Hi, I guess I am the "[redacted]” (clearly derogatory!).
I know this is me because this is a regurgitation of complaints already made to HR and known to me from two years ago. But here it is again, after two years – wonder why? Hmmm.
For three days after being shown this, I thought I should take the high road. I thought I should let the vile pettiness and clear professional jealousy go. To be honest, I’m not that person. I won’t let accusations made by someone unhinged, and which are garbage, stand unchallenged in a public forum. So I will use my right to reply hoping the moderators let this through.
So, I’ll take this head-on and take this apart - one by one. This will be my only comment on this goss column site, where a lot of salty and disgruntled ex-employees seem to lick their wounds while carrying around their grudges as their little axes to grind.
- [redacted] works at night.
I indeed worked nights. I did the most amount of traveling in the entire team prior to the pandemic, up and down during every week, to attend hearings, attend client meetings, and assist in briefings. Clearly, someone in their wisdom thought it was worthwhile to get me to go up and down and was worth the client’s money. Work spilled over. I am not superhuman – in fact, two trips to the hospital showed that.
Plus, as law firm lawyers, most people know that you have little agency in making a schedule. Working at night depends on when you receive drafts from the junior, from the client (possibly in a different time zone), or external counsel (who work late into the night) to take in inputs. You clearly have excused yourself from disclosing facts and relying on broad generalizations.
- [redacted] makes people stay up at night
Of course, when you have deliverables and ongoing back and forth with a client across time zones, you are going to have to have some bad nights. It’s also usually understood if a matter is live, you wait till your immediate senior is done with it before you push off. That is a basic courtesy extended across the board. It may be different elsewhere, but it wasn’t here. If you have not figured this out – good luck. Some poor sod is clearly doing the work for you anyway, while you are being deadweight and pulling your Calcutta-style siestas.
- [redacted] is extremely average
Here is the thing – I really don’t care about your views on me professionally. I’ll take the validation I get from the work I do, and the tasks I am assigned. I value the feedback I get from the counsels I brief, the seniors in the team, and the partners I report to, even my former employer for that matter. I also take feedback from the juniors who are worth their salt and aren’t “operators” who slip away from the job for a million breaks and dump their work slyly on someone else.
Maybe I am average, maybe I am not. I consider the job a constant learning experience. I don’t think I am god’s gift to the law like you seem to think of yourselves. If you do think you’re some hotshot - congratulations and thank you very much for your useless feedback.
- [redacted] has bad English
If you’re a junior associate, your job is going to be proofing documents often – if you haven’t figured that for yourself, you need to come back down to earth a little bit. As you go higher, you’re expected to air your views and give higher-level inputs. As a junior associate, you are supposed to assist in the process and watch the process if you can. So, the junior associates will end up finalizing drafts and be fixing typos. I’m sorry you didn’t get the memo on this. Thank heavens you’re now elsewhere.
- [redacted] only makes tables
Part of the job, in a regulatory setup (especially merger control) is presenting vast amounts of information in the most lucid manner, which is understandable and discernible for a regulator. Tables are one way of doing it. It’s a pity you stood there, didn’t learn, and just sat in spite during the duration of the whole process. Hello? If you didn’t realize it – I was doing your job as well, and not getting paid for it in the bargain. What a waste of time for me and what a waste of space you were.
- Accusations of being a POSH candidate and being a “creep”.
It’s extremely worrying that you lot try to weaponize POSH and throw words like “creep” to scare people. I’m not scared of this. If anyone has the guts, please walk up to the HR department and make this a formal complaint. I’ll be there to make my case.
Even if you have left your jobs – please go ahead. Who knows I could be in a whole lot of trouble if you can make your case? And what was the basis of the complaint again? That I made you work late when there was a client deliverable. That I made you wait till I figured out, with your help, on what was to go to a client? Please go ahead and complain. Make my day.
In fact, the worst thing about this is this – not only is this unsubstantiated, but it is also hearsay which is twisted so deliberately and raised after two years with sheer malice. How so?
(.....)
Full disclosure - I have spoken to the person (who has now left employment here) and got the clarifications myself. There isn’t anything here to dig up here, no matter how hard you try.
Incidentally, both these people are now people whom I think I can reasonably call a friend. Honestly, you lot should really consider joining the NCB at this rate - you have the talent to run a nice smear campaign.
