I (26F) have been an attorney at my dad's (57M) firm for 1.5 years. He is reluctantly going to hire one of the interns - I think it is a bad idea for both admittedly personal and other reasons. Should I say anything to him?

ETA: I totally forgot to include this, but the law firm has JUST recently gotten to a good profit margin. I am worried if we hire Emily, she will expect a nice salary, but will not be bringing in any money, so we will essentially be paying a lot of money to a person we do not need/want in litigation...

Hi everyone,

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT

So my dad has a law firm and I have worked for him for years - although only as an actual attorney for the past 1.5 years as I had to get through law school and pass the bar exam.

There are about 15 lawyers. All of them do estate planning, except my dad and I - we do litigation.

My dad is general counsel for this company and, in exchange for handling all their litigation without pay, the company refers us all of their clients for estate planning.

This summer we had an intern, Emily. We didn't have much for her to do, but one of the employees of the company my dad is general counsel for asked him if the law firm would hire his daughter for the summer (she is now in her final year of law school).

He said yes and then all of the responsibility for her and her daily activities fell on me, which is fine, I managed. Quite honestly i didn't have much to give her to do a lot of the time. So I mostly made up some busy-work, although some of the stuff she did was helpful.

SIDENOTE -- I really do like Emily, I do. She's very nice and cool and I have hung out with her outside of work. However, she tends to want to talk to me all day and seems resentful if she's not totally involved in all the cases I have going on right now. Frankly I sometimes just don't have the time to talk all day and go over everything I'm doing.

My dad made an off-handed comment to her during this summer that she could stay on for the entire school year, so now she works 'remotely' a few hours per week. (she does get paid as well). I've been super busy and sometimes I forget she is even working since she's not actually in the office, but lately I have been finding some things to give her.

She also seemed to take the comment to be a job offer for after she graduates, although I know my dad never offered her this. She has mentioned to me many times working here after she graduates, and I have told her I'm not sure what things will look like and that at the moment it doesn't seem we have enough work for another full time attorney in litigation.

She seemed to ignore this and instead had her dad tell my dad that she has another offer and that she needs to talk to him about what to do.

THE ISSUE

Anyway, Emily booked a meeting with my dad this past Friday. Both of them talked to me separately after the meeting and my dad said he REALLY encouraged her to take the other offer and that he thought he was clear with telling her he doesn't really want to continue doing litigation and is moving in another direction.

I don't think she got the hint. My dad should have been direct with her, but he said he wanted to be nice and political. He told her she should take the other offer because she will always have a job here to come back to.

When Emily talked to me about the conversation, it seemed she was leaning towards working for our firm. she said she is going to think and let us know Monday.

I told my dad this and his reaction was, "Shit! I thought I was very clear. Ugh, well this is not the direction I wanted to go."

I don't know why my dad feels he has to hire someone we do not want or need in our department, but he does feel this way due to his association with Emily's father at the company.

My issue is partly selfish. I love being on a team ALONE with my dad. I learn so much from him and get to spend quality time. On top of that, I am a new attorney and I am slooooowly working my way up. If Emily also is on our team, she will need to work her way up too. The issue is we don't have enough work for her to do. Further, I want to be the one doing what a low-level attorney can do so that I can LEARN and DEVELOP. This includes making oral arguments, taking depositions, etc. But if she comes along, she'll want to do those things too and there simply will not be enough cases.

Another issue is I am trying to place myself in a position to one day (like in 30 years!) take over for my dad and do what he does. In order to do that, I need to be immersing myself in these litigation cases and putting myself in my dad's position. I need to establish myself with this company in order to one day be in a position to act as general counsel. If Emily is also on the team, my chances to do this are diminished because she's another attorney they'll go to for help.

I also just feel if she is on our team as a full time attorney, A LOT of my time will be devoted to training/supervising her.

Anyway, I know I sound selfish, but my dad himself doesn't even want to hire her.

Should I talk to my dad about all this or just let things play out?

Thanks for reading if you got this far!

tl;dr: An intern wants to join me & my dad's litigation team when she becomes a full time attorney. Neither my dad nor I want her to join. However, he was trying to be nice and she took it as a job offer and now is going to think about it over the weekend. Should I say something to my dad about my concerns or stay silent?

Submitted November 09, 2019 at 07:11PM by ProperChipmunk https://ift.tt/2qz6qNz