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Associates who do all the drudgery work (dds, compliance checklist, document review, contracts, case law research), then it's SAs who review the work and recheck and finally the Partner who confirms / revises based on industry experience
definitely SAs. Not senior enough to be able to avoid grunt work and the review of deliverables by juniors, and not junior enough to use inexperience as a crutch to escape the more substantive work. I've seen SAs put in the most time.
Who is really the backbone of a team? I think it's usually the SA's. They are the ones who put everything together