''Do you have capacity?''
What does this mean to you?
As in, what constitutes it? Does it mean, are you working until 10pm tonight?
Scenario - its 3.30pm and you think that you can finish the day's work by 6.45pm. Someone asks ''Do you have capacity?'' Its nice outside and you want an evening. What do you say?
Interested in people's opinion!
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discrete tasks or new project?
deadlines?
who is asking?
All plays into the answer. But generally speaking wave goodbye to your evening.
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I take it as are you doing less than 100% of your target hours for the week?
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What kind of firm do you work for and what are the general expectations?
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The answer to that question is always no or as near to no as you can get away with.
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Ask what it is and when they need it for. If it’s today say no.
Capacity to me doesn’t mean immediate work.
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Also you've either been pinged because (i) you are rated, (ii) you have been idnetified as not being as busy as colleagues and/or (iii) the requestor is desperate, so you probably have limited leverage to refuse.
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What dusty said
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The answer should always be "yes".
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No. You are not mentally competent
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"Sorry mate, no spare bandwith at present, but I know young Davos has lots free..."
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Heh at Marshall. Always knew he would be a slacker.
What Goose said.
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Depends on your relative positions. For a junior bod the answer is always yes unless you actually will in fact not have time to do the work. Your evening plans are as dust to us, speak not of them to us lest we think it weakness
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Mid level firm, not a US/M-C firm by any stretch, not a small shop either.
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The correct response as a trainee/nq/junior is always "yes tomorrow but if absolutely urgent I can always discuss with partners and try to move things around today?"
The correct response as a more senior lawyer will depend on whether or not you can be bothered
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I’m assuming you’re less than 5 pqe - it depends how ambitious you are / how much you need and/or want your job:
want to make partner at current shop: “sure I’ve got capacity.....”
don’t want to make partner at current shop and happy to burn bridges to preserve quality of life : “sorry no can do, it’s a beautiful evening and I’m meeting this amazing girl for a drink at 6 and hope to be...,”
having wasted too much of my life inside a “mid level firm” fortress I’d say go for the latter
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don’t want to make partner at current shop and happy to burn bridges to preserve quality of life : “sorry no can do, it’s a beautiful evening and I’m meeting this amazing girl for a drink at 6 and hope to be...,”
bullace - are you SURE you're not my former trainee by any chance? heheh
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deffo! never turned down work when I was a trainee. kids these days are, rightly, not so easy to beast.
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The best answer is "I'd love to help, unfortunately I've got [urgent bullshit] at this point but I reckon I could get it done by [X]" where X is a day which seems reasonably helpful but is likely be just too far away for them to give it to you
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I always answer "no" whether I have or not. Time is better spent bringing in new work than doing someone else's.
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For me, the answer is almost always, I won’t have capacity for at least 12 weeks. Is this not normal? I do actually have work to do that I was planning to do, and which will generate more work.
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Depends who is asking and what it is of course but in the scenario given above I would be saying I have no capacity today but could look at it by X.
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