As he recovers from the crash landing of his once-promising legal career, MacDonald is arguing that law firms should pay more attention to the quality of associate life.

He now makes regular posts on a blog, where a recurring theme in his writing is that young lawyers should unionize in order to get more respect and better working conditions. In one recent post, he wrote about partners that lead large projects and numerous people, but lack management skills, and a lack of meaningful input for younger attorneys into any aspect of firms' practices.

"We should have a voice in how our firms are run. We should have a voice on whether our firms are doing good or bad things for society, and unionization would allow all of that. It's all about having a voice," MacDonald said in an interview.

His claims about associate life at his former firms could be viewed as self-serving, but when he talks about partners assigning work to associates on a Friday at 7 p.m., MacDonald comes across as someone who's been there.

At Cole Schotz, MacDonald said