Burnt Out Articling Student

[Pantalaimon]

@pepesilviaI think it's similar to how law students talk about studying. If you listen to the vocal ones, they spent 1L waking up, reading, attending lectures, and sleeping. But it's almost certainly not true.

If I had to guess, there's two factors at play. The first is people remembering noteworthy times - in this case, busy times with a lot going on - and forget boring times that didn't make an impression in their mind. You'll remember being up until midnight for three days in a row frantically drafting closing documents with three other students, but not finishing a factum draft on time and calling it a night.

The second is that the most vocal people are probably having atypical experiences. When someone tells a story about billing 300 hours last month, I'm not in a rush to pipe up and talk about my 150. I'll ask them about their month, listen/commiserate, and change the subject. If asked directly I'd just shrug and say things are steady but avoid throwing a number out.

[Ryn]

If someone is billing 350 hours as an articling student I’m almost certain a huge chunk of it is actively being written off, with few exceptions. At least for students being billed out at Bay Street articling rates. There is little chance that most students are actively adding that much value to files unless it’s an intense matter that requires a ton of attention from everyone, like sifting through thousands of emails for a litigation file. And even then, 350 billed is quite an intense workload.

Look, not everyone requires personal time. There are those who can legitimately work and sleep and that’s it. But most people can’t do with only that; some downtime is required. COVID and work from home has made things a bit easier, because in the past a lot of time was spent commuting by a ton of people. Like, I was in the office 9-9 as an articling student, but I was also commuting 2 hours each day. That’s 14 hours of just work-related things, provided that I didn’t have to do any work when I got home. But even with that, I wasn’t billing anywhere close to that. As an articling student I think I billed like 150 in a good month. The rest of it was non-billable work like working on papers or articles, or time spent doing administrative work or learning from other lawyers by accompanying them to things or sticking around while they met with clients or took calls.

It’s very possible to get burnt out doing the “average” amount of work, let alone many hundreds of hours some have purported to work. There are only so many 12 hour days we have in our reserves, and add to that the fact that articling students are under intense scrutiny and pressure to perform, it takes a toll.

My advice is to take your vacation time. Don’t try and save it or decide to not take it because it looks good. Literally no one will give a shit (and if they do, you don’t want to work there). I had 2 weeks as an articling student. I took a week off during December and another week in April. If you’d rather just take a day here and there to decompress, rather than take entire weeks, do that. Your firm really shouldn’t care. Just make sure you tell people beforehand so they can plan their schedule. 

[OntheVerge]

It's important to remember that other people have different claims to their time outside of articling (and/or work) which can contribute to burn out. This accounts for why some articling students experience burn out more than others, even if hours/billables are comparable. As an example, I lived by myself during articling so on top of working long hours, the running of the household was solely up to me. Laundry, dry-cleaning, cleaning, groceries, cooking...basically, the same things I was doing as a law student except instead of varied student hours (at campus for 2-6 hours 3-4 days a week), I was now trying to do everything while being away from the house for 8-10 hours a day 5 days a week. I was burned out and barely functioning until about month 5 when I had built up some stamina and figured out some shortcuts for the aforementioned chores.

Articling students who live with their parents or with a partner may have it a bit easier in this regard. Many of my articling peers and friends either still lived with their parents and didn't have to think about cooking, groceries, laundry, cleaning or had a partner who helped out with the general running of a household. Articling is a different experience when you finally get home exhausted but still need to make supper, clean the kitchen, throw in a load of laundry, etc. versus coming home to a cooked meal and knowing the other things will be looked after. 

This isn't to say that one situation is better or worse, and I'm certainly not intending to call out people who have support and can lean on it when needed. I'm just saying this is one reason that some articling students might be experiencing worse burn out than others when on paper things like hours/billables/type of work seemed comparable.  

[easttowest]

For clarity, I am referring to billable hours that I docketed.

I articled at a big firm. Early in my articles, I had one month over 200hrs, and a couple around 180. After that I was mostly under 160, with one around 100. My average at the end of articles was around 160, pulled up by early industriousness. Based on that average, in my final review the firm noted that I had worked a lot, and they offered me a job.

I’m sure there are some students getting crushed for months on end in some rotations, but not everyone is doing that everywhere. 

[PzabbytheLawyer]

On 11/14/2021 at 9:09 PM, easttowest said:

For clarity, I am referring to billable hours that I docketed.

I articled at a big firm. Early in my articles, I had one month over 200hrs, and a couple around 180. After that I was mostly under 160, with one around 100. My average at the end of articles was around 160, pulled up by early industriousness. Based on that average, in my final review the firm noted that I had worked a lot, and they offered me a job.

I’m sure there are some students getting crushed for months on end in some rotations, but not everyone is doing that everywhere. 

I had a near identical experience, with more hours in the beginning because of two huge appeals. Though no one would think I would work that much given where I was (unless you knew about its reputation).