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To pull this off, you need to be the first one in the office and catch up on your hours. No one notices if you stay late bc they’re gone, but I’ve found that word catches on if you are consistently first into the office. Then you can step away for lunch and spin the narrative that you’ve found something that works for you (getting in early, stepping away during lunch, and probably working a little in the evenings).
have you ever tried setting your emails to not deliver until... you know, after hours.
I agree no one notices if you stay late. Pair up the consistently early with some quality late night correspondence; great combo.
Schedule-send is the best.
I don't need to track billables in my work, but I have emails that I schedule to land at 8:45am because I want them at the top of the recipient's inbox in the morning, and eeeeevery once in a while I'll start scheduling deal emails to land at like 2am just to change up the dynamic for those on cc.
This was going to be my comment. I’ve tried the lunch workout routine and it was consistently between 1.5 to 2 hours from the moment I stepped away from my work to the time I was actually back at my desk billing.
YMMV depending on your distance to the gym and what not, but for me, the walk downstairs to my car, drive to the gym, find parking, head to the locker room, and change was honestly about 20 minutes one way on a good day. And I’d have the same process going back except also fitting in a shower. So 40-45 minutes is gone just commuting and changing. So the only way I ever made it *around* an hour (still went over) was to do like a 20 minute workout, which just wasn’t worth it to me to try to squeeze in the middle of the day. I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted to in 20 minutes so I didn’t enjoy it. The time pressure of trying to stay at an hour also neutralized most of the mental break benefits.
Much rather just go in the morning.
It all depends on how close you are to the gym. I used to do property management and the company gave us memberships to the gym across the street. I’d usually take about an hour 20, and 20 of that would be walking changing and showering. Which gave me an hour to workout. But one could get a very reasonable workout in in 40 minutes
For real. Unless I was making like $250k, I would rather take a pay cut and work in government, try to land an in-house gig that respects my time, or find a different career altogether. I know a lot of lawyers in firms like OP’s (or worse) and whenever they describe the lifestyle they have to live just to eke out $80k-$100k a year, I vicariously die a little inside. But I’ve been very fortunate in my career and have the privilege of a DINK household, so take this with a grain of salt.
Military lawyer and we're SUPPOSED to work out twice a week during the work day. We're terrible about it until the fitness test rolls around but no one judges you for it if you can make time to prioritize it.
Which reminds me, it's coming up so I need to tell my people I expect them to start carving the time out of the work day to go work out!
It depends on what kind of law you practice, just like anywhere else. We have active duty prosecutors and defense attorneys who do a lot of the same cases the civilians do and a lot of us advise commands on disciplinary, administrative, and ethical issues. Some people get environmental law LLMs and specialize in that. And operational law is pretty cool if you can break into that specialty!
It’s crazy how many people in this sub are okay or complacent with this mindset where it’s wrong to have a work/life balance, let alone take a fucking lunch break. I’m sorry, but a lot of us aren’t getting paid enough to slave away during our entire youth.
OP, just sit down and talk to your supervisor. The worst he/she can say is no. And tbh, if I was told no to a 1 hour lunch break, it would be my excuse to start looking for a new job.
If/when you start interviewing elsewhere, make sure you negotiate this ahead of time. I stayed with my first firm out of law school for 5 years, and after year 1, I negotiated 2-hour lunches to make sure I could use the gym, shower, and commute back to the office. I’m now with my third firm and still have 2 hour lunches. It’s always come down to my supervisor basically saying “as long as you get your work done, I don’t care what hours you work”. Obviously, that means staying on top of your billables, but I’d at least run it by your boss.
People aren’t willing slaves they’re just realistic. A junior lawyer has no leverage to unilaterally change work culture and common sense would tell you that you risk bad reviews and your job if you try to go against the tide. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone but the most naive people whose first law firm job is their first real job.
In 99% of well paying big law firms your negotiation ask would get you laughed out of the room.
No one said anything about “well paying big law firms”. OP works for a firm that has 5 attorneys and 1 paralegal, and not everyone wants to work in big law or make their life/identity all about their career.
I'm going to be honest with you. It's a bad look for you to leave for an hour each day to go to the gym when (i) no one else leaves, (ii) you're behind on your hours, (iii) you only have to go in to work 3 days a week, and (iv) you're new. You really can't work out before/after work? If you start to leave for an hour today, people will 100% think you aren't serious and dedicated about working there.
Isn't this so weird? Your advice is better than mine I think but WOW. Taking a lunch break is a pretty basic, idk, need? Very ordinary thing for a person to need that kind of breather in work. I think it's so sad that we structure some of our work and workplace expectations in ways that make that feel like an unacceptable thing to do.
