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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I believe a bunch of big law lawyers are responding in this thread: too many sanctimonious personal attacks and too little in the way of useful advice going forward. This is what feedback looks like in big law; mostly personal attacks pointing out what you did wrong and very little advice on what hat you should affirmatively do in the future because the latter would actually force your reviewer to take a position on something.

1.  If you continue to be slow, max out your pro bono hours to the extent that your firm gives billable credit to pro bono hours. If your firm gives unlimited credit to pro bono hours, don't go over 100 for the fiscal year.

2.  Confront the issue head on. Ask this specific partner for work. If you continue to be slow ask to take on non-billable work from him/her, like prepping pitch books, writing articles, etc....

3. (A) Pounce on new partners and partners that lateral in to the firm. You should still have a neutral reputation with those people. (B) Suck it up and go ask the most difficult partners in your practice group for work. They sometimes have a tougher time staffing and there may be hours there for the taking.

4.  Does your law school classmate know you came in as a second year?  If he/she is a fifth year and beleives you are a fifth year also, your classmate could see you as competition and you should take things he/she says with a grain of salt.

5.  Goes without saying, but don't delegate right now to the extent you don't have to. Your lower billable rate sort of helps you here and you can do work that would otherwise be appropriate for juniors/non-legal personnel.

6.  Start applying for other jobs. You can claim you wanted to shift the focus of your practice group.

7. Whether you're slow or not, you don't leave early (whatever that means for your practice group).

8.  They may be paying you as a second year but they are expecting midlevel quality work. Don't forget that. [/quote]

Spoken like a true gov't lawyer/non lawyer. Sorry but those of us who are in biglaw who are responding are telling her the truth - that these impressions form quick and do not change and it is NOT fixable. She's free to follow your 8 step guide, but 99.99% chance the rain maker's impression of her does not change -- unless she somehow makes it rains and brings in a few 100k in business. So we're not picking on her - we're telling her to move on and telling her what she did wrong so she doesn't do it again at the next place.[/quote]

Wow, this might be true, but honestly what surprised me most was that a partner had *any* opinion on a *2nd year associate* at all.  In my experience it is possible to do totally mediocre work for the first 2.5 years and as long as sometime around year 3 you start impressing someone, you're fine.  In fact, I feel like that first 2-3 years are there just for lawyers to learn the ropes etc.  I'd say, OP shouldn't beat herself up about it, and now that she knows what she should be doing, she should start doing it.  And she should TOTALLY dismiss what her "friend" said to her.  [/quote]

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