The natives are restless. Associates are wandering the semi-deserted halls, dodging the partners that haven’t jetted off on vacation, hiding in our offices cloaked in sweaters to fight off summer colds in the subzero air conditioning, and frittering away the hours staring into space until it’s acceptably late enough to sneak out of the office. I’ve talked to at least four associates at various firms in the past week that share my constant unease, it’s like we’re all functioning in a state of mild depression. I walk into the office and face the associate Dawn of the Dead. I’m hardly immune myself - I’ll sit down and stare wildly at a paragraph of case law for 20 minutes, glance up and realize I’ve neither read nor registered a single word. So I’ll rise from my desk, thinking a stroll will do the trick to rekindle concentration, and pay a visit to a neighbor, usually also sitting at her desk staring into a vacuum.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What’s up? Everything ok?”
“Not really. I’ve gotten nothing done today. And I just don’t care. I try to care, I think about how angry Partner X will be if I don’t have this ready when he comes back from Honolulu, but I just don’t care. No matter what I do, it won’t be right, I’ll get yelled at, I have no future at this firm, and I could give a shit at this point. I don’t care, and I don’t care that I don’t care.”
“I hear you.”
Work product, billables, performance reviews, partner rage, we’re numb to it all, drowning in a puddle of apathy. I’ve tried to put my finger on a reason for this sudden collective lassitude. Maybe it’s that many of us are coming up on anniversaries of our start dates; like family holidays, a firm anniversary never fails to drudge up years of buried resentment and old feuds. Maybe it’s because the summers are leaving, and we know the days of 3-course lunches, free Broadway tickets and lighter workloads are over (firms don’t want to give the summers the impression that people actually work late here, plus they want everyone attending summer events with bright eyes and beatific smiles, so some associates are granted a virtual 2-month reprieve).
But whatever the reason, we’re sinking into a quagmire, misplaced souls trapped in this legal purgatory unsure of whether to bother fighting for ascension or just accept the long drop south. One thing is clear; no one is happy. One friend recently launched into holistic medicine and acupuncture, another is seeing a therapist and contemplating medication. Most of us are resigned to sticking it out at whatever firm for a few more months, and then “seeing what else is out there.” People utter this phrase with a tiny glint of optimism followed by a sigh and drop of the eyes, since we all know that “what else is out there” is a job at another firm. As soon as you enter the “market,” you realize that you can spend the next three years playing firm musical chairs if you wish. As soon as your name and office extension are listed on the firm website, legal recruiters begin calling you twice a week, asking in perky, dulcet tones, “So are looking to make a change?” These sunny hyenas have an instinct for descending just when you’re lying wounded on the open plain, right after a partner meltdown or ridiculous nonbillable assignment hit you unawares. They’ll be more than happy to swoop in and ship you off to another firm within a few weeks, where you’ll be bandaged, re-branded and herded into a new pen to repeat the process.
The one emotion that seems to pervade our collective consciousness is visceral disappointment. We’ve done everything we were supposed to do - toiled through college to get into law school, mortgaged our brains to pay tuition, fought our way through the pressure of first year exams, played the recruiting game with pasted smiles, sweated blood over the bar, and sacrificed the remainder of our twenties to bill like maniacs for a few years. Now, we step back to take stock, and realize that none of the late nights, passive aggressive bullshit and salt-in-the-wound debt and has amounted to anything meaningful, and we’re trapped in a cycle. Everyone wants to be doing something socially useful and fulfilling with this weighty law degree, but no one is brave enough yet to take the plunge and just leave firm life for good. We’re like domesticated orangutans who haven’t quite figured out how to open our cage doors, and aren’t entirely sure what path we would take if we did escape. Call me an optimist, but I cling to the belief that eventually, we’ll find a way to open the latch and choose the less-travelled road back to the wild, even without opposable thumbs.