Monday, August 20, 2007

 
An associate invited me to his wedding this past weekend. I assume he was hoping that actually being at the wedding would make me more willing to give him a half-day off for his honeymoon, but no such luck. I made up for it by giving him a fairly substantial gift certificate to the firm cafeteria as a wedding present. I don't think I've seen his wife come by the office too often to join him for a quick dinner down there, so hopefully this will give them the opportunity to get a little more time together. I felt uncomfortable the whole time I was there. It bothers me that this associate has friends, and family that's still speaking to him. It means we're not working him hard enough. I fear I've failed him. I'll have to work harder at getting him some time-consuming assignments this next quarter. Part of me felt like I didn't need to give him a gift at all. After all, the cost of the firm health insurance his wife will now qualify for dwarfs the gift I gave him. Isn't health insurance the best present anyone can receive anyway?

I looked at his wedding website before I went to the affair, so I could remember his name and what he looked like. I laughed when I scrolled through his wedding registry. When does he think he'll have time to use a serving plate or a toothbrush holder? He should be brushing his teeth at work. If he only brushes his teeth when he's at home, they'll all fall out. No one at the firm is home often enough to restrict his dental care to the bathroom in his house. And when will he ever be home for a dinner party where he'll need service for 8? I was tempted to give him 7 of those 8 plates, 7 forks, 7 knives, to symbolize those dinner parties he's sure to have where everyone shows up but him, still stuck at the office working. That's the life he has to look forward to. Dinner parties he doesn't get to attend.

In between salad and the main course I e-mailed him an assignment from my BlackBerry, hoping he'd ignore it, hoping he'd give me reason to put him on probation, deny him his bonus. But sure enough, I saw him sneak out for a few minutes during the first dance, and fifteen minutes later I had an e-mail back from him. I looked out at him, cutting the wedding cake, and gave him a wink. Job well done. Maybe he's a keeper. Or at least until he has kids.

Comments:
We encourage children here. It is part of the family environment, or so we say. It is really to put more incentive on them to work harder to pay for the upkeep of the little darlings
 
Walking into the building today, the guard at the desk made direct eye contact and initiated a conversation with me. I'm seriously thinking about leaving my firm. What's the point of getting a JD if this continues?
 
Has anyone seen the blog dedicated to Marty Lipton? This thing is nuts.

http://poison-pill.blogspot.com/
 
what would be nice would be if anonymous boss at anonymous manchester law firm would realise that this is a satire and not the way to go about managing.
 
anonymous paralegal, quit struggling and trying to assert your humanity. You'll only make yourself tired and stringy.
 
At least he married her after he joined the firm. She would have gotten a much larger divorce settlement had he married her while in law school.
 
Oh my god - everyone has got to read the http://poison-pill.blogspot.com. I read it on the advise of the previous comment posted and I must say: It is what AnonymousLawyer used to be.
 
I'm not sure if the same person is just attempting to promote poison-pill.com or what the situation is, but that blog is not that funny. To compare it to this blog is like saying Chris Kattan is what Steve Martin used to be.
 
http://bloggingthebar.blogspot.com/

check out this chick's Aug. 18th post, she cites to a book that is very similar to your November 18th, 2005 entry.
 
Cigar smoking/beer drinking said it best... name me one large firm in California which doesn't promote mass breeding. Once you've popped a few, you're locked in for life. Student loans, mortgage, car payment, and kids too? You simply can't afford to work anywhere else. And once the kids become a handful and your marriage is no longer in the newlywed bliss stage, guess what... you actually WANT to work until midnight. That is the sick part. This business sux. Someone want to offer me an exit strategy?
 
Exit strategy: reinvent yourself. Change is constant, embrace it.
 
I still heart this blog. Funny, funny.
 
Exit strategy: We are currently hiring. We are a very family friendly firm located in the mid -south. Not a top tier market, but we pay above average for our area. We also will help you relocated, pay for your first leased car and even help with a down payment for your house.
 
