff you again -- isn't that literally the goal if midlevel is atypically tyrannical? Always keep in mind your own agency in all of this, but keep your eyes open to the bigger picture and why people are responding the way they are to the speedbumps that arise. If you think the buck is stopping at the midlevel, look harder.

[Anonymous User]

Feel like this tangent has run its course and is turning into a wall of text...

Disagree that it has to do with where you stand in the structure. Due to staffing shortage I've worked directly with partners and counsels at times.

Agree that it's possible to brush it off and find non work outlets to vent, indeed that's what I'm doing right now. Sucks that it's a job that requires that, so to the extent that this tangent is on topic that's the takeaway.

[Anonymous User]

Partners aren’t created full-grown though, they were tyrannical senior associates first. If senior associates are more tyrannical than partners (on the aggregate, not just random individual personalities) of course it’s about where they sit in the power structure. They have a lot of responsibility and accountability (if juniors screw up, it will be there fault) without the power security of partners. Not sure that worrying about retention makes a difference so much as partners are just in a better position than senior associates.

(Not saying it’s okay to be an asshole to those below you, just thinking about why.)