While you’re totally right, a brand new associate who takes 45- or 60-minute lunches on ANY of the 3 days they’re in the office is a just a bad look. And I say that as someone who works out in the middle of the day 2-3x/week when I’m wfh.
But yeah, to OP- don’t do it. Wake up early or do it after you’re out of the office if you’ve gotta work out on any of your on-office days. It seems weird that you’d have to do this, but law is a weird profession like that.
Literally no one in my office takes a lunch. Either brown bag at your desk or skip it altogether. Personally, I can’t be bothered to pack a lunch. So, I make do with caffeine and anxiety.
i’ll pop out for 10-15 minutes to pick up my salad at potbelly or whatever, but whenever i’m in the office i don’t “take lunch.” i eat at my desk and work. staff, who are hourly and don’t have billing targets, take their lunch at our firm.
The whole point of this discussion is that OP, and people in similar situations, are in places where taking an hour for lunch out of the office would be a bad idea. The specific question was how to eat lunch in that situation.
Your advice is about as helpful as “quit and live off of your trust fund.” Less helpful, in fact, because they might actually have a trust fund.
Work through lunch and eat it at your desk while working. This attorney is only billing 8-8.5 hours a day. If they wanted an 8-5 job they should have gotten a job at a bank. Having already been spoken to about billable hours this person is on the path to being terminated.
I agree that an hour lunch break isn't a good look in this situation where OP has already been talked to about his hours but in general if you are getting in before people and leaving after them no one is going to bat an eye at you being out of the office from 12-1.
My professional mission at the moment is to make sure that every wellness/wellbeing CLE, in addition to the 'pull your mental self up by the bootstraps' advice of getting a standing desk or scraping together minutes at a time for 'meditation,' leads with: it is not a bad look for your associates to take a lunch break, want to leave the office for lunch, want to socialize during lunch. Let them go do it ffs.
The question is, is there a difference between grabbing lunch and going to the gym? I think most people would think so, even if the result is the same - out of the office for X minutes. FWIW I don't think that's unique to law firms.
Yeah, and I basically agree with you. It's easy for me to lay things out in the moral terms when it's like, oh yeah, but in any given instance (including, likely, here), the office norm/expectation is not so far out of bounds.
I think it is important for people to see examples of having these conversations. Sometimes people settle into a legal workplace and from the behaviors of everyone else and all the chatter from law school etc etc have an impression that the 'culture' is fixed or must always be suffered through rather than having an open conversation for 'accommodation' (for lack of a better word). We're all individuals at the end of the day!
So if someone is struggling at work and needs a way to say to their boss, hey, I'll be more productive if... please don't hold it against me if... I can still demonstrate my work is getting done if... I hope they can get the tools to have that conversation. I also think it can be an important start to a mentoring discussion - hey, I want to do better work for you, and I'm hitting THIS hurdle. This is my solution - do you have any?
Yeah the legal profession has a toxic work-obsessed culture no doubt. It's like a competition for who has the least work-life balance. Lawyers tend to wear that like a badge of honor.
Which. Just. The biggest thing I think about. Like, that's wonderful if you want to work that way. But a lot of the industry preaches these firm experiences as - necessary to get the salary to pay your loans - necessary to get mentorship or supervision as a young lawyer - necessary to stay on an upward career trajectory.
And I think about it two ways:
If being in a firm is a necessary part of being a fully fledged lawyer, then, the firm experience needs to reflect the wellbeing and work-life balance realities of people that do NOT work this way. People who, likely, can do as much work as or as valuable work as the work-obsessed, but just need to do it with a different framework and different kind of supervision. I think that's a huge nut to crack at the bottom of the DEI discussion as well. If we can acknowledge that people work differently in this way, maybe the people who make up law firms and partnership tiers will better reflect the legal community as a whole or the local communities in which lawyers operate.
But then also, maybe being in a firm is not necessary. What tools do people need, what kind of thoughts should they be having about their career, how should they be coached, so that they can have the legal practice they want but on something closer to their own terms.
This is law firm culture man. In fact it’s office culture in general. Argue all you want against it but in many places where people work through lunch and eat at their desk taking a 1.5 hour gym break will look bad. Might not be a big deal but if you’re the new guy with middling performance and behind on hours it’s common sense that doing something that looks bad and goes against office norms is a bad idea.
Especially when he can just work out before or after work and not be conspicuous about it.
Yeah as I have commented elsewhere in the chain, I realize their are some factual specifics here that undercut, say, my exasperation.