*****
P.S.: A word of advice to random third parties reading this and liking muck being thrown – especially those students, vying for jobs in a law firm. I’m no hotshot, but I know some truths and understand a few things. Law firms are transactional spaces – where you need to bring some value to the team and the firm to be paid for it. This can be by having a good attitude to learn, or being a team player, or being well-read on the law. Honestly, the first kind is the most appreciated, because law firms are a grind, the little you have read up on, constantly changes, and being a team player in a team with a heavy workload is essential.
The initial years in a law firm are unlikely to give you any satisfaction. It's only as you rise a bit that you get to do work that made you initially consider working in a law firm. You will feel like a cog in a wheel, but this is a process. Law firms, inevitably weed out chaff who are only there for the money or are just difficult to be part of a team, because those people are not worth investing further on.
The hard hours are the function of demands placed by clients. That 1 Lac salary you’re pulling is not growing on trees, it's someone else’s sweat (most of the time). No one – even the partner - is enjoying ruining your plans, dates, or movie nights. For all the money, the job has real downsides - it isn’t great. It’s up to you to decide if you wish to do it or not. Two reasons to stay – to earn or learn. If not – just leave. Do not come to do “Andolan” here – you’ll just piss people trying to make a living and getting the job done.
And for heaven’s sake - get off these pages. It’s an absolute waste of time, where a lot of failures, sleeping beauties, goggle-eyed numpties, and entitled prissy folk enthral us with their insecurities and air their professional life laundry. You rather get dysentery than work with these people. These are people who haven’t grown out of their college-pride days. These people will go around to tomtom the name of the college that they graduated from while they’re knocking back at the first decent-paying jobs. Some of them haven’t faced a setback in their lives yet.
There are too many of these who are too proud of their college - it’s usually laughed at discretely. It’s also detested by the mid-level because they literally create a caste system for themselves, while they go about being "woke" in life. It makes teams unworkable and most of us don’t give a damn where associates come from – but just want work done. They’re best rid of at an early stage.
So, you will learn nothing here – just witness their deflated egos, and the bitterness as some folk handle their first failures in life.
I know this is me because this is a regurgitation of complaints already made to HR and known to me from two years ago. But here it is again, after two years – wonder why? Hmmm.
For three days after being shown this, I thought I should take the high road. I thought I should let the vile pettiness and clear professional jealousy go. To be honest, I’m not that person. I won’t let accusations made by someone unhinged, and which are garbage, stand unchallenged in a public forum. So I will use my right to reply hoping the moderators let this through.
So, I’ll take this head-on and take this apart - one by one. This will be my only comment on this goss column site, where a lot of salty and disgruntled ex-employees seem to lick their wounds while carrying around their grudges as their little axes to grind.
- [redacted] works at night.
I indeed worked nights. I did the most amount of traveling in the entire team prior to the pandemic, up and down during every week, to attend hearings, attend client meetings, and assist in briefings. Clearly, someone in their wisdom thought it was worthwhile to get me to go up and down and was worth the client’s money. Work spilled over. I am not superhuman – in fact, two trips to the hospital showed that.
Plus, as law firm lawyers, most people know that you have little agency in making a schedule. Working at night depends on when you receive drafts from the junior, from the client (possibly in a different time zone), or external counsel (who work late into the night) to take in inputs. You clearly have excused yourself from disclosing facts and relying on broad generalizations.
- [redacted] makes people stay up at night
Of course, when you have deliverables and ongoing back and forth with a client across time zones, you are going to have to have some bad nights. It’s also usually understood if a matter is live, you wait till your immediate senior is done with it before you push off. That is a basic courtesy extended across the board. It may be different elsewhere, but it wasn’t here. If you have not figured this out – good luck. Some poor sod is clearly doing the work for you anyway, while you are being deadweight and pulling your Calcutta-style siestas.
- [redacted] is extremely average
Here is the thing – I really don’t care about your views on me professionally. I’ll take the validation I get from the work I do, and the tasks I am assigned. I value the feedback I get from the counsels I brief, the seniors in the team, and the partners I report to, even my former employer for that matter. I also take feedback from the juniors who are worth their salt and aren’t “operators” who slip away from the job for a million breaks and dump their work slyly on someone else.
