laundry day

[kaylarudbek]

Things have been hectic the last couple of weeks -- workload going up and I caught the true Ur-cold that hung on forever. I am finally feeling better and able to breathe through the night without attempting to hack up my lungs, and the conjunctivitis is practically gone now. Of course, minastir is now starting to feel sick.

Work is now hopping (lots of due diligence -- I appear to share some of Adele Mundy's talents in terms of finding information, which is both good and bad. Good insofar as it's billable hours, bad insofar as I'm.not.writing.patent.applications!)

Have received some interesting advice from one of the senior associates, that a law firm is like a pyramid scheme, and so there are two ways to make partner. The first way is to try to bill zillions of hours a week; the second way is to bring in clients. Which means going out, joining organizations, and schmoozing. Since I am at heart fundamentally a lazy wench, I like the second way a lot better. Have alumni & scientific clubs covered, must come up with more things I care enough about to join a club and/or spend precious non-work time at.

Comments

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Not only is it the lazy way to success, it's more likely to be the successful way to success. If you bill lots of hours they can't afford to make you partner because then you will stop billing lots of hours and they will lose money.

Never ever take the path of actual as opposed to pretend contribution to the firm. If you do you become indispensible in your current role.

All partners are useless. Therefore to be partner you too must be useless.

just call me cynical

Speaking of due diligence...

[girliewhirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what's the deal with IP due diligence anyway? I feel like I'm sifting through thousands of pages of contracts looking for some "smoking gun" that isn't there. They want to pay $200 /hr for ME to read the contracts for them and write them a cliffs notes version? Okay... whatever...

Re: Speaking of due diligence...

[kaylarudbek.livejournal.com]

Ah, I get the due diligence that's patentability searches/prior art searches. Or "let's go see what the client's competitors are up to litigation-wise" due diligence. Probably more fun, but as shiv5468 above said, I'm good at it, so they don't turn me loose to write as many patents as I want to...