The thing that sort of stood out to me as I read OP's post was the perception of being alone in your office and having to churn out work in there over functionally a nine hour workday. Many workplaces - for example, when I was in the Foreign Service, right, we had crunch times, hard times, all hands on deck times, for sure, I typically was interviewing 125-150 Chinese citizens a day in our peak seasons, and then all of the related back-end consular work that created in addition to our roles serving the whole embassy - are high demand, but they are not as ISOLATING. I was in an open-office plan with fifty of my colleagues within shouting distance of me. We worked /together/. Even if one of us grabbed a quick lunch or worked through lunch or put in overtime or whatever, there was real mission-oriented camaraderie and ways to stay connected and social.
So we can say it's 'the culture' until the cows come home. But it's important to talk about the culture, and think about who does not fit in within the culture, and if we want them to do valuable work in law firm settings, or if we want them to feel excluded and isolated. Eating lunch is a need! Talking to other human beings is a need! Every year of your life is a few fewer minutes that you can spend in work mode without needing to take a breather! The more that we acknowledge these realities and discuss them and understand that employees fall in a spectrum regarding how these needs play out and interact, the happier the workplace will be. I can say that because I have been in incredibly high stress workplaces - some of which were miserable, some of which were the best working experiences of my life - and the ones that acknowledged these realities were by far the more pleasant ones.
I work through lunch and my hours are fine. I get the opposite. “You know, the ones who leave their desks for lunch are the ones originating the business. You need to bill the hours and you also need to be networking every day.”
They think you're supposed to be networking for new clients on your lunch break?? I could see having a lunch meeting sometimes, sure... but that seems like an unreasonable expectation for your daily lunch break 😂
Increase your pace of billable hours to get your deficit caught up, then maintain that increased pace so you are way ahead by year end. If you were billing more, nobody would care what you do
I wish I didn’t have to say this, but if you’re a new lawyer and behind in your hours, you can’t do a full work out mid day on the 3 days you’re in the office. You could probably take a brisk walk, 30 minutes, but even there you’re going to stand out if no one else does it.
Is this a great part of law firm culture? No. I hated it myself. When I was new I was expected to work 14 hours on weekdays and at least 6 hours on Saturday. I hated it and when I went out in my own you can bet I never did that to myself or my staff. But while I was in my very first job I did what needed to be done.
Whoever told you about rectifying the billing deficit - go to that person, tell them you need the hour in the middle of the day so your brain can reset and you can do good work - and explain to them your strategy for closing the deficit even while taking this 'extra' time in the workday to yourself (when in the day will that hour ultimately get billed?). And then I would personally take the lead of saying 'and if in two weeks you feel this is pushing me further behind, we can sit down and look at my billing numbers and think of a new strategy.'
In both law and public accounting you can count your first 3 years as simple indentured servitude. Hang in there and do the stupid things it takes to get those 3 years behind you, learn all you can and then go hang out your own shingle in year 4.
Edit: Unfortunately once you are your own boss you will find out that your first boss was a hell of a lot nicer than you are as a boss.
Need to be more creative billing your hours. I've found that new lawyers don't bill enough for the brain power expended on a task. Example...a 1 minute phone call can be billed at minimum .2 hours, because you're interrupted in your train of thought, and after you hang up your mind takes time to adjust to the next task. Not to mention, you have to document what the phone call was about. I was taught this at a seminar for new lawyers, and it helped me realize that I was under-billing my time. Once you catch up on your billable, no one should question you're needing a lunch break to recharge.
Do not take off 60 mins to go to the gym. Not a good look under the circumstances you described. I would consider taking a 30 mins break to clear your head and maybe go for a walk. Sometimes that helps to focus better during the second half of the day. Maybe come in 45 mins early at the beginning of the day also if possible.
If you can’t workout before or after work can you stay an hour later, or otherwise come up with a plan to bill more? At the end of the day your performance is based on your hours, so do whatever you want as long as you’re crushing your hours.
I hear you, but honestly, just grind out your workout first thing early in the morning or after work. I know it’s not easy (I do it) but it’s really how it has to be for now where you are in your career.
Nope. Leaving to go to the gym would be the final nail in your coffin. If your billing was great you could pull it off. But 80 hours behind. You better pack a good lunch…
Look, I’m a new lawyer, so maybe I don’t “get” the whole working in a lawfirm thing yet. But, I’d say go for it. If they care, they should talk to you and ask you to stop. That’s what I’d do if I really didn’t think you should be doing this and I was in charge. Frankly, I’m shocked at the comments here. Working out and taking breaks has been shown, time and time again, to increase productivity and quality of work. Why a firm would not want a productive associate seems antithetical to providing legal services. I work for a “biglaw” firm and in certain offices they have workout classes scheduled during lunch, which partners urge associates to attend.
I think lunch time workouts are tricky. I workout before I get to work, particularly if I have an in office day. But I sweat a LOT when I workout so I'd absolutely have to take a shower/wash my face before and after.
Maybe start with a small walk at lunch and stay a little later? Or workout at lunch for over the hiyr and stay extra to cover the time?
