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Trainee: ‘My supervisor leaves much earlier than I do but still expects me to work late. Is this normal?’

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By Legal Cheek on

3

P****d off 😠


In the latest submission to our Career Conundrums series, a trainee questions whether it’s normal for their supervisor to regularly head home early while leaving them with last-minute work and late-night requests.

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“Hi Legal Cheek. The subject line pretty much sums it up, but I’m a third-seat trainee and I’m starting to get a bit pissed off with my current supervisor (senior associate, not partner). They’re often out the door by 6:30pm but regularly dump a load of work on me just before leaving. On one occasion, they left the office at around 5pm and then emailed me with some ‘urgent’ work at about 7:15pm, just as I was getting ready to head home. Is this sort of thing normal for trainees, or am I being screwed over?”

If you have a career conundrum, email us at tips@legalcheek.com.

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3 Comments
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Law firms are like pyramids
Law firms are like pyramids
56 minutes ago

Haha! Welcome to the real world my friend

Anon
Anon
40 minutes ago

Is this a seat in a department into which you’d like to qualify? Whether yes or no, will this senior associate get any say in you getting retained, or is it going to be wholly up to the partners in the firm? Have you built decent relationships with them? Do you actually want to stay at this firm anyway, even leaving this seat aside?

The answers to the above will determine what you do about this, if anything. The seat will be over soon enough. Take a long view.

Also, I note this associate emailed you long after leaving the office; maybe they have to go home to collect children etc and then they work in the evenings?

Anon
Anon
32 minutes ago
Reply to  Anon

Some really good points here. Rare for this site.