I had a great experience at my workplace. The practice size was small, but we had some really high flying real estate clients and our boss had some business dealings in Dubai. We worked till 7, late nights were a rarest of rare scenario, coming in was also not tight leashed. If I had a matter fixed for 12pm, Could directly go to court. The staff was really nice, had enough internal politics to keep me entertained.

My chamber experience has been the absolute worst. The owner/senior treats his associates like slaves, and says - 'nobody is irreplaceable'. LOL. The owner's wife gets involved in the day to day activities and she is another nightmare that the associates dealt with, her screech voice and randomly wasting associate's time to explain her regular matters. The senior also had a god complex, he wouldn't show up for hearings because he would have a hangover, woke up late, had a tiring morning coz of workout or plain - Mann nhi kr rha. If the associate was forced by the judge to argue/make submissions instead of seeking an adjournment, and the associate got a good order that day that made the client happy. IT WOULD PISS HIM OFF SO BAD !!! Needed constant raves about how amazing he is (which he was not). The things he taught me are - 1. How to lie regarding his laziness to client-judges-senior advocates engaged in a matter, 2. Be a secretary and even a personal secretary for him (to the extent of carrying his choice of cigarette and lighter even when I didnt smoke), 3. Fake appreciation to stroke his ego, 4. laugh at his stupid jokes, 5. Over work because he would need constant guidance in his ear during senior advocate briefings- arguments before court, 6. BECOME PATIENT - with clients as he would neglect them, wait for him while he was out traipsing across the city partying, to his irregular demands on all days at all odd timings and MOLLYCODDLE A 46 year old.

I used to work at a family run Law Chambers, wherein father is SA and sons are pushing towards SA. Family run law chambers are like Lalaji ki dukaan, they would make us do things that were beyond our JD as an Associate. Like writing resignation letters for their drivers, making guest list for their parties, inviting guests for their parties by sending invitations from their phones. The worst part was that like most lawyer's chamber's these guys' had their office and their residence in the same building, they would run off to have their dinners on time and make us stay late into the night first waiting for them to finish dinner and then finishing unnecessary work. One of them had severe OCD, made us waste time making lists, not just schedule interviews for hiring but do the work of the HR to segregate over 1500 CV's, and sending individual email responding to them - all this in addition to the existing bloated work. The OCD senior had a habit of making a new format note every few years, then he would put it on us to change the note format for each of the 300 matters. There are umpteen situations of torture, but the worst part was, they paid pennies, didnt reimburse for the late night cab that we were forced to take at 1-2-3-4-5 am and sometimes work nonstop fro 72 hours. They didnt reimburse for transportation between forums, incase we had to go to 3-4 courts in a. day, all came from our pay. Our salary's major portion would go into late night expensive cabs, transportation between courts, and the leftover on medicines coz how can all this not make you sick every couple of months.