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Who do you work for?
A question for anyone who has worked in a law firm as a summer associate: How often did you do work (research, writing, document review, whatever) without knowing who, exactly, you were working for?
I ask because I was talking to a friend who's spent the summer at a big firm and she says she generally didn't know who she was working for. She just got assignments to research this or that topic of law based on a general fact pattern. Is this a common experience? I understand you're usually not allowed to tell people outside your firm who you're working for, but do you generally know, even though you can't talk about it?
And if summer associates often don't know who they're working for, is it common for junior associates to also be ignorant of such details? I'm guessing the answer is "no," but can anyone give any confirmation of that?
Posted August 2, 2004 05:50 AM | 1L summer
By not knowing who you are working for, I assume you mean the client, as opposed to the billing partner.
That was not typical of my experience, both as a summer associate and as an associate giving out assignments. For one thing, how do you know who to bill your time?!?
Posted by: Tung Yin at August 2, 2004 06:18 PM
Yes, I'm talking about the client, not the billing partner. I'm wondering if you know who is going to pay for the work you do.
My friend tells me she bills to codes in a database. She doesn't know which clients the codes represent. I don't know if she could have a key to these codes (a decoder, if you will) if she asked for it, or not. From our conversations, it sounds kind of like she doesn't really care. Baffles me...
Posted by: ambimb at August 2, 2004 06:47 PM
I work in a large city in a medium-size firm. I always know who it is I'm doing a project for/on. I might not get it on the initial project sheet but I almost always have some questions and the associate/partner ends up saying, Oh by the way, this is for [large restaurant chain] or [utility company] or whoever. But maybe it's because it's a smaller firm or because it's a comparatively close-knit firm (yes, the mythical "lifestyle" firm) and everyone often knows what projects are going on throughout the firm.
Posted by: E. McPan at August 5, 2004 09:51 PM