Maybe I am average, maybe I am not. I consider the job a constant learning experience. I don’t think I am god’s gift to the law like you seem to think of yourselves. If you do think you’re some hotshot - congratulations and thank you very much for your useless feedback.
- [redacted] has bad English
If you’re a junior associate, your job is going to be proofing documents often – if you haven’t figured that for yourself, you need to come back down to earth a little bit. As you go higher, you’re expected to air your views and give higher-level inputs. As a junior associate, you are supposed to assist in the process and watch the process if you can. So, the junior associates will end up finalizing drafts and be fixing typos. I’m sorry you didn’t get the memo on this. Thank heavens you’re now elsewhere.
- [redacted] only makes tables
Part of the job, in a regulatory setup (especially merger control) is presenting vast amounts of information in the most lucid manner, which is understandable and discernible for a regulator. Tables are one way of doing it. It’s a pity you stood there, didn’t learn, and just sat in spite during the duration of the whole process. Hello? If you didn’t realize it – I was doing your job as well, and not getting paid for it in the bargain. What a waste of time for me and what a waste of space you were.
- Accusations of being a POSH candidate and being a “creep”.
It’s extremely worrying that you lot try to weaponize POSH and throw words like “creep” to scare people. I’m not scared of this. If anyone has the guts, please walk up to the HR department and make this a formal complaint. I’ll be there to make my case.
Even if you have left your jobs – please go ahead. Who knows I could be in a whole lot of trouble if you can make your case? And what was the basis of the complaint again? That I made you work late when there was a client deliverable. That I made you wait till I figured out, with your help, on what was to go to a client? Please go ahead and complain. Make my day.
In fact, the worst thing about this is this – not only is this unsubstantiated, but it is also hearsay which is twisted so deliberately and raised after two years with sheer malice. How so?
(.....)
Full disclosure - I have spoken to the person (who has now left employment here) and got the clarifications myself. There isn’t anything here to dig up here, no matter how hard you try.
Incidentally, both these people are now people whom I think I can reasonably call a friend. Honestly, you lot should really consider joining the NCB at this rate - you have the talent to run a nice smear campaign.
*****
P.S.: A word of advice to random third parties reading this and liking muck being thrown – especially those students, vying for jobs in a law firm. I’m no hotshot, but I know some truths and understand a few things. Law firms are transactional spaces – where you need to bring some value to the team and the firm to be paid for it. This can be by having a good attitude to learn, or being a team player, or being well-read on the law. Honestly, the first kind is the most appreciated, because law firms are a grind, the little you have read up on, constantly changes, and being a team player in a team with a heavy workload is essential.
The initial years in a law firm are unlikely to give you any satisfaction. It's only as you rise a bit that you get to do work that made you initially consider working in a law firm. You will feel like a cog in a wheel, but this is a process. Law firms, inevitably weed out chaff who are only there for the money or are just difficult to be part of a team, because those people are not worth investing further on.
The hard hours are the function of demands placed by clients. That 1 Lac salary you’re pulling is not growing on trees, it's someone else’s sweat (most of the time). No one – even the partner - is enjoying ruining your plans, dates, or movie nights. For all the money, the job has real downsides - it isn’t great. It’s up to you to decide if you wish to do it or not. Two reasons to stay – to earn or learn. If not – just leave. Do not come to do “Andolan” here – you’ll just piss people trying to make a living and getting the job done.
And for heaven’s sake - get off these pages. It’s an absolute waste of time, where a lot of failures, sleeping beauties, goggle-eyed numpties, and entitled prissy folk enthral us with their insecurities and air their professional life laundry. You rather get dysentery than work with these people. These are people who haven’t grown out of their college-pride days. These people will go around to tomtom the name of the college that they graduated from while they’re knocking back at the first decent-paying jobs. Some of them haven’t faced a setback in their lives yet.
There are too many of these who are too proud of their college - it’s usually laughed at discretely. It’s also detested by the mid-level because they literally create a caste system for themselves, while they go about being "woke" in life. It makes teams unworkable and most of us don’t give a damn where associates come from – but just want work done. They’re best rid of at an early stage.
So, you will learn nothing here – just witness their deflated egos, and the bitterness as some folk handle their first failures in life.