Freshly minted second-year litigation associate, trying to sanity-check something.
I’ve been running into a pattern where I’m effectively on standby late nights and weekends (monitoring emails, being looped into group chats, quick questions flying around, waiting to see if something “blows up”), but when the dust settles, the actual billable work ends up being 0.2–0.6 hours, sometimes even zero.
To be clear, I don’t mind working nights or weekends when there’s real work or an actual filing/emergency. What’s been hard is the constant low-grade vigilance — you can’t fully unplug, can’t plan your time, but also can’t really bill.
Is this just a normal phase in litigation (especially early years), or a sign of poor case management?
How do people draw boundaries around “standby” time without being perceived as unresponsive?
Do you bill this kind of time (email monitoring / quick back-and-forth), or is it generally expected to be written off?
Any advice on how to mentally or practically manage this without burning out?