I’m not interpreting that slide the same way. Yes it’s aggressive. There’s a need for lawyers who will make themselves available 24/7 and produce top quality work though. If I was paying $850/hour that’s what I would expect. There are likely roles even within the same firm that are less demanding if/when you want a better work-life balance.
Yeah I mean 3 comes with the territory when you are making this much money. Not sure what people expect. Same with 2, 4, and 5.
6 is good advice in general.
I guess really my issue is with 8/9 which is just bad advice and I would never want juniors to feel like they couldn’t ask me questions or tell me they don’t know and the partners I work for feel the same way. If you tell people not to ask questions and not to say I don’t know you will get a ton of made up shit that’s just wrong which is a million times worse.
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Thank God I never had the desire take a job that owned my soul like that. Just reading that list gets me going.
#8 is a horrible concept for any sort of business or organization.
I’d consider selling my life for $850/hr… but the truth is that “only” about $100 to $150 of that goes to the associate, the other $700-$750/hr minus overhead goes to the asshole that wrote the memo. Hmmm, no wonder the browbeating, aggressive tone.
“I don’t know” is a fantastic answer in a lot of cases. That’s just awful advice.
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Lot of us living simply, touring the country in a converted tour bus.
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Couldn’t agree more. The number one way I identify the smartest people in the room in a meeting or working with a new team is the people willing to admit they don’t know and to recognize uncertainty and complexity.
Dumb people have certainty.
Are you certain about that?
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Nope. 
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It’s especially awful advice in something like the law which is very ambiguous.
It’s maybe a good rule of thumb for mathematicians or engineers. Even then I don’t think so.
i mean everyone is hitting on this, but the legal profession has to be one of the worst places for the strategy of just refusing to say “i dont know”… making up stuff has serious potential ramifications. “it depends” is often the best legal answer you can give people.
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The slide is basically garbage top to bottom. Even 20+ years ago when business was more “hardcore” and I was more of a go getter, if someone put that slide up in a meeting I would walk out of the room and likely quit.
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I worked in a biglaw firm where this would have resulted in negative consequences for the author. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy but it wasn’t this. Makes me question if the author is a lawyer and not some business professional.
Seems like it concerns corporate work and not litigation. Being overly “hardcore” and not saying I don’t know in litigation can lead to bad results and a lot of wasted money.
I would guess this is a slide for new hires prepared by a person just 2 or 3 years into the job who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is and didn’t get approved. Of course it’s possible that this is coming down through official channels, but it looks more like the work of an ambitious moron.
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I recently had to hire my first lawyer. I went with a medium sized firm, probably a big firm by Ohio standards, and a $400/hr lawyer. A few months in now, and every interaction requires me to follow up with some email that’s like “dude wtf it’s been 3 or 4 weeks and you haven’t even responded to my email or set up the meeting that was supposed to happen a month ago.” It’s amazing how responsive he was right up until I signed an engagement letter and posted a retainer.
I already new the lethal profession is a giant con but it’s pretty astonishing to see first hand.
Great typo in last sentence. 
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LOL just wait until they bill you for responding to your question about your bill.
Already got billed $100 for them to respond to one simple email asking if they had received the retainer, because they said we’d set up a meeting the week following posting the retainer and it had been like 3-4 weeks and they hadn’t even acknowledged receiving the retainer.
It was literally ‘Yes we received the retainer. I’m reviewing things and will get back to you to set up a meeting.’ $100