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1. The Last minutes' gang -
A. Last minute dumping shit on you despite having that email rotting for maybe weeks and because you don't crack under pressure, but you come through at the cost of your health (especially hair) because you don't want to lose the job and the job now suddenly seems to be hinging on this very last minute but urgent task.
B. Selective amnesia: Doesn't communicate within the Partner circle for things that are only known to them and then last minute changes strategy and you end up doing the whole thing again, ruining your life and sleep just because that one assface didn't speak to the lead partner.
2. The "Give uper":
Sees that two partners (one whiney + banshee and the other absentee) are arbitrarily leading one matter, fails to even discuss the potential strategies with the SA-1 and A2 and simply literally raises hands and says I give up, ask the other guy. Lo-behold the team of various types of associates making strategies and formulating ways to save the client and taking to the lead who throws it back to the previous partner.
3. The Deadweight credit hogger:
Doesnt bring in clients and instead expects the associates to bring in the clients, do all the work, including ensuring the work is done perfectly because they won't do the review properly and then take a cut and credit for your work.
knows nothing
I am just about to be promoted to SA (hopefully no surprises there) and this post made me feel like an AI description of my partner's habit. I am more scared than excited about my prospects here.
I think another aspect you can write is the absence of mid management (there are no counsels, other SAs in the team) and I think that's a gigantic red flag as well.
If you are a junior (1-4 PQE) and have a lazy boss, who has the qualities I will list below, run, run for your life. Get another job, change teams, but do not be their associate.
(a) Lazy Instructions - One of the biggest red flags. They will give you half assed instructions, without context, without information without proper briefing - despite them having the knowledge that you may have never done it before or do not have experience in something. For eg. One fine day, your boss calls you and tells you to review an ISDA Agreement and cuts the call, but you are an IPR Lawyer.
(b) Expects you to do all the work - I mean I understand the youngsters are supposed to do the grunt work, but if you are a partner, you ought to work bro, not expect everything on a silver platter, perfectly plated and served to you, so that you can just put your sign on the platter and serve it to the client. This is especially present in very young partners.
(c) Is a passive aggressive whiner - I had this one boss who used to be passive aggressive. He used to send long whiny texts on WhatsApp or an email at the end of the day for any mistake that I would make. These texts would be very hurtful, and sometimes he would make personal judgments, now I realise he was just projecting his insecurities. This sort of person is a pain to work with, because they will never accept any fault of theirs. Everything will be your fault. You will have to take the fall for many of their faults. He will tell the client, my associate XYZ fucked up. Mine did, when I was just 1 PQE.
(d) Has a target on someone's back in the office - If you notice that your boss targets one person in the team repeatedly. Like shout at them, berate them in person or email, just targets them for the smallest of things which are forgiven for others. Be on notice. They will come to target you eventually. It will happen. Until the day you quit, like the previous guy who was harassed. I don't understand the psychology behind it, but that's but I have seen this happen multiple times. I don't know if its a churn and burn strategy or just plain inability to regulate one's emotions.
(e) Absentee Boss - If you partner rarely comes to office or comes in very late - in the afternoon or evenings without good reason. Then yeah, summarily disqualify them from every becoming your boss. Because you will have to end up managing a lot of fires yourself, clients will harass you for deliverables. Which your boss hasn't properly reviewed, or reviewed at all, because they were sleeping in or doing something illicit or being a drunk or partaking in a hobby. Whatever maybe the reason, if your boss is absent when there are fires, or fires are caused due to their absence, client deliverables are delayed because they wanted to take a sudden unplanned trip. Say your goodbyes, because this will keep happening. And you will be thrown under the bus. Remember, this advice is for those between 1-5 PQE, of course this is subjective and depends on the context and matter. A 1 PQE can't be left to manage client expectations and deliverables when the Boss is AWOL. Similarly, a 5 PQE can't be left managing regulatory issues when the boss is unreachable for a silly reason.
(f) Lack of Mentorship - This is my biggest red flag in a boss for a junior. And lord knows I have faced this, and it caused me a lot of pain in terms of slow progress, exposure, training and knowledge. Any boss in this profession who sees a junior as a resource that does not need input, but like an AI bot that comes ready made with skills is not fit to lead others. These people forget that a person graduating from a law school is not a lawyer, he has just studied the law, not lawyering. It takes patience, training, nurturing and a whole fucking lot of mentoring to make a law graduate a lawyer, who has the skills of a lawyer.
When you are a graduate, you don't know what needs to be looked at in a contract, that comes with experience, which is very practice area specific, you don't know what the court does in practice. Some of these people need to marinate in this information, because, some even after 15-17 years in practice don't seem to understand it.
My then boss who used to think like this destroyed my confidence completely. It took me a while to gain it back. I realised what an incompetent fool that man was.
(g) Inability to handle and deflect pressure - If you are a boss, and a small unreasonable stinker or demand from a client comes in and you lose your shit or panic and move the deadline to 3 am in the morning from the day after, then fuck you. Really fuck you. Your job is to deal with the clients, and the senior partners and keep your juniors away from that pressure, if you can't do that, then why are you even in this position? Let the junior handle the client and the senior partners. While you're at it, please leave the building and the firm. This applies especially to Principal Associates, Counsels or whatever they are called nowadays.
(h) The Screaming Banshee - There are some bosses who like to scream and be mean for no particular reason, after doing all the above, they will scream at you as if you were the one at fault all the time. The Screaming Banshee boss is almost always accompanied by a junior minion who behaves in a similar manner. This junior most probably has been mentored to be a mean screaming banshee too. So that the load of the screaming doesn't completely fall on the senior banshee. Sometimes they will both gang up and scream at you. They are best ignored. I had the misfortune of having such a boss who was a combination of all the above bosses.
Sorry for the dirty typing, I typed on notepad on the phone and ctrl c + ctrl v ed it. Ciao.