the curse of competence

What I am about to say is going to sound very arrogant. Maybe because it is. Being good at your job is a total curse.

I have been smashing it at work recently. I have nailed discovery from every angle. I have revolutionised colour coded tagging systems and replacement coloured sheets for original files. I have charmed the litigation support unit and developed an awesome new database function in the software to make everyone's jobs way easier. I have even updated the litigation manual and refined the section on discovery so everyone can learn from my mistakes. (yes, it's true I too am finally learning from my mistakes).

Other people started to see that I was doing my job and doing it fairly effectively. Now they all want me to do work for them. Then a senior associate in our team resigned and guess who got all the files?

The only benefit of being so insanely busy is that I am going to have to find someone to help me with all the work.

His name is Ben. Oh sweet payback. Partnership here I come. Would it be a bit too obvious to write off his time and claim it as my own? Maybe if I started with a little bit here and there no-one would notice...

sleep, stress and date number three

Last night for the first time in ages I had a good night's sleep. At the risk of sounding somewhat Heath-Ledger-esque, sleeping when you are stressed can be incredibly difficult. As you know, I have been in absentia for the last couple of weeks, consumed by litigation strategies, affidavits as to documents and discovery. We are settling back into a bit of a pattern with some more regular hours now and the heart pounding, sweaty palm stress of the last few weeks is starting to fade.

Which leads to the issue of sleep. Obviously, when the stress and anxiety are less, the sleep is more. It's very easy when you're under pressure to get into a cycle of long hours, no exercise and bad office diet. You don't get to blow off steam at the gym because it's shut when you leave work and by the time you get home you're exhausted but can't stop your mind racing… so you have one glass of wine, which becomes two and then maybe three (which means you may as well finish the bottle) just so you can relax and let it all slide away into a light, fevered, broken night's sleep before you're up and do it all again with the aid of too much coffee.
We all know that this level of commitment to work is a little bit unhealthy but when you're in the middle of it feels like you have no choice, like you have to keep soldiering on and that the matter will fall apart if you're not there.

And how the hell do people maintain relationships in this madness? The person I spend most of my life with is Ben, at a conference room table with a pile of documents and bad office food I have learnt to seriously dislike (even the Moroccan lamb with cous cous doesn't cut it any more). Poor Adam has had to book date number three a week in advance in the hope I will be able to escape for dinner at the Panama dining room (excellent date venue) by planning my week properly. And how on earth am I meant to find time to prepare for date number three when I am going to be in the office all day Saturday?

Why don't time management courses properly address these issues?

a note from the other side....

So I haven't posted for a while because I have been so insanely busy with a GINORMOUS piece of litigation which is slowly sucking the life out of me as well as most of the other lawyers in the team.

It's great timing, coming up to review season, to be billing 11 hours a day but how sustainable is it long term? 'Not very' would be my answer.

And I have so much to fill you in on: the move of the retreat from Melbourne to Lorne (well that's not actually very interesting they just lied to us and changed it without telling anyone); Ben's official demotion back to Senior Associate (the office wide email was issued last week); my insomnia (which is RIGHT out of control and making me do strange things); the few but very promising dates I have had with a state public servant called Adam; and the fact I have developed an obsession with baking my own bread.

I will try to come back and post again soon but it's not looking good. Hope you're all well! xx

a weekend at lawne

OK, I know it's spelt Lorne, not Lawne but crikey, we did a good job trying to put the 'law' in Lorne this weekend, 'at home, together, at work'. When I say weekend, I really mean Thursday to Sunday morning. Question number one about staff retreats: why is the timing so weird? Surely they want us to bill so why not take us down Friday night and put us up somewhere really swanky and give us massages and pedicures to ease the pain of having to sacrifice our weekend?

Question number two is how is it possible to politely listen to three of the four partners in my team serenade the team with some 'golden oldies'... yet again? The first couple of times I watched the partners down a couple of bottles of what Rumpole so politely called 'Chateau Thames Embankment' and then break into song (without even a karaoke backing track) I thought it was endearing, in the same way you think your grandad spilling his coffee out of side of his mouth is endearing (but still requires intervention). After the third or fourth time, I wanted to scream 'you are NOT Tom Cruise and you're right, I have definitely lost that loving feeling'! This time I did manage to quietly move and pretend I was part of a more sober and better behaved team and I think some people did actually believe I was the new girl in the 'real estate' team for a while.

