Transcript
"Cravath tells us officially not to worry about hours. Because they're not counted towards bonus and salary, but it took me until this month to hit 100 hours of legal work. People say It picks up. You'll look back on these days and want to redo them, but it isn't picking up. Whether an attorney is at Cravath or another firm with no hours minimum, how real are they? Is there a point at which you're in trouble even if there's no hours minimum?"
At Cravath, I don't think you're going to have a ton to worry about, but if you're not working a lot of hours, most firms will let attorneys go if they're not hitting a certain number of hours after a certain length of time.
Now, a firm like Cravath typically is not ever going to lay people off for not making hours. But they will give you indications that they don't like your work and ask you to leave if you're not doin' a good job. But most firms that don't have hour maximums, even when they say that they will still expect you to leave the firm at some point if you're not working hard, and many times they will lay people off that aren't. Your objective when practicing law is to do whatever you can to stay busy.
When an attorney runs out of work, that's bad. Always having work to do and access to work is very important. So if you're not getting work at Cravath, you're not going to get laid off from Cravath, but at most firms, if you were only getting 100 hours of work, that would be a bad sign, and that would mean that the firm doesn't have the work. And if other people are getting the work, that's a big problem. That means you need to find people to give you the work, but that's how I'd recommend that.