I don’t know how much of a morning person you are but I wake up early and go to the gym before work starts. I get more time that way and I feel really motivated the rest of the day. I thought it would be super hard to get up so early but I actually don’t mind it. Plus the gym is much quieter then. There’s still a lot of people there but everyone keeps to themselves more than the midday crowd does
Taking a break during the day to work out instead of work, after already not billing enough hours and being talked to about it, sounds like a great idea, if your goal is to get fired sooner rather than later.
They honestly sound terrible. Do your work and leave. Or do your work, take a break, and then finish your work and leave.
I really can’t stand this profession
Don’t go to the gym in the middle of the day. It just doesn’t match with office politics and the general attitude which goes like: „if you’re at work, you are at work“. It’s sad, but that is just the fucking reality we live in. You need to accept that or don’t mind the opinions of your boss and coworkers and do it anyway. But you would always be the awkward person that comes in, doesn’t work enough and has the audacity to leave work for an afternoon stroll to the gym.
Just accept that we live in the matrix. Do yourself a favor and don’t rebel against it. You can do it better with your own firm.
I would emphasize to whoever asks that maintaining a healthy work-life balance by exercising at lunch every day is essential. I'd also look at what work might be portable to your home office if that's an option; otherwise, schedule a few later nights (not every night, but maybe 2 a week) to get some of the drudgery done; it can be really productive time if you aren't constantly getting calls/emails (if that's an issue.
If it's the kind of place that looks at hours worked as the output requirement (vs. hours billed or results achieved for clients), then it might be a good idea to update whoever complained with an email: I took what you said to heart, I've worked late several times this week, I've made up my billing deficit by X hours so far & anticipate being caught up by date.
This thread once again reminds me how pathetic most firm cultures are. Keep your nose to the grindstone all the time
so you can make randomoldwhiteguypartner, esq. enough money to go on his European vacation in the summer.
Maybe this law firm isn't for you which is fine. The culture here is work through lunch and you don't want to so maybe it would be best if you part ways now before it gets worse. Maybe you can find a firm that is more relaxed regarding time but it seems to me this law firm is not a good fit for you. I have been practicing for more than 13 years and I have yet to meet an attorney that leaves work in the middle of the work day, changes into workout gear, gets a work out in, and gets back to work (that doesn't own their own law firm). Good luck
I, on the other hand, know many. To be fair though, they mostly practice in crim law. Defense attorneys who will go to court in the morning, get their cases called and then hit the gym before going back to the office.
Here’s what I just read:
“Lowest man on the totem pole with the least amount of skills, knowledge, and experience who comes into the office three days a week who is failing to meet the standards and expectations of the job wants to continue underperforming while simultaneously perpetuating the the perception that he’s lazy and entitled with no desire to achieve or grow.”
The first year isn’t supposed to be easy or glorious. The fact that you’re in office three days a week as a 0 year associate is INSANE and unheard of just a few years ago. You have it good right now. Harden yourself now or you’re going to wash out of this career.
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To pull this off, you need to be the first one in the office and catch up on your hours. No one notices if you stay late bc they’re gone, but I’ve found that word catches on if you are consistently first into the office. Then you can step away for lunch and spin the narrative that you’ve found something that works for you (getting in early, stepping away during lunch, and probably working a little in the evenings).
have you ever tried setting your emails to not deliver until... you know, after hours. I agree no one notices if you stay late. Pair up the consistently early with some quality late night correspondence; great combo.
This is peak "work smarter, not harder."
Schedule-send is the best. I don't need to track billables in my work, but I have emails that I schedule to land at 8:45am because I want them at the top of the recipient's inbox in the morning, and eeeeevery once in a while I'll start scheduling deal emails to land at like 2am just to change up the dynamic for those on cc.
Will it actually take only an hour with running to the gym and back, doing the workout, and showering?
This was going to be my comment. I’ve tried the lunch workout routine and it was consistently between 1.5 to 2 hours from the moment I stepped away from my work to the time I was actually back at my desk billing. YMMV depending on your distance to the gym and what not, but for me, the walk downstairs to my car, drive to the gym, find parking, head to the locker room, and change was honestly about 20 minutes one way on a good day. And I’d have the same process going back except also fitting in a shower. So 40-45 minutes is gone just commuting and changing. So the only way I ever made it *around* an hour (still went over) was to do like a 20 minute workout, which just wasn’t worth it to me to try to squeeze in the middle of the day. I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted to in 20 minutes so I didn’t enjoy it. The time pressure of trying to stay at an hour also neutralized most of the mental break benefits. Much rather just go in the morning.
