Stand Up to Your Boss

This is a guest post by Katie Lipp

My boss pushed to file a lawsuit before it was ready.

I was a first-year associate right out of law school.

I knew the lawsuit wasn’t ready.

I went to my boss for help, and they pushed me away, not even making eye contact. “Figure it out, and it must be filed tomorrow.” They didn’t explain why it had to be filed “tomorrow.” There was no statute of limitations issue, so I believe it was client pressure.

I was also working at the office over a holiday weekend - again. Another colleague instructed me that at this firm, the lawyers “didn’t get holidays.”

I was in over my head.

I went to a senior associate and begged them to look at the Complaint. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never filed a lawsuit before.” They looked at it and made some edits for me but were terrified too.

We both went to my boss’s office saying the Complaint wasn’t ready, and that we needed their feedback to make sure it was correct for the client.

My boss snapped at us and said, “Figure it out. And figure it out by tomorrow.”

We didn’t stand up to the boss. We were terrified. This was the point where I knew I had to leave this firm. I kept being put in situations where I was in over my experience level, being told to figure it out, and not having any sort of lifeline.

Unfortunately, I didn’t stand up to my boss. I wish I had, but I was worried about my job. The Complaint was not ready, but it still got filed. I did not put my name on it, because I didn’t believe it was properly prepared.

I left the firm for another one as soon as I could.

When you know something is not right – don’t give in. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

Stand up, and don’t back down.

[Aaron's comments: This is bringing back memories of when I was an associate and a lawyer asked me to do something on a transaction that I strongly felt was not in the client's best interests.

Effectively, they wanted me to duplicate out a set of documents, even though the first set hadn't been finalized yet. There were a lot of documents, and not only did this seem like an unnecessary makework project, but it seemed like an enormous waste of the client's money.

I knew that once we had the first set finalized, we could very quickly duplicate out the documents.

So I refused.

And they were not happy about it.

Naturally, I heard about it in my annual review. And I just laughed when they told me that I needed to learn to read the room.

I read the room. I just chose to ignore it.

It wasn't the lawyer's fault - they were never trained on process or what it truly meant to put the client first. And they were making assumptions about what the client wanted without asking.

If we weren't going to ask the client what they wanted, then I was going to err on the side of saving the client money, provided that it wasn't going to delay things once the client was ready to get the deal closed.

And I resolved never to work with that lawyer again if I could avoid it.

They were truly doing what they thought was right - it just wasn't aligned with the way I wanted to serve clients. ]