Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Which firms has the most office politics and difficult colleagues?

Everywhere has politics.
You just have to put on knuckle dusters and show you’re no pushover.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Now is a great time to lateral to big 4. Local firms are heavily bleeding assocs who are leaving for offshore and in-house. They are desperate for warm bodies and it's an employees market as a poster mentioned before.

This is very true. There is generally a cycle where one batch of associates spends approx 2 years at a big 4 before moving en masse - great time to lateral as most practices are short staffed.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Which firms has the most office politics and difficult colleagues?

Every place also have. Just that if they ask you deal with ****, dont pay peanuts!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Which firms has the most office politics and difficult colleagues?

A&G - bloody toxic place.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi all,

Given the pay raises in Big 4 and several mid-sized firms, does anyone have any info on what the general NQ / 1PQE / 2PQE pay looks like outside of Big 4 now? What's considered competitive?

Thanks!

Bump

Ok great news about lots of vacancies and all, but what are the cold hard figures? Thanks!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

The junior has been micromanaging the trainees as if they are the partner, and regularly makes noise. We are no longer talking.

Regularly disturbs partners and trainees for work. Bullies all newcomers as well.

I am concerned for my trainees as a fellow assoc. How can I help them?

I think the best thing you can do is to ignore and carry on with your work as usual. To protect the juniors, you need to bring them under your ‘sphere of influence’ to shield them from the toxic junior eg by giving your trainees work so that your trainee can say they are busy with your work. Unfortunately, I think that as a fellow junior, there’s not much else you can do. You can try to tell your partners about it, and paint it as the toxic junior terrorizing the trainees but you would need some strong evidence or anecdotes to back you up. Good luck!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

A&G - bloody toxic place.

You mean corp or liti? I heard generally A&G is one of better ones though

Which practice in A&G? I thought they were better than the others.

As a trainee, what should you do if you are not assigned to work on bigger deals but merely working on smaller files compared to the other trainees and doing more legal exec/admin work instead of real legal work eg drafting submissions? Is it a sign of non-retention? If your boss doesn’t trust your ability to let you work on the important deals, how do you make the most of the TC in terms of gaining experience and cv building?

How do firms with many trainees select who is to be retained and when will we know if we are going to be retained?

For those who are not retained, do you face any stigma when applying to other firms for Assoc role?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

As a trainee, what should you do if you are not assigned to work on bigger deals but merely working on smaller files compared to the other trainees and doing more legal exec/admin work instead of real legal work eg drafting submissions? Is it a sign of non-retention? If your boss doesn’t trust your ability to let you work on the important deals, how do you make the most of the TC in terms of gaining experience and cv building?

How do firms with many trainees select who is to be retained and when will we know if we are going to be retained?

For those who are not retained, do you face any stigma when applying to other firms for Assoc role?

Usually the first one isn't an indicator of your ability but favouritism by the boss. But if you're sure the boss doesn't trust you, fight to be on every big case you can. Volunteer aggressively because either you succeed (and get the boss to like you) or you sink (but now have alot of cases on your CV).

Bosses typically know within 1-2 mths if they want to retain you. This is still wiggle room if you're in the maybe pile, but not if you're no pile. There's no hard and fast rule regarding retention, but if you're in your 4th month and the boss hasn't started "treating you like insider", you should be abit worried.

Yes, you will face stigma, they will want a non-work and non-attitude related response to why you weren't retained. Prepare to start talking about how you didn't like the work you were doing, or how it was a mutual parting lol.