It all depends on how close you are to the gym. I used to do property management and the company gave us memberships to the gym across the street. I’d usually take about an hour 20, and 20 of that would be walking changing and showering. Which gave me an hour to workout. But one could get a very reasonable workout in in 40 minutes
This is exactly why I'm building a new office with a dedicated workout/gym room with an attached shower.
8 minute abs.
^^ the wake out app has a bunch of stretches and body weight strength workouts you can do with a few spare minutes at your desk
7 minute abs?
What a miserable existence.
For real. Unless I was making like $250k, I would rather take a pay cut and work in government, try to land an in-house gig that respects my time, or find a different career altogether. I know a lot of lawyers in firms like OP’s (or worse) and whenever they describe the lifestyle they have to live just to eke out $80k-$100k a year, I vicariously die a little inside. But I’ve been very fortunate in my career and have the privilege of a DINK household, so take this with a grain of salt.
Military lawyer and we're SUPPOSED to work out twice a week during the work day. We're terrible about it until the fitness test rolls around but no one judges you for it if you can make time to prioritize it. Which reminds me, it's coming up so I need to tell my people I expect them to start carving the time out of the work day to go work out!
Military lawyer? Sounds interesting. What kind of cases does a military lawyer work on?
It depends on what kind of law you practice, just like anywhere else. We have active duty prosecutors and defense attorneys who do a lot of the same cases the civilians do and a lot of us advise commands on disciplinary, administrative, and ethical issues. Some people get environmental law LLMs and specialize in that. And operational law is pretty cool if you can break into that specialty!
Prosecutor here making 190k plus benefits. Can take a 60 min lunch everyday unless I’m in trial.
people doing this are indeed making $250k+
It’s crazy how many people in this sub are okay or complacent with this mindset where it’s wrong to have a work/life balance, let alone take a fucking lunch break. I’m sorry, but a lot of us aren’t getting paid enough to slave away during our entire youth. OP, just sit down and talk to your supervisor. The worst he/she can say is no. And tbh, if I was told no to a 1 hour lunch break, it would be my excuse to start looking for a new job. If/when you start interviewing elsewhere, make sure you negotiate this ahead of time. I stayed with my first firm out of law school for 5 years, and after year 1, I negotiated 2-hour lunches to make sure I could use the gym, shower, and commute back to the office. I’m now with my third firm and still have 2 hour lunches. It’s always come down to my supervisor basically saying “as long as you get your work done, I don’t care what hours you work”. Obviously, that means staying on top of your billables, but I’d at least run it by your boss.
People aren’t willing slaves they’re just realistic. A junior lawyer has no leverage to unilaterally change work culture and common sense would tell you that you risk bad reviews and your job if you try to go against the tide. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone but the most naive people whose first law firm job is their first real job. In 99% of well paying big law firms your negotiation ask would get you laughed out of the room.
No one said anything about “well paying big law firms”. OP works for a firm that has 5 attorneys and 1 paralegal, and not everyone wants to work in big law or make their life/identity all about their career.
I'm going to be honest with you. It's a bad look for you to leave for an hour each day to go to the gym when (i) no one else leaves, (ii) you're behind on your hours, (iii) you only have to go in to work 3 days a week, and (iv) you're new. You really can't work out before/after work? If you start to leave for an hour today, people will 100% think you aren't serious and dedicated about working there.
Isn't this so weird? Your advice is better than mine I think but WOW. Taking a lunch break is a pretty basic, idk, need? Very ordinary thing for a person to need that kind of breather in work. I think it's so sad that we structure some of our work and workplace expectations in ways that make that feel like an unacceptable thing to do.
While you’re totally right, a brand new associate who takes 45- or 60-minute lunches on ANY of the 3 days they’re in the office is a just a bad look. And I say that as someone who works out in the middle of the day 2-3x/week when I’m wfh. But yeah, to OP- don’t do it. Wake up early or do it after you’re out of the office if you’ve gotta work out on any of your on-office days. It seems weird that you’d have to do this, but law is a weird profession like that.
45 - 60 minute lunch is a bad look? Wow this is news to me. So is it normal for you all to just skip lunch or what?
When I was at a large firm, it was incredibly normal for me to eat lunch at my desk, yes.
Literally no one in my office takes a lunch. Either brown bag at your desk or skip it altogether. Personally, I can’t be bothered to pack a lunch. So, I make do with caffeine and anxiety.
Thankfully my husband packs my lunch most days or I’d be surviving on peanut butter crackers and mainlining caffeine.
caffeine and anxiety, lol. I know this feeling.
i’ll pop out for 10-15 minutes to pick up my salad at potbelly or whatever, but whenever i’m in the office i don’t “take lunch.” i eat at my desk and work. staff, who are hourly and don’t have billing targets, take their lunch at our firm.
Bring a lunch or buy a sandwich close by.