Seems like there's a consulting version of Anonymous Lawyer:

http://covertconsultant.blogspot.com/

Or is it? Hard to tell...
 
I don't understand this website. Is this supposed to be an over the top parody of life at big law firms? Unless they are at Wachtell, lawyers don't work all that hard, especially by comparison to their counterparts in banking. What's the point of dozens of blog entries month after month that emphasize how much lawyers work at some non-existent law firm.

If you want to make a parody of life at big law firms, it would make more sense to emphasize, say, how law firms are so excessively egalitarian that the best associate from Cravath (with HYP undergrad, HLS) gets the same salary as the worst associate at a V50 law firm from schools no one has ever heard of. Anonymous Lawyer should mock this insane egalitarianism rather than a supposed elitism/crazy hours that really don't reflect reality.
 
I looked at that poison pill site and all that went through my mind was 'who is marty lipton and who the hell cares?' Judging by the 0 comments on the majority of posts, it would seem the answer is nobody. It is not even on the same planet as this blog. Anonymous Lawyer is the only thing that delivers that motivational pick-me-up between billable hour 7 and 8, when the sixth coffee for the day just cant...
 
"Pardoy"? Hah! The sad part about this whole thing is that it is suppossed to be a parody but it is assuredly not. This blog is spot on for the life of any given 1-5 year associate at a large firm.
---then it gets worse when the poor souls actually think they have a chance at making partner
 
I am not sure where the anonymous poster commenting on the fact attornets dont work worked or had experience working in a large law firm, but I assure you the lawyers I all know are worked to death - long hours with maybe Sunday off, little or no postive feed back but tons of negative - the red pen mark up of a document is the worst.

This website maybe tongue in cheek, but it is close enough to the mark to be believable. Thank god I got out when I did.
 
Wow, "don't reflect reality?"... "don't work that hard?" I'm not sure where you're working (if you're working at all), but it's surely not where I and many other regular readers of this blog work. If you're working in the salt mines of a large California firm, I guarantee you're either working your ass off, fudging your bills, or both because they don't hire people who do anything else. Watchell? Gimme a break... Aside from the fact that nobody even wants to work for that tired firm anymore, didn't they lose their anchor clients in the real estate and antitrust practices last year? You're probably bitter because you're sitting in asbestos depositions all day playing video golf on your laptop even though you're Harvard law. I agree... those types of tasks don't require much work. It's the appellate brief you'll be up drafting all night after you get back to the office from your asbestos depo that sucks.
 
Whoever doesn't know who Marty Lipton is should not be reading the other blog or this one. Can you even be a lawyer? You obviously didn't go to a top name school.
 
Venomous lawyer would suit you better. Nice blog.
 
Great blog, great writing.
 
What's amazing is how one could just as easily call this the anonymousdoctor blog and change a few of the technical terms around. Same basic principles usually apply.

Unless you are a pediatrician.... or family doc.
 
Hahaha.. my old law firm invited me to a board meeting when I told them I wanted to get married. Then the partners 'politely' invited my fiance to lunch, just to make sure he wasn't a threat to the firm.
They surely did not encourage me to have babies. Law firms don't want pregnant female lawyers worrying about their water breaks while there's a financial restructuring transaction to close... this anonymouslawyer blog cheers me up.. hahaha...
 
Why are partners so horrible to assosiciates if they were once one themselves?
 
associates should be required to marry each other...that way they are consistently cognizant of billable pressures and no worries of familial time off needed.
 
actually, i know of many associates at the same firm who are in relationships. probably because they don't meet anyone else during their waking hours...

great blog!
 
Talking of billable hours, although the billable hour does not seem to be dead as yet, its days are definitely numbered. Clients are increasingly demanding reduced legal costs, forcing the law firms to innovate. One solution to the high legal fees problem is legal outsourcing.

With the advent of legal process outsourcing, legal work is now being done at a fraction of the cost in countries like India, without compromising in quality. Legal outsourcing providers are helping buyers of legal services in the U.S. reduce costs dramatically by providing cost effective legal solutions.
 
best of luck! give it a try.

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