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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'd update your resume and put out some feelers to recruiters, OP.

How were your billables? [/quote]

[b]Low billables.[/b] But the market has been slow for our group in general. [/quote]
I wouldn’t keep riding on the good performance review from last year.

How does your firm normally handle performance issues? Is it multiple warnings/a PIP? Or immediate separation?[/quote]

Law firms aren't like this.  If there isn't enough work to support the associates on staff, they will fire some until there is a better matching of supply/demand.  You can be totally competent, even well liked associate. But if there's not enough work, and the firm predicts the downturn will last, then you still have a high chance of layoff.  Firms took too long in 2008 to react to the sudden downturn, and figured out they needed to be quicker - so now assume they will make firing decisions within 3 months of a slowdown.  They'll do this even if you're a good lawyer - but they'll pick the least busy associate to lay off, because that is just a general indication of how much partners need/like the associate.

If you're a bad associate, you also don't get a warning - they will just let you go with severance.

[b]OP - i would be surprised that they wouldn't give you more of a 3 month runway to come back after leave and get your feet back on the ground. It's very normal to take a while for work to pick back up. And it's not good optics to fire new moms.  [/b]But how were your hours before leave?  Had you been cruising a bit and already seen as one of the lesser focused associates?

BUt with all that said, in my 17 years in biglaw, I have never heard of an associate or non-equity partner having a meeting asked for by HR where it wasn't to be let go.  [/quote]
Like you said, if there’s not enough work, they’ll fire people. If OP is not meeting their target, then they’ll be in the pool to be fired. Coming back from leave doesn’t exempt you from billing targets unless you have an accommodation that could reduce the target.[/quote]

It does not exempt you.  But it is so typical and expected to need 2-4 months coming back from leave to get back on hours track, that firms would be firing 80% of moms after leave if they didn't give them an informal pass.  And that would get noticed.

Funny story but a super star associate on my team was promoted to partner last year and also had his first kid. Firms all give gender neutral leave now to new moms and dads, so he took his 2 or 3 months with interspersed working - but was pretty checked out for a while, in a good way.  Over the 6 months, he's been in a bad mood - lots of complaining about how there aren't enough institutional supports when you transition from associate to partner, you're basically thrown to the wolves to find clients and partners stop sending you stuff (none of which is true in our firm or practice group - people LOVE this guy and have very long term plans for keeping him busy).  Turns out a lot of this anger was because for the first 3 months after leave, he was freaked out about how little work he had and that no one was instantly fixing the problem.  The men were all "hmmmm that's a challenge that we should support you on".  The women were all "yeah, no sh*t, welcome to our lives".  We'd all had kids, we'd all had years were we were freaked out for 12+ months where we weren't hitting target that we would get fired, and we'd all been denied bonuses those years.  We all had complained to each other and firm management, who did nothing.  Including not pay us our bonuses. Apparently, men did not know this was a thing.

Interestingly, last year our firm announced some kind of new adjusted hours target for bonuses for years impacted by leave.  [/quote]

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