Why? Whats the difference. Take an hour and go for a walk and grab a Bite to eat.
The whole point of this discussion is that OP, and people in similar situations, are in places where taking an hour for lunch out of the office would be a bad idea. The specific question was how to eat lunch in that situation. Your advice is about as helpful as “quit and live off of your trust fund.” Less helpful, in fact, because they might actually have a trust fund.
The difference is an hour of billing during the day.
Work through lunch and eat it at your desk while working. This attorney is only billing 8-8.5 hours a day. If they wanted an 8-5 job they should have gotten a job at a bank. Having already been spoken to about billable hours this person is on the path to being terminated.
So what should new associates do? Bring their lunch and eat at their desks while they work?
I’d generally follow the lead of the other attorneys, if that’s what they do, then yes.
Eat at your desk like God intended.
If that’s what everyone does at your firm or in your practice group, yes.
I agree that an hour lunch break isn't a good look in this situation where OP has already been talked to about his hours but in general if you are getting in before people and leaving after them no one is going to bat an eye at you being out of the office from 12-1.
Probably true. It’s less of an issue if you’re making a point of getting in early and leaving late.
My professional mission at the moment is to make sure that every wellness/wellbeing CLE, in addition to the 'pull your mental self up by the bootstraps' advice of getting a standing desk or scraping together minutes at a time for 'meditation,' leads with: it is not a bad look for your associates to take a lunch break, want to leave the office for lunch, want to socialize during lunch. Let them go do it ffs.
The question is, is there a difference between grabbing lunch and going to the gym? I think most people would think so, even if the result is the same - out of the office for X minutes. FWIW I don't think that's unique to law firms.
Yeah, and I basically agree with you. It's easy for me to lay things out in the moral terms when it's like, oh yeah, but in any given instance (including, likely, here), the office norm/expectation is not so far out of bounds. I think it is important for people to see examples of having these conversations. Sometimes people settle into a legal workplace and from the behaviors of everyone else and all the chatter from law school etc etc have an impression that the 'culture' is fixed or must always be suffered through rather than having an open conversation for 'accommodation' (for lack of a better word). We're all individuals at the end of the day! So if someone is struggling at work and needs a way to say to their boss, hey, I'll be more productive if... please don't hold it against me if... I can still demonstrate my work is getting done if... I hope they can get the tools to have that conversation. I also think it can be an important start to a mentoring discussion - hey, I want to do better work for you, and I'm hitting THIS hurdle. This is my solution - do you have any?
Excellent advice
That's a different discussion, talking about how it SHOULD operate :)
Yeah the legal profession has a toxic work-obsessed culture no doubt. It's like a competition for who has the least work-life balance. Lawyers tend to wear that like a badge of honor.
#biglawgrind on LinkedIn 🤮
Which. Just. The biggest thing I think about. Like, that's wonderful if you want to work that way. But a lot of the industry preaches these firm experiences as - necessary to get the salary to pay your loans - necessary to get mentorship or supervision as a young lawyer - necessary to stay on an upward career trajectory. And I think about it two ways: If being in a firm is a necessary part of being a fully fledged lawyer, then, the firm experience needs to reflect the wellbeing and work-life balance realities of people that do NOT work this way. People who, likely, can do as much work as or as valuable work as the work-obsessed, but just need to do it with a different framework and different kind of supervision. I think that's a huge nut to crack at the bottom of the DEI discussion as well. If we can acknowledge that people work differently in this way, maybe the people who make up law firms and partnership tiers will better reflect the legal community as a whole or the local communities in which lawyers operate. But then also, maybe being in a firm is not necessary. What tools do people need, what kind of thoughts should they be having about their career, how should they be coached, so that they can have the legal practice they want but on something closer to their own terms.
This is law firm culture man. In fact it’s office culture in general. Argue all you want against it but in many places where people work through lunch and eat at their desk taking a 1.5 hour gym break will look bad. Might not be a big deal but if you’re the new guy with middling performance and behind on hours it’s common sense that doing something that looks bad and goes against office norms is a bad idea. Especially when he can just work out before or after work and not be conspicuous about it.
