At many law firms, partners are actively encouraged to delegate as much work as possible to junior associates beneath them.
The reasoning behind this approach is straightforward: freeing partners from routine tasks allows them to focus on business development and client relationships.
Keeping associates occupied with billable work also has a direct and positive impact on a firm’s overall financial performance.
However, there are meaningful situations where a partner completing a task personally makes far more practical sense than assigning it to someone else.
In certain cases, the time required to explain an assignment, gather materials, and review the finished product can exceed the time needed to simply do the work outright.
A partner delegating even a routine letter may first need to send the associate earlier correspondence, relevant court orders, and other background materials before work can begin.
Beyond that, the partner may need to explain prior conversations with opposing counsel and clarify what outcome they are hoping to achieve through the correspondence.
Once a draft is returned, the partner may then need to substantially revise the document to properly reflect their own strategic thinking and understanding of the matter.
In those circumstances, it might simply be easier and faster for the partner to sit down and draft the letter personally from the outset.
This dynamic was observable earlier in the career of Jordan Rothman, who noted working at large law firms where partners routinely assigned most tasks to associates as a matter of course.
The efficiency argument for delegation is well established in legal practice, but it does not apply uniformly across every task or every situation a partner encounters.
Partners who reflexively delegate without considering the complexity of the handoff process may inadvertently create more work for themselves rather than less.
The decision of whether to delegate should ultimately be driven by a clear-eyed assessment of what approach actually saves time and best serves the client.