I’m a single mom who left biglaw because of people like you. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there is no hard reason that this filing that was due at 5pm wasn’t completed well before 5pm. I don’t know you or your associate, but I remember multiple times where I, as the senior associate, had a filing ready to go with client sign off by 9am and the partner either refused to look at it until 4:30 or wanted to make silly non-substantive changes until late into the afternoon. I would also remind them about my childcare obligations in the lead up to me leaving when I was checking in to see if I had sign-off. Usually exactly as you said your associate did, “Hey X, do I have sign off to file this? As a reminder, I have to pick up Y at 5pm.”

I now work at a mid size firm and do not have these problems anymore, though I work with similar clients. My honest opinion is that biglaw partners use the clients as an excuse for their own poor time management. If you are routinely filing things at the last minute, that isn’t client driven, that’s you. And given the unavoidable fact that most women have children, and most women who have children are the primary caregivers, if you decide to operate this way, you are deciding that you do not care if you lose the majority of your senior women as they advance.

Have a policy that the filing needs to be 100% ready the day before the filing deadline so that it can get filed while associates are still there. When I first started as a lawyer (before electronic filing), our court run left at 3:30 everyday. Your brief had to be in the basket, signed, and 100% ready to go by then or it didn’t get filed that day. (I guess you could run it to the courthouse yourself but as attorneys we really didn’t know the process, how many copies, etc.)

Alanon

This!!!

I posted a longer comment below, but agree with all this.

I am a biglaw equity partner, and I am really surprised at the pushback you are getting here. I say that as someone who is (1 a parent of two young kids, and I almost always log off for dinnertime and (2) generally very flexible and accommodating with my associates. That said, I would absolutely lose my mind if an associate thought they could clock out before a filing was 100% done, barring some unusual circumstances. Being regularly unavailable for filing deadlines when they are known in advance is just not acceptable in our field (not interested in a debate about whether this is right or wrong, it is just a fact). And while I love the suggestions below that filings get done in advance — something I also aspire to do — I have a feeling the people below have never actually worked in a big law firm (or really any litigation position — I worked in government for many years and the feedback to a junior person leaving before a filing was done would have 100% been the same).

Here, I think it is reasonable to give the feedback that leaving before a filing is done on a filing day is not okay. I would also give the feedback that in our line of work, there are times that working in the 5-9 window just has to happen. I would try to key both of these forms of feedback to a specific incident, rather than discussing them in the abstract. I would also not suggest that leaving at 5 is itself a problem (because it’s not — although I agree with commenters that a 4-hour window of unavailability every day is not realistic, especially at a junior level). Instead, the feedback can be that part of succeeding in our field is being available to take care of key client tasks (like filings!).

I would use a script along the lines of “Hey Associate A, remember yesterday when we had that MSJ due? And despite the fact that we all worked so hard to get it done by 5, it was not done for reasons outside our control? We all have to be available on those days to do what needs to be done to get it over the finish line. I will always do my best to give you as much notice as possible about when those filings need to happen.” I think you can use the same script about a late-afternoon call that needs immediate follow-up.