Where Did My Life Go?

which is pretty much what I find myself thinking whenever I spend an entire sunny Saturday in the office, doing all the stupid detail stuff I was too crazed to do during the week -- and it's truly amazing how many stupid details there always are to do, even with my newly improved delegation skills. (Yes, I finally got comfortable with "letting" my secretary send out routine reminder letters, file things, copy things and manage my calendar. Only took two years!) It's not so much the "Saturday at work" thing, since that's pretty much to be expected, and it's not like I'm here every Saturday like some poor associates (although the word "poor" is used somewhat ironically, since those people make about four times my salary, but whatever) -- what really gets me is the "whole day doing stupid-ass stuff." It would be fine if I could spend the day working on this appellate brief I've been promising to finish for a month, or writing up the field-of-law-review assignment I took on (non-billable, mind you -- and I took it on voluntarily -- perhaps I need my head examined). But no. So far, I've culled through the eight million files in my office to figure out what I needed to keep and what could be returned to partners, so that I could finally at least see my desk, visitor chairs, and table/drawer-arrangement-thingy (I believe some people call these "credenzas," but that sounds too much like Clemenza for my taste). I've written stupid non-routine follow-up letters to stupid opposing counsel/clients who have continually failed to give me basic documents I need to close out a bunch of files. I spent an hour doing forensic billing, trying to figure out WHAT exactly I was doing all week as I was running around tearing my hair out 11 hours a day (I'm still only up to 7 billables for four days and 4!! for the other one -- AAAHHH! I know I did things, I know I didn't even have two minutes to myself to write an email or surf jcrew.com, but I just don't know what those things are!!) I've finally taken the stacks of research notes and cases that have been threatening to topple over and tsunami my office and made appropriate files for them so I can find them again when I have a similar question, instead of re-inventing the wheel constantly. This all somehow took over six hours, of which I can bill a total of about an hour. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's not like I"m at an evil sweatshop where the billable hour whip is snapped regularly -- it's not a big issue around here. But still -- it's my way to prove I'm working my ass off -- even though I know my partners know, having the billing sheet in front of me proving that I spent 10 hours a day on loggable work just makes me feel less frantic. How silly is that? ah. well. I'm off to go find a big margarita. Enjoy your weekend!