How to Be Proactive In Getting Work
[00:00:00] This next question, I'm at a tier-one firm and have built less than two hours this year. All signs say that the market is still busy. Am I being frozen out? Yeah, that's not good. First of all, sometimes firms, I don't know what practice here you're in, but you may be incorporated, you may just complete a deal or something. But you have to be proactive in getting work. So regardless of where you're at, you have to be proactive in getting work. you need to go all out and do whatever you can to get work from people.
A lot of people will not get work. I know, there are some examples just to come to mind. I knew one corporate attorney that he was at a firm and he had to be in the office every day or every Monday at 9:00 AM to get to respond to an email when the work would go out. And he was like, I'm not gonna act like that. But, you did go to law school to have to get work. Partners are expected to get work and associates are expected to get work from partners. That's just the market economy and all law firms. So, the market economy demands that you get work. Sometimes, [00:01:00] what'll happen is that a partner won't like you that has given you work in the past. They won't like how you behave. They won't like something you said they'll send some entitlement. Maybe you didn't do a good job for them in the work, or maybe you work too many hours or maybe your work wasn't thorough enough, I don't know.
But whatever you did something wrong and they will bring that up in the review. But you can also go ask them, go ask what did wrong. And, if they're not giving you work. The other thing is, do other people have work too? So that's the other question I would ask. Do others have work and ask that question, but if they do then you need to go find work.
That means, if you're in a - firm and there's a lot of people around, you should be able to find other people to get work from. If you're in a large office with hundreds of people, the odds are, there's going to be other people that can give you work.
Even if one partner doesn't like you, remember, if 20 partners are in an office, those 20 partners may not like each other. One partner is not gonna like 10 of the partners. Typically, one-third of the people who will like you, one-third will not like you, one-third won't care. . So, that's typically the rule and there have been [00:02:00] studies on that and stuff, it's funny. Your objective is to try to find - of the people that do like you. So just because you go do an assignment or something and you work with someone that doesn't necessarily like you and they give you a bad review or a couple of people that like your, you just need to find the people that do like you.
That's the big thing to worry about.
