I’m an M&A attorney at a firm with a free market system. Coming recently from a firm with centralized staffing.

I’m finding it difficult to stay busy without being totally slammed right before going on vacation or going to a conference. I’m just kind of sitting around with nothing to do and it doesn’t feel great/is making me nervous. Because we don’t have centralized staffing, I have limited confidence that I would actually be removed from a brand new matter while out—I will probably just be working through my time out of office.

Would take on a small pro bono matter, but my firm does not have a robust pro bono program, and it clearly makes no effort to cater to corporate attorneys. It’s all litigation matters. And the billable credit for pro bono is limited, so it has to be a small pro bono matter. Also, my firm offers billable credit for no non billable matters other than pro bono. So. 🙄

How do y’all do it? lol. I feel like I’m effectively blowing through three times as much PTO as intended in the least fun way possible because I’m not billing before vacations.