the secret about "non-negotiable expectations"
everything in life is negotiable
I turned 32! And boy, am I glad to be 32—it’s going to be a much better year than 31. My 31st birthday was a month after I had quit my biglaw job, and I was so stressed about my future that I could only throw together a small dinner at the last second, even though the Aries in me always loves a good excuse to throw a party. (I even held a Funemployment Party the weekend after my last day, when I was still riding high on the exhilaration of quitting but before the panic set in à la Albert Brennaman in Hitch.)
This year, I’ve gotten much better at handling the uncertainty and external judgments of not toiling under the auspices of W-2 employment, so I managed to get it together enough to host a combination birthday/book deal fête!
In honor of becoming older and wiser, I wanted to talk about the Paul Hastings slide (sorry; the slide created by a senior associate at Paul Hastings which “does not reflect the views of the firm or its partners”).
There has been much commentary about this slide by the intersection of lawyers who are also very online. Whenever there is great uproar on all sides about something, I always know it means that every position is probably a little bit right and a little bit wrong. So let’s break it down.
PH is an AmLaw 20 law firm. You’re in the big leagues, which is a privilege, act like it.
Right: Working in biglaw, and earning a salary of $215,000 in your first year out of law school, is a privilege that many people and many law graduates do not get. I’ve noticed that junior associates from low-income or first-gen college or immigrant backgrounds tend to grasp this instinctively—some to their detriment—while associates from wealthier backgrounds tend to view biglaw as the baseline expectation for their lives.
Wrong: Facially? Nothing. The tone is arguably lacking empathy, but it’s hard to convey tone over text, and I’m trying not to tone-police anyone these days—not only is it a tired and largely invalid criticism, but it also is predominantly used to discredit and silence Black women. (I don’t know the race or gender identity of the senior associate, but it doesn’t matter—let’s stop tone-policing, period.)We are in the business of client services — you are the concierge at the Four Seasons, a waiter at Alinea. The client always comes first and is always right. If a client wants a mountain moved, we move it. No questions. As a junior, your “clients” are the associates and partners on the deal team.
Right: All legal practice is client services. Hell, most corporate jobs are client services in some shape or form, just with different price tags and different definitions of “customer” groups. And client services do indeed mean that the job is to assist clients/customers/whoever-pays-your-employer and advance their interests.
Wrong: Clients aren’t always right. Sometimes they’re very, very wrong. “No questions?” If a client wants a mountain moved, you should certainly look into it—but unquestioningly? What is this, the Mafia? Sometimes, clients want to do things that aren’t advisable, whether legally or from a business perspective. The lawyer’s job is to consider both the legal and business ramifications of the desired course of action and counsel the client accordingly. I have disagreed with more senior associates and partners and—yes—even clients. As long as those disagreements are voiced professionally and rationally, “clients” in all senses of the word tend to appreciate the advice (even if they ultimately choose to take a riskier position, as a lot of businesses are wont to do). If the senior associate thinks that their job is only to move mountains unquestioningly, then they will truly be one of the first to be left behind by A.I.You are “online” 24/7. No exceptions, no excuses.
Right: The first three words. We are, indeed, online.
Wrong: Everything after the first three words. I get that this is likely hyperbolic, and in response to getting burned by a junior who was a little too unavailable, but telling anyone to be online 24/7 isn’t the solution. Especially when the senior associate writing this is likely not online 24/7. (And if they are, they need to stop. Seriously—that’s not good for their health.)Timelines/Quality: clients expect everything to be done perfectly and delivered yesterday.
Right: Work product should be quality and should be delivered before the agreed-upon deadline. Determining “quality” as a baby lawyer can be difficult, but it typically includes both substantive checks (e.g., rereading the assigning email(s) or your notes from the assigning communications to make sure you covered everything, cross-referencing the asks from the assigning notes with your deliverable) and superficial checks (e.g., spellcheck, formatting). Much easier to do is simply meet deadlines—one of the easiest and most effective ways of making a good impression.
Wrong: The emphasis on “perfectly” and “yesterday.” Focusing on doing everything perfectly and delivering it immediately is a one-way express ticket to burnout. Mistakes are inevitable in any job, and fostering a no-mistakes-allowed environment doesn’t mean that no mistakes will be made—it just means that they will be hidden, with way worse consequences. And when it comes to timing, clients don’t need a deliverable yesterday every single time, because guess what—they are also extremely busy and aren’t waiting around for an email from their lawyer, of all people. Timing is always a conversation between the sender and the recipient, not a panicked “yesterday.”Someone is paying $850+ for one hour of your time. Think about that in everything you do. All communication and work product needs to be prompt, professional and polished.
Right: In the same way that we expect the waiter at Alinea to be more attentive to diners than, say, the waiter at Applebee’s (by virtue of the difference in price and tip), it’s true that paying more in an industry where your time is your product means that the more expensive you are, the more the client “owns” your time. Biglaw is not a 9-5, or even a 9-9—it is a 9-2, in both temporal senses of the 2.
