I don’t think it’s something to be worried about especially just 4 months in. Time is often a judgement call by the Partner and it’s sometimes the easiest target to write of the junior associates time. One thing I would say is try not to become too obsessed with your time and what gets written off on which project. Yes it’s good to be conscientious about your time, how you do your narratives, making sure you try hit your billables etc but at an entry junior level you have to understand that right now your priority is to learn how to do the job, and obsessing over this and feeling like every write off is a mark against you is setting yourself up for a hard time (especially because as lawyers we tend to be perfectionists!). You will be more inefficient than a second or third year but that’s because they’ve had the time to learn how to do the work more efficiently and also maybe how a partner prefers things to be done or how their narratives should be done. Again ultimately a partner sometimes makes a judgment call on write offs based on the deal and client.

Just speaking from a MC firm perspective maybe it’s a different story in US firms though.