Surprisingly, it was Ben who made much of this retreat bearable. He has decided to throw caution to the wind and admit that now Uncle is back it is unlikely he will continue to hang on to partnership for much longer. So, like all good men, he has stopped trying. This meant that when the Meyer Briggs personality testing started he didn't want to indulge it and threw out some brilliant one-liners about people's level of extroversion or feeling-ness. Laughs all round.

And more importantly, the self declared defeat means my terrible attempt at scheming can remain just that and all I need to do is offer to help Ben by sharing some work with him so when he does inevitably build up his cleint base again, I can take the credit for it.

retreat!

The BCF staff retreat is this coming weekend.

Usually this means a weekend somewhere like Apollo Bay or Lorne and everyone drinks too much and then, hungover the next day, is forced to participate in 'trust' exercises. Of the you-fall-over-and-we-all-catch-you variety.

This year they've decided to do something a bit different and have booked out one of the hotels so we can all have a weekend in Melbourne 'at home, together, at work'. That's seriously the tag line for the retreat.

So we have been forced to sacrifice the ocean paddles for a tour of Melbourne's "secret laneways". I reckon if they're still secret from me now I don't really want to know about them.

And really, I don't want to be stuck down some pokey alley way, half cut, with a partner (or even worse Ben) breathing down my neck as we wait for the next teeny tiny bar to have enough room for more than two of us to sit and have a drink together. Not a great idea when over 100 lawyers work in the same place.

I am trying to work out how to get out of a night in substandard hotel accommodation when I have perfectly lovely 250 thread count sheets and all my creature comforts 'at home, alone, away from work'.

baking my way to the good books

Alright, as I'm sure you all predicted it's not been that easy to make Ben look like a super freak by buying him double shot coffees. Attempt number one led to exceptional motivation and energy as well as a massive number of billed hours (what else do you do if you're so wired you can't sleep!) Attempt number two made him break into a very interesting sweat at our lunch time CLE but everyone was just concerned he might be getting sick and sent him home. (Can you believe a law firm actually chose to send someone home rather than let them get sick at work, making them money!)

So I'm back to the drawing board.

There haven't been many brain waves of late so I tried Kate for inspiration. She didn't seem too impressed. It's probably down to the fact that Jean-Claude and Ben are old 'mates' (how old I'm not sure but they've obviously worked together for a while). In fact, as she and I cooked up some pasta post work (with standard glass of wine glued to hand) she made it quite clear that she thought my plan was a little 'unethical' and not what 'ABC is about'. I think she's just jealous she didn't think of it first.

Maybe she's right that hard work and dedication will pay off in the end. My challenge for this week is to push my cynicism aside and try a bit of the old Julie Andrews style hard work and good ethics. (Remember I'm a lawyer, I can do anything.)

Lesson learnt = be careful about sharing sneaky plans with Kate (she used to love scheming with me when we were at University, how love has changed her).

Way to get back in good books = cook up a batch of my fabulous sticky date and ginger biscuits.

In fact, I'm going to cook a second batch and take them in to work for mornos tomorrow to demonstrate the full extent of my Julie Andrews goodness.

double shot

When I first started at D & H as a criminal lawyer, there was an English bloke working with us who was a bit strange. He used to turn up for work about midday and then work through until three or four in the morning. Now, I know we lawyers often establish strange study/sleeping patterns while we are at law school but this bloke was especially strange. He consumed an awful lot of coffee and was always a bit jumpy and nervous. No one was really sure whether the coffee was causing the jumpy nerves or whether he was up to something very dodgy and that he just needed to keep drinking coffee to keep himself awake to get through it. My personal theory was that he worked London hours and was involved in some sort of international crime scandal. Anyway, he ended up leaving D & H in strange curcumstances. One day we got an email from the boss saying it was his last day and then he never came back. No explanation, no reason. Flat out weird.

Despite the weirdness, it was an interesting lesson in how too much caffeine can mess you up and make you seem shifty.

I was thinking about this because I'm just about to pop out for my morning coffee from Nonna's, I think I'll see if I can pick one up for Ben while I'm down there.... double shot perhaps?