Wrong: “Prompt, professional and polished” can be pretty subjective, even within the same biglaw firm. There are some who expect a response within fifteen minutes of receiving an email, even on weekends; there are others who expect a response within a couple hours, with more leeway given on weekends. What constitutes “prompt, professional and polished” is a negotiation between you and whoever manages you, and the $850/hr doesn’t really have much to do with that negotiation at all. Working in biglaw is a marathon—you gotta pace yourself. Knowing when and to whom you need to respond within five minutes and when and with whom you can take more time is absolutely crucial to not burning out.Take ownership of everything you do. Once you touch a document/work stream you own every mistake in it—fair or not.
Right: “Taking ownership” is basically corporate-speak for going through the substantive and superficial quality checks (see #4) and appearing like you care about what you turn in. That means having familiarity with the document and why you chose the particular language/cites/structure, as well as being able to explain to others your reasoning for every part of what you’re giving them.
Wrong: “You own every mistake in it—fair or not” reads like the senior associate is already trying to assign blame for future mistakes. I’m of the opinion that in extremely hierarchical companies like biglaw firms—where more senior attorneys routinely take credit for the work of their juniors, because juniors are “supposed” to work purely in the background—every person owns the mistakes of whomever they delegate to. You can’t really have it both ways, y’know?WFH is a luxury. Don’t take advantage of it. Buy a full home setup (2 monitors, docking station, keyboard/mouse and a working phone) or come into the office. No poor connections. No excuses. See #3 and #5.
Right: Your home office setup should be comparable to your office setup. A lot of firms have technology stipends for this exact purpose—take advantage of them!
Wrong: WFH, at least a day or two of the week, is the new reality. And sometimes, there will be connection issues due to circumstances out of a person’s control. Work, and life, is never an all-or-nothing situation, despite how much the senior associate sees it as such.No questions until you’ve tried to figure something out for yourself (Google unfamiliar concepts, search the DMS, read statutes, read the instructions, etc.). Still can’t figure out the answer? Talk to your classmates.
Right: Self-help before asking others for help is a good rule of thumb for life, generally. Biglaw firms, in particular, have a lot of resources available, and it’s good to avail yourself of those resources. Talking to peer associates is also a great way of learning (not to mention bonding!).
Wrong: Sometimes, it is just easier and more efficient to ask the senior associate/partner. If you’ve tried all the self-help routes and still have questions, it’s best to send those questions out. For each question, explain what you’ve looked into (so the recipient sees that you’ve taken the effort to answer the questions yourself) and then clearly state what the remaining unknown is. And be sure to consolidate all questions into one email—I suspect the senior associate is reacting to getting a bunch of “quick question” emails or DMs throughout the day (which I admit I also hate).“I don’t know” is never an acceptable answer. See #6 and #8.
Right: “I don’t know” by itself is not a great response from anyone working in professional services, whether junior associate or partner.
Wrong: Sometimes, you truly will not know. But you can find out. The easy way to turn an unacceptable “I don’t know” into an acceptable “I don’t know” is by simply adding: “… and I can find out by [describe the process through which you plan on tackling the unknown].” See #8. Voila!This is YOUR career. Embrace the reality and always put your best foot forward. If not for the Firm or your deal team, for yourself. At the end of the day, it’s your reputation that will carry you—whether that’s here or in-house or elsewhere. Make it count.
Right: This is your career. In fact, it’s your life. Law is a pretty small world at the end of the day (particularly within practice areas), and if you want to build a good reputation as a lawyer, it takes consistent effort. This is true for being a lawyer as much as anything else in life.
Wrong: Nah, this one is pretty good. The more you live for yourself, try for yourself, and keep promises to yourself—instead of only doing it when others are involved—the more you will feel that you are in control of your own life.
🔖 open tabs
For those of you who have joined my working/studying lives, you know that I’m a Lofi Girl devotee. Last week, I clicked on her YouTube stream, as usual, and… she was gone. It turns out that her disappearance was a carefully coordinated campaign to introduce Synthwave Boy, the boy in the blue window in the building across from Lofi Girl. I’ve never loved a concept more—in fact, I moved to New York because I wanted to know the stories of every single window lit up at night in the city—and I may perhaps even be shipping Lofi Girl and Synthwave Boy now…???
The U.S. News and World Report’s law school rankings are out! Except maybe they’re wrong. After various law school deans and legal commentators (myself included, including on Substack) spent much of last fall debating the merits and demerits of the U.S. News rankings, it’s funny to me that the law schools still seem to care so much about the rankings. Associate Dean of YLS, Debra Kroszner, said that Yale anticipated its employment rate would increase to nearly 97% this year instead of decline to 80% under the revised methodology. Which is nice and all, but it shows that YLS doesn’t actually have foundational issues with the rankings (of which there are many)—it just wants the methodology to favor it even more. (They remind me of the friend who is totally unbothered by an ex but still somehow has opinions on what their ex is or isn’t doing.)
Natural Beauty: A Novel, by my friend Ling Ling Huang, is out now!* I devoured the last 70% of the book in just a few hours—that was how much of a page-turner it was. Speculative fiction with a fair share of body horror from the middle onwards, it was an incisive interrogation of how much money we spend on—and the lengths we will go—to be “beautiful.” This is especially apt as we’re in the middle of the Sephora anniversary sale right now, during which I will certainly be stocking up on a few products that shouldn’t—but do very much—help me feel my “best.”
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