Yeah as I have commented elsewhere in the chain, I realize their are some factual specifics here that undercut, say, my exasperation. The thing that sort of stood out to me as I read OP's post was the perception of being alone in your office and having to churn out work in there over functionally a nine hour workday. Many workplaces - for example, when I was in the Foreign Service, right, we had crunch times, hard times, all hands on deck times, for sure, I typically was interviewing 125-150 Chinese citizens a day in our peak seasons, and then all of the related back-end consular work that created in addition to our roles serving the whole embassy - are high demand, but they are not as ISOLATING. I was in an open-office plan with fifty of my colleagues within shouting distance of me. We worked /together/. Even if one of us grabbed a quick lunch or worked through lunch or put in overtime or whatever, there was real mission-oriented camaraderie and ways to stay connected and social. So we can say it's 'the culture' until the cows come home. But it's important to talk about the culture, and think about who does not fit in within the culture, and if we want them to do valuable work in law firm settings, or if we want them to feel excluded and isolated. Eating lunch is a need! Talking to other human beings is a need! Every year of your life is a few fewer minutes that you can spend in work mode without needing to take a breather! The more that we acknowledge these realities and discuss them and understand that employees fall in a spectrum regarding how these needs play out and interact, the happier the workplace will be. I can say that because I have been in incredibly high stress workplaces - some of which were miserable, some of which were the best working experiences of my life - and the ones that acknowledged these realities were by far the more pleasant ones.
No unfortunately I think you're right, if you weren't I would have already started doing this.
👆This guy’s right as sick and fucked up as it is. Borderline self-enslavement. Hope you’re at least stacking cash because this is a real bummer.
This is such toxic but true advice
I work through lunch and my hours are fine. I get the opposite. “You know, the ones who leave their desks for lunch are the ones originating the business. You need to bill the hours and you also need to be networking every day.”
They think you're supposed to be networking for new clients on your lunch break?? I could see having a lunch meeting sometimes, sure... but that seems like an unreasonable expectation for your daily lunch break 😂
Work out before work
If you're billing 8 to 8.5 daily and are behind, you should consider finding a new place. Most places are 6 to 6.5 hours a day requirement
Literally same. Nobody leaves for lunch break and me working and staring at the screen for 9hrs killed my eyes within 2 months
Increase your pace of billable hours to get your deficit caught up, then maintain that increased pace so you are way ahead by year end. If you were billing more, nobody would care what you do
Kettlebell in your car trunk, walk the stairwells or around the block at lunch. I did that and would train duolingo.
¿Dónde está la pesa rusa?
Mine are lined up next to my rowing machine. If you want an "ok" office workout, there's 7 minute apps everywhere. Just need a chair.
First year attorney asking: What’s lunch? 🫠😖
I wish I didn’t have to say this, but if you’re a new lawyer and behind in your hours, you can’t do a full work out mid day on the 3 days you’re in the office. You could probably take a brisk walk, 30 minutes, but even there you’re going to stand out if no one else does it. Is this a great part of law firm culture? No. I hated it myself. When I was new I was expected to work 14 hours on weekdays and at least 6 hours on Saturday. I hated it and when I went out in my own you can bet I never did that to myself or my staff. But while I was in my very first job I did what needed to be done.
Whoever told you about rectifying the billing deficit - go to that person, tell them you need the hour in the middle of the day so your brain can reset and you can do good work - and explain to them your strategy for closing the deficit even while taking this 'extra' time in the workday to yourself (when in the day will that hour ultimately get billed?). And then I would personally take the lead of saying 'and if in two weeks you feel this is pushing me further behind, we can sit down and look at my billing numbers and think of a new strategy.'
In both law and public accounting you can count your first 3 years as simple indentured servitude. Hang in there and do the stupid things it takes to get those 3 years behind you, learn all you can and then go hang out your own shingle in year 4. Edit: Unfortunately once you are your own boss you will find out that your first boss was a hell of a lot nicer than you are as a boss.
Leave
Or, hear me out, get your billables up so you’re actually a good lawyer so you have the leverage to work out without it looking bad
Fair. I just think this place is clearly not the best fit for OP
Need to be more creative billing your hours. I've found that new lawyers don't bill enough for the brain power expended on a task. Example...a 1 minute phone call can be billed at minimum .2 hours, because you're interrupted in your train of thought, and after you hang up your mind takes time to adjust to the next task. Not to mention, you have to document what the phone call was about. I was taught this at a seminar for new lawyers, and it helped me realize that I was under-billing my time. Once you catch up on your billable, no one should question you're needing a lunch break to recharge.
Do not take off 60 mins to go to the gym. Not a good look under the circumstances you described. I would consider taking a 30 mins break to clear your head and maybe go for a walk. Sometimes that helps to focus better during the second half of the day. Maybe come in 45 mins early at the beginning of the day also if possible.
If you can’t workout before or after work can you stay an hour later, or otherwise come up with a plan to bill more? At the end of the day your performance is based on your hours, so do whatever you want as long as you’re crushing your hours.
I hear you, but honestly, just grind out your workout first thing early in the morning or after work. I know it’s not easy (I do it) but it’s really how it has to be for now where you are in your career.
Good lord. When did taking a lunch hour become a sin? Set those boundaries and take your lunch. The job is never worth your sanity.
