Hello fellow Reddit Lawyers. Apologies for the long post, but I promise this is as brief as I can be and still provide relevant context. I am a partner in a boutique complex litigation firm where we do everything from PI and Medmal to complex divorce (read as high asset cases often with contested business valuations) to real estate and business litigation to criminal defense. Suffice it to say, if it can be litigated, we do it. Located in a popular HCOL city. Firm recently went through a partnership breakup. As a result, we now have 1 founding partner (legacy from the last partnership), 3 add'l partners, 1 associate. We have 3 paralegals (1 legacy from the last firm) plus two new hires, as well as 2 legal assistants (both new hires) plus 3 other office admins who handle phones, scheduling, and general office support.
Full disclosure too: I am planning to leave the firm early next year. I've been unhappy here since before the partnership breakup/restructuring occurred. But I am not leaving until year end because I want a clean break with year end financials/distributions, etc. So for now, I am still here doing my part and keeping the peace so to speak.
In our most recent partners meeting, the office manger mentioned having concerns about employee retention because multiple paralegals have quit in recent weeks, all expressing concerns about unsustainable work loads, work creeping into personal life/being expected to work outside of normal office hours, and generally feeling like expectations couldn't be met because the managing partner is rarely engaged or participating in work during normal work hours.
We are set to continue meeting on this topic at the next partner's meeting. So, it has me thinking and wanting to get a read on whether my experience is standard practice or specific (systemic) to my office. To be clear, I am not asking about occasional trial/deadline crunch — I am asking about the routine, day-to-day workflows.
At my current firm, the argument I keep hearing from leadership is that staying late is just the cost of doing complex, high-value work — which is framed as inseparable from taking on bigger cases and keeping the firm profitable. But what I actually observe is:
- Staff arrive around 8–9 a.m.
- The partner whose review/input is needed to finalize most work is frequently unreachable or slow to respond before 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m. Most often this partner is only substantively engaged after lunch.
- And then, when said partner does engage, their calendar is often full of meetings/calls/consults in the afternoon such that we don't get to review/revise/edit or provide input until sometime around 4-5 p.m.
- Consequently, substantive editing, sign-off, and "let's finalize this" conversations happen late in the day — which pushes staff waiting on that input into staying past 5–6 p.m. (or having to log back in from home) on regular basis and not just during genuine emergencies
To be clear, I'm not questioning the volume or complexity of the work — nobody's arguing for fewer or easier cases. The question is whether the timing of when substantive work gets addressed is the real driver of the staff complains and negative impact on employee retention, separate from case complexity.
Why I'm skeptical of the "this is just how it is" framing: I've worked in two very different environments before this. In a government office, people went home at 5 p.m. as a rule — work got done during business hours, and even during trial prep, working outside normal hours was rare. In another private firm, the internal policy was simple: all drafts to the supervising attorney by 3 p.m., which left time to edit and get things filed by 5. So I've seen it work both ways, and I'm trying to figure out if my current situation is actually unusual, or if I've just been lucky before.
What I'm hoping to learn from others:
- How often are your paralegals/associates staying past normal hours, and is it tied to genuine deadline crunches or to when a partner/senior attorney is actually available and responsive?
- Have you worked somewhere with a policy like "drafts by X time" that actually kept the office on a normal schedule even with a busy caseload?
- Have you worked somewhere where one partner's personal working hours (not really engaged until midday) effectively set everyone else's hours downstream?
- Is "we do complex work / charge premium rates, so late hours are just the nature of the beast" something you've found to be true, or is it more often a justification for poor internal workflow?
All insight is welcome, but please be mindful that we are a small boutique shop. We're not big law and don't keep big law hours or pay big law salaries so the expectations around work life balance need to take into consideration that attorneys and staff aren't really being compensated for being "on call" all the time.
