Law Firms Need To Stop Suing Associates For Not Hitting Their Billable Hours

// Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.

It is a partner’s job to bring in work. It is an associate’s job to do the level of work appropriate to their class year. It is extremely atypical for associates’ performance issues to be addressed via litigation.

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There are two main reasons that an associate doesn’t have enough work to do: (1) they are being frozen out and should be looking for another job or (2) client demand is down. The latter is the more prevalent scenario by a mile. And nothing about it is on the associate to rectify.

— Kate Reder Sheikh, a partner in the Associate Practice Group at Major, Lindsey & Africa, in a recent op-ed published by Law.com, concerning the recent trend of law firms filing suit against former associates to recoup losses sustained for falling short on billable hours.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Associate Issues, Biglaw, Billable Hours, Partner Issues, Quote of the Day