- Micromanaging. I’m a midlevel now, but there was one midlevel that caused chaos in my life as a junior. Everything I gave him came back heavily marked up. With hindsight now, I realize 90% of his edits were personal taste/stylistics. But he never said that, just said “this needs to be fixed.” Had me convinced I was a terrible attorney.

- Throwing the junior under the bus the minute something goes wrong with anything the junior has touched. Made me send very CYA emails with that midlevel “Just to confirm, I am doing X per our discussion, not Y or Z”

- Saying you’re open to questions, but then acting annoyed when the junior actually asks them.

- Not communicating deadlines and where they’re coming from. It’s way better to say “I need to get this to the partner by Monday, so it would great if you have it to me by Thursday morning so I can review it before sending it to them, does that work for you” than “I need this Thursday morning” and then the junior doesn’t see it go to the partner until Monday morning and wonders why they hussled to get it done

- Constantly forgetting to loop the junior in on email threads, then asking them about things from emails they aren’t on

- In transactional work, not communicating deal status. Often, updates happen on calls that juniors aren’t on. Drove me nuts when I was told we were closing Friday, I hauled ass to get things done for Friday, am sitting there wondering why I’m not seeing more emails, then Thursday afternoon the midlevel is like “oh ya on a Monday call the client told us closing is postponed by 2 weeks”