2 Thoughts On What To Do When You're Exhausted And Just Want To Mail It In

In-house columnist and former Biglaw partner Mark Herrmann offers thoughts for lawyers, especially associates, on what to do when you're too tired or too overburdened to produce great work product.

How can the world (collectively) be so silly?

If I gave this article one particular title, no one would click through to read it: “What To Do When You’re Exhausted And Just Want To Mail It In.”

But if I gave the article a different title (as I have), folks will click through like vultures pursuing carrion: “2 Thoughts On What To Do When You’re Exhausted And Just Want To Mail It In.” Both anecdotes and empirical evidence — the number of people who have actually read my columns over time — prove that adding an Arabic number at the beginning of a title prompts more people to click through to read the thing. As a readership (or a world), how silly can you be?

The foolishness doesn’t stop there. A title that starts with an Arabic number followed by a hysterical adjective entices yet more readers. If I had an ounce of creativity in me, I would have come up with an adjective that would have made this article one of Above the Law’s most widely read columns of all time: “2 [Critical, Heart-Warming, Must-Read] Thoughts On What To Do When You’re Exhausted And Just Want to Mail It In.”

(Actually, from what I’ve seen of ATL’s traffic data, I’d probably do better if I called this column: “2 Pornographic Videos In A Law School Library Showing What To Do When You’re Exhausted And Just What To Mail It In.” But I’ll leave that sad truth for another day.)

In any event, I wrote a column several weeks ago called, “4 Ways Associates Screw Up.” (See the lead-off Arabic number? I wasn’t kidding; this is killing me.) David Lat linked to that piece on Facebook and noted that most of my ideas were just common sense, but common sense that was worth repeating. One of Lat’s Facebook friends then chimed in:

Of course, because this is mostly common sense, associates probably fall short not because they don’t know all this, but because they are burned out or jaded or on their last legs or have too much work to make every draft excellent.

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Lat went on to explain his friend’s concern:

The reason associates/lawyers sometimes fall short or dump piles o’ crap on colleagues or the court is not because we don’t know any better, but because we don’t have the time or ability to do better. Partners/clients burden us excessively and make too many demands on us. We don’t have enough time to sleep, to spend with our families, or to have a little fun. If we occasionally ‘phone it in’ or give you a ‘pile o’ crap,’ maybe it’s because just once we’d like to leave the office before ten o’clock at night, see our kids, or catch a movie for the first time in six months.

I have this reaction to the suggestion that tired or burned-out lawyers can occasionally blow things off:

Don’t do it!

Don’t do it!

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(See? “2” thoughts about what to do when you’re exhausted and just want to mail it in. My title was as honest as the day is long.)

If you don’t have time to do a project well, then decline the project.

What happens when you decline a project? The partner (or client, or whomever) will hate you for an instant and think that you’re lazy. The partner will curse you under his breath. The partner will then figure out how he can solve his dilemma, and he’ll find someone else to do the project. That replacement person will either do the project well or do it poorly, but the project will get done, and the partner will no longer blame you.

What’s the alternative? Accept the project and blow it off. Turn in crappy work because you decided that today was a good day to maintain work-life balance.

What happens when you blow the project off? You give the partner crappy work product. But you haven’t just done that. You’ve also wasted several precious days during which a concerned, intelligent person could have done the project right. Instead of giving the partner a chance to recover from your laziness, you’ve screwed the partner to the wall. You’ve left the partner without two things: (1) useful work product or (2) sufficient time to produce useful work product. The partner can adjust if he’s missing just the first of those two things, but he can’t adjust if you’ve robbed him of both. By accepting the project and blowing it off, you have hurt the partner far more seriously than if you’d just declined the project in the first place.

After you turn in your crappy work product, what will the partner think? “Shoot! I can’t trust this guy! He’s an idiot. He wasted days working on this, and then he handed me a pile o’ crap. How will I possibly recover from this? I guess I have to stay up all night trying to make this right, and I’m not even sure I can do that in the time we have remaining. Why did I trust this person? I’d be nuts ever to rely on him again; I can’t run the risk of being left in the lurch like this. I’m plucking this moron out of my life!”

Why do I know this to be true? From the most reliable possible source: My own personal experience, and no other data whatsoever.

I was a partner at one of the world’s largest law firms for nearly two decades. I cannot now remember the name of any associate or junior partner who declined a project that I asked the person to do. I’m sure that happened; I just don’t remember the name of anyone who declined a project.

Why? Because I found another way to get the work done, so the person who declined the project didn’t ruin my life.

On the other hand, I vividly remember the names of many associates or junior (or senior) partners who handed me shoddy work at the last minute and thus screwed me to the wall. I remember scrambling to write an appellate brief, basically start to finish, in a single day, because I foolishly believed an idiot who told me he was drafting the brief — and drafting the brief, and it wasn’t quite ready, and it wasn’t quite ready — and then handed me a pile o’ crap less than a day before the brief was due. Do you really think I’ll ever forget that guy’s name? (RF — if you’re reading this column, it’s you. I haven’t forgiven or forgotten, and it’s been damn near 20 years.) And RF isn’t alone. I remember vividly the names of most — perhaps all — of the people who have left me in the lurch. Unless my reaction is idiosyncratic, it teaches an important lesson: Blowing off a project engraves a memory in the mind of your victim. You really don’t want to emblazon that memory in the minds of senior partners at your firm.

Given the choice between (1) declining a project and (2) accepting a project and then blowing it off, decline the project. Better to suffer short-term, quickly forgotten rage than to imprint indelibly on a partner’s mind the idea that you’re a dangerous fool who can’t be trusted.

So what should you do if you’re exhausted and just want to mail it in?

I have 2 thoughts on that:

Don’t do it!

Don’t do it!

Earlier: 4 Ways Associates Screw Up
Easy Writer (Or: An Analogue To Pile-O’-Crap Syndrome)
A Disquisition On Pile-O’-Crap Syndrome


Mark Herrmann is the Chief Counsel – Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.