27 April 2006
Twiddling...
One of the reasons for setting up this blog was to give me a place to vent, whinge, and whine about work (more specifically the long hours and stress!). But, for the last month or so I haven't been busy at the office...shock horror - a lawyer who isnt busy!
I should back track and do some explaining here.
Im currently finishing off my firm's "graduate program" (our firm has a 3 x 6month rotation system for all its graduates). About two months ago I finished my second rotation which was in our corporate group. Loved the work, but unluckily for me, it was one of the busiest quarters we've ever had - it sapped evey ounce of life out of me. I worked 13 days straight at one stage. My longest working week while I was there was an 80 hour week. I know this may sound pretty tame compared to what some "hardcore" lawyers work (how scary is that statement), but these sort of hours are overkill for a graduate I think (plus we dont get paid enough to put that sort of hard slog in!)
Anyway, the pace in my new group is quite leisurely, to say the least. When I first started here it was great: got to leave at a reasonable hour, have lunch breaks, had enough energy to go out for a drink on Friday nights...it was quite great really, I was on a quasi holiday!
But now, everything is REALLY slow - there's not a lot of work coming in, and even when there is stuff to do, the lawyers arent all that into delegating. And I dont even like the practice area. I've got the trifecta happening: stagnating work flow, no delegation, and no interest.
So I'm getting super bored. And de-motivated. Bored and de-motivated is such a bad combination.
Plus its worse because in the space of a couple of months I've gone from crazy busy to twiddling thumbs. Well maybe not that bad, I've had bits and pieces of work to do, to keep me "looking" busy, but not a great deal of billable, and we know that lawyers live and die by the billable unit. Unfortunately, this is going to kill my budget figures : (
So for the sake of my sanity Ive decided that Im going to try bail before my time is up, and head back to the "land of plenty". It got to the point today where I was considering running upstairs to my old partner, getting on my knees and pleading "take me back!".
But I decided that would probably not be a good look.
I think I'll call him tomorrow.
I should back track and do some explaining here.
Im currently finishing off my firm's "graduate program" (our firm has a 3 x 6month rotation system for all its graduates). About two months ago I finished my second rotation which was in our corporate group. Loved the work, but unluckily for me, it was one of the busiest quarters we've ever had - it sapped evey ounce of life out of me. I worked 13 days straight at one stage. My longest working week while I was there was an 80 hour week. I know this may sound pretty tame compared to what some "hardcore" lawyers work (how scary is that statement), but these sort of hours are overkill for a graduate I think (plus we dont get paid enough to put that sort of hard slog in!)
Anyway, the pace in my new group is quite leisurely, to say the least. When I first started here it was great: got to leave at a reasonable hour, have lunch breaks, had enough energy to go out for a drink on Friday nights...it was quite great really, I was on a quasi holiday!
But now, everything is REALLY slow - there's not a lot of work coming in, and even when there is stuff to do, the lawyers arent all that into delegating. And I dont even like the practice area. I've got the trifecta happening: stagnating work flow, no delegation, and no interest.
So I'm getting super bored. And de-motivated. Bored and de-motivated is such a bad combination.
Plus its worse because in the space of a couple of months I've gone from crazy busy to twiddling thumbs. Well maybe not that bad, I've had bits and pieces of work to do, to keep me "looking" busy, but not a great deal of billable, and we know that lawyers live and die by the billable unit. Unfortunately, this is going to kill my budget figures : (
So for the sake of my sanity Ive decided that Im going to try bail before my time is up, and head back to the "land of plenty". It got to the point today where I was considering running upstairs to my old partner, getting on my knees and pleading "take me back!".
But I decided that would probably not be a good look.
I think I'll call him tomorrow.
// posted by db @ 27.4.06 
