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Something I think is missing from the late-night emails discussion: the distinction between internal and external communications and the potential power imbalances that make the former trickier. /1
If you& #39;re emailing opposing counsel, have at it. You have no power to affect each others& #39; working hours or workplace culture. You can laugh at each other or commiserate or hate each other or be friends. Whatever. /2
And when it comes to internal communications, if you& #39;re the junior person, send those emails whenever. Again, you aren& #39;t going to affect the senior person& #39;s working style or schedule. They might worry about the hours you& #39;re keeping, but they& #39;re not going to change their own. /3
But. I think if you& #39;re a senior person working with very junior people, and you& #39;re in the habit of sending late-night emails, it& #39;s also *really* important to communicate that you do not expect them to answer those emails in the middle of the night. Communicate that explicitly. /4
It& #39;s easy to forget what it& #39;s like being a newbie in an unfamiliar profession and unfamiliar workplace, but junior people look to senior people for clues about expectations. Lemme give an example. /5
When I first started working, I didn& #39;t understand that the annual billable hours expectation was a bare minimum, not a target. Nobody explained that to me. Maybe they assumed I just knew it was like pieces of flair. /6
I figured it out from watching senior people, but things could have gone sideways so easily. Unspoken workplace rules can be gnarly, and it& #39;s easy to assume something is an unspoken workplace rule if you see it happen enough. /7
It& #39;s why, for most of my years in BigLaw, I slept about four hours a night, answering late-night emails from one partner (who I now realize was working late because she had kids) and early morning emails from another partner. /8
Now let me be clear: I& #39;m not saying it& #39;s rude to send late-night emails. You get the work done when you can, especially nowadays when everything is on its ear. This pandemic has screwed working parents, especially moms. But. /9
If you& #39;re sending late-night emails to a junior colleague, it& #39;s a kindness to communicate that you don& #39;t expect an answer right away, and to be firm about that, repeatedly. It will help you retain good talent and will foster a healthier workplace. /10
I still remember a 3 am email I got from a young partner at my second firm about six months after I& #39;d joined. He prefaced it with, "I& #39;m up in the middle of the night with the kids. I do not expect a response to this right away." It blew my mind that he was so thoughtful. /11
