I am a lawyer and have been with my firm 5 years. I am being encouraged to apply for a promotion at the moment. This would involve doing some formal supervision of juniors and additional business development activities and an interview over the next few months to even be formally considered.
Then, assuming I got the promotion I would need to supervise juniors going forwards, be much more involved with clients and business development, attend management meetings ect.
I have a reasonably high chargeable hours and billing target as it is and so I already do unpaid overtime just to hit expected utilisation (as many solicitors do). I would say I work around 45-50 hours per week. My target would not be adjusted to compensate for all the extra (non-chargeable) work that comes with the promotion, so essentially the supervision, business development and management work would largely be done in my own time. I would be looking at maybe a 55-60 hour week after promotion.
I wouldn’t mind this so much if the promotion came with a pay rise, reduction in target to allow for non-chargeable work etc. But all I would get would be an extra 1% into my pension, which I would also have to match! There used to be more benefits to the role but these have been eroded over time.
It’s not a role I feel particular passionate about any more, the content of the work and the system we work in can be demoralising.
I really don’t want to apply for this promotion as it essentially seems like a lot more work for no benefit. I think I would become resentful.
It’s strange as people do apply for this promotion year on year and seem happy to do so. I can understand if you ultimately want to make partner, this step would be a necessary evil, but that’s not what I want.
I don’t have any close friends at work, it’s not really that sort of place unfortunately (some people refuse to even respond to good morning from most other members of staff) 😂
There have been others who have not sought the promotion but those are the women with kids and who work part-time. I am single and have no kids. But I would like to meet someone and have kids in the next say 4-5 years. Regardless of this though I just don’t want my life to be about work and I’m not passionate about it. It’s a means to an end. Even if I didn’t end up having kids, a life that revolves around work is not what I want.
Does anyone have any advice for delicately turning down this ‘opportunity’? It’s quite a political environment, where I don’t really feel like I have any allies so I don’t want to be ‘turned on’ by the partners if I turn this down. I could just be overthinking it though.
Thank you for reading!