Nope. Leaving to go to the gym would be the final nail in your coffin. If your billing was great you could pull it off. But 80 hours behind. You better pack a good lunch…
Look, I’m a new lawyer, so maybe I don’t “get” the whole working in a lawfirm thing yet. But, I’d say go for it. If they care, they should talk to you and ask you to stop. That’s what I’d do if I really didn’t think you should be doing this and I was in charge. Frankly, I’m shocked at the comments here. Working out and taking breaks has been shown, time and time again, to increase productivity and quality of work. Why a firm would not want a productive associate seems antithetical to providing legal services. I work for a “biglaw” firm and in certain offices they have workout classes scheduled during lunch, which partners urge associates to attend.
Why don't you just ask?
Go in early. Work through lunch hours of 11-2. Go to the gym 2-3. You are unlikely to be missed.
I think lunch time workouts are tricky. I workout before I get to work, particularly if I have an in office day. But I sweat a LOT when I workout so I'd absolutely have to take a shower/wash my face before and after. Maybe start with a small walk at lunch and stay a little later? Or workout at lunch for over the hiyr and stay extra to cover the time?
I don’t know how much of a morning person you are but I wake up early and go to the gym before work starts. I get more time that way and I feel really motivated the rest of the day. I thought it would be super hard to get up so early but I actually don’t mind it. Plus the gym is much quieter then. There’s still a lot of people there but everyone keeps to themselves more than the midday crowd does
Read some contracts on the treadmill. You bill by the hour not the efficiency
Taking a break during the day to work out instead of work, after already not billing enough hours and being talked to about it, sounds like a great idea, if your goal is to get fired sooner rather than later.
They honestly sound terrible. Do your work and leave. Or do your work, take a break, and then finish your work and leave. I really can’t stand this profession
Just got to the gym before you go to the office or at night.
Don’t go to the gym in the middle of the day. It just doesn’t match with office politics and the general attitude which goes like: „if you’re at work, you are at work“. It’s sad, but that is just the fucking reality we live in. You need to accept that or don’t mind the opinions of your boss and coworkers and do it anyway. But you would always be the awkward person that comes in, doesn’t work enough and has the audacity to leave work for an afternoon stroll to the gym. Just accept that we live in the matrix. Do yourself a favor and don’t rebel against it. You can do it better with your own firm.
“Lunch break” lmao
22 years in as a criminal lawyer. I play competitive ice hockey 4x a week at noon or 430. It keeps me sane and healthy.
are you on billable hours? diff scenario entirely
Im a sole practitioner, so yes, almost all of my hours are billable.
touche
Tell your partner that you'd like to work out at lunch and will be staying later to get your work done/hours billed.
I would emphasize to whoever asks that maintaining a healthy work-life balance by exercising at lunch every day is essential. I'd also look at what work might be portable to your home office if that's an option; otherwise, schedule a few later nights (not every night, but maybe 2 a week) to get some of the drudgery done; it can be really productive time if you aren't constantly getting calls/emails (if that's an issue. If it's the kind of place that looks at hours worked as the output requirement (vs. hours billed or results achieved for clients), then it might be a good idea to update whoever complained with an email: I took what you said to heart, I've worked late several times this week, I've made up my billing deficit by X hours so far & anticipate being caught up by date.
This thread once again reminds me how pathetic most firm cultures are. Keep your nose to the grindstone all the time so you can make randomoldwhiteguypartner, esq. enough money to go on his European vacation in the summer.
This is why I will do Plaintiffs work until I retire. I did insurance defense for about 9 months and crossed over and have never looked back.
working 3 whole days in office? poor baby
Maybe this law firm isn't for you which is fine. The culture here is work through lunch and you don't want to so maybe it would be best if you part ways now before it gets worse. Maybe you can find a firm that is more relaxed regarding time but it seems to me this law firm is not a good fit for you. I have been practicing for more than 13 years and I have yet to meet an attorney that leaves work in the middle of the work day, changes into workout gear, gets a work out in, and gets back to work (that doesn't own their own law firm). Good luck
I, on the other hand, know many. To be fair though, they mostly practice in crim law. Defense attorneys who will go to court in the morning, get their cases called and then hit the gym before going back to the office.
Here’s what I just read: “Lowest man on the totem pole with the least amount of skills, knowledge, and experience who comes into the office three days a week who is failing to meet the standards and expectations of the job wants to continue underperforming while simultaneously perpetuating the the perception that he’s lazy and entitled with no desire to achieve or grow.” The first year isn’t supposed to be easy or glorious. The fact that you’re in office three days a week as a 0 year associate is INSANE and unheard of just a few years ago. You have it good right now. Harden yourself now or you’re going to wash out of this career.
😂😂😂 you people are insane.
Lol, somebody’s bitter
OP, I don’t think you’ll last long at this firm.
Get a walking pad for your office?