Difference between associate and senior associate?
1
I left my associate attorney position to do a federal clerkship for a year. How do I explain to friends and family that it’s not like a demotion even though I won’t be practicing as an attorney? All the non-law people I tell seem confused as to why I would take a lower paying, temporary, non-attorney job for a year.
So I found a new job and tomorrow I am going to put in my two weeks’ notice. I am nervous how everyone will react because I have given no clues that I was looking. My boss always asks me if I am happy with where I am at and I lie and say yes so I am nervous this will come out of left field. I do have anxiety and the thought of letting others down only increases my anxiety. Any advice on how to calm my nerves before tomorrow?
Why do we pay paralegals so little? A senior associate completely miscalculated a statutory deadline, and our lead paralegal caught it at 4:30 PM on the final day, staying late on a Friday to fix the caption and get it over the line. If she hadn't been paying attention, the firm would be facing a massive malpractice suit, yet she makes less than the associate who didn't even know what month it was.
Seniority.
Logged on just to say this when I saw the OP notification. Looks like there’s a smarter a** already here! Love it.
My title gives the firm the ability to bill me out at a higher rate because when clients see my absurd rate my title says “senior” next to it.
It is actually the firm’s reason. I asked when I got “promoted”
Access to early bird dinning specials.
Awesome!
Responsibility. Usually senior associates are responsable for the junior associate’s work and we have administrative work.
I’m a *senior* associate. At my firm, I got the title once they hired a junior associate. The big difference is billing. They couldn’t bill the just passed the bar junior associate at the same hourly rate as the more experienced senior associates, so I got promoted. I also got a raise. But I also have more administrative work. I have to review the juniors work, and I do a lot more consultations and billing review. I have to edit all the time for the junior associate and paralegals before it goes to the partner.
Increased responsibilities e.g. training juniors / client management. Also likely to be expected to undertake more business development to grow practice. Greater autonomy
Do that many firms distinguish? I see grad years on case acceptance letters but I’ve don’t really see Junior vs senior specifically as a title much except on here.
I was at a regional ID firm with 300 attorneys and only 2 partners that had senior department managing associates
Word count in the footer
At my regional firm, senior associates were distinguished from associates in that they were authorized to bill clients directly (along with some other minor benefits).
At my firm it’s so they can bill more
I’m going with training wheels vs. not
Hopefully it means there are younger associates the senior can delegate the basic shitty work to. Otherwise what’s the point!