I’m tired of partners complaining about “entitled” associates. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort getting into this profession, so when we are treated like crap by companies with supposed “one firm” and “open door” policies, we’re going to get pissed off. Most of us want to become the above-average, intellectual, genius lawyer your TTT education has already proven you, our whiny, pussy bosses, will never be. Sorry you’re bitter about having employees who are better educated than you, but you’re a grown up, so get over it and be thankful for the good fortune of having access to so much potential.
And shut up about the number of hours we’re billing. We bill however many hours you give us to bill. So if we’re not billing enough, it’s your own fault. Sure, billing 1950 hours is considerably less than the 2300 hours you may have billed when you were in our position 40 years ago. But in today’s world, it can take us 3000 hours in the office to bill 2000 hours. And, for the most part, it’s the fault of the damn partners.
We can go all week with nothing to do, only to get an “urgent” assignment Friday afternoon that needs to be completed by Sunday night. And by “urgent,” I mean “you forgot to assign it two weeks ago when it landed on your desk.” So even though we might have only billed 35 hours that week, we were in the office for 80.
Maybe you billed more hours than we did, but we put in more time and are getting less credit, and it’s all your fault, you no-talent hack. Until you learn the fundamentals of management, you’re nothing more than a super-senior associate, no matter where your profile is on the firm website.
And yes, we know that law is a business, but it’s also a profession. Once upon a time, it was profession first and a business second. The only reason it’s a business first now is because you got jealous of your friends who went into finance and made your salary look like chump change and picked second wives from the cream of your daughter’s friends. So, you decided to over-leverage your firm structure, relying on an army of associates to bring in the bucks, instead of finding ways to bring in clients or provide unique, quality services.
And now that the structure has collapsed, students from top law schools who took out massive loans to pay for their education are looking at massive pay cuts or unemployment. Yet when we complain about finding ourselves in a shitty market that we had no hand in making, we’re told we’re “whiny, entitled pussies” and should be lucky that someone might pay us $18/hour for doc review.
Listen up, assholes. We weren’t the ones who thought it’d be a good idea to hire six associates for every one partner. The last time the legal market crashed, many of us had just received a free Gillette razor and a letter reminding us that if we didn’t register for the draft, we’d never be able to vote or get student loans. At the same time, you were working at a freaking law firm, probably more than a little nervous about your job security. But did you decide to learn from the economy then? Not a chance. And yet, we’re whiny, entitled pussies because we’ve failed in the first few years of our professional lives to make up for the mistakes you made over the last decade.
Are you seriously complaining that we’re pissed off about being stuck with the all the downside of your mismanagement? Maybe we’re not entitled to six-figure jobs straight out of law school, but you’re not entitled to pass the costs of your mistakes on to us AND tell us to like it. Even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.
And to that barely-literate asshat William Urquhart at Quinn Emanuel, “etc.” is used for a list of things; “et al.” is used for a list of people. Learn what the “save as draft” function is for and stop relying on junior associates to impress your clients. That’s your responsibility. Nut up, or shut up.
