My Attorney Blog

I previously touted the financially joyful benefits of working during official holidays to earn double overtime. Now I have a concession/confession to make. I personally won’t be working during Thanksgiving or during the upcoming Christmas holiday break in December.

Earning extra overtime is certainly great, but it’s just not worth the extra sacrifice for me right now. There are more important places I need to be at and more important people I need to be with during this time than spending it cooped up in an unventilated, stuffy room clicking away on a computer.

Knowing When To Keep Time Off Information To Yourself

It’s been a wonderful luxury to be able to set my own working schedule. Since the summer I’ve been working on the same project and have taken a few days off here and there. In general, agencies don’t mind when you take very infrequent time off but when you do it too often they are likely to see it as a serious problem that warrants prompt terminative action. Some agencies are more stringent than others and will ask before submitting you for a particular project whether you intend to take any time off during the expected duration of the assignment. If your response is anything but an emphatic no, it is likely that the agency will take a pass on you and choose to submit someone else for consideration. Some agencies won’t even submit you if they believe you intend to take time off while the project’s ongoing. When you are not working, you are not billing hours. When you are not billing, the agency is not earning their cut off of your efforts. Thus, unless you plan on taking a very significant period of time off, my suggestion is to keep tight lipped about any anticipated vacation plans when asked by the agency.

Agencies are notorious for providing very inaccurate projections and overestimations of project duration. I understand that sometimes it’s not possible to pinpoint exactly how long something will last, but I think certain agencies frequently provide exaggerations to coax more interest from prospective contract attorney applicants. This makes it extra difficult to plan vacations around project estimations.

So I think it is in every contract attorney’s own working interest not to reveal whether he or she plans on taking time off when inquiring about project availability. Disclosing such information to the agency will only lead to negative results in you not being considered for projects that you would otherwise have been submitted for. Besides, deciding when and if you plan on taking time off in the contract attorney business is a very fluid decisional process. Originally I thought I would try to maximize my working hours and overtime opportunities by plugging through the holidays, but I ultimately reconsidered and decided my time would be better spent with family and loved ones. Money is important, but it’s not every thing. Heeding my own advice, I didn’t alert the agency until the last possible moment (a few days before my planned time off), although I did reasonably make sure the project would not be too understaffed while I was away.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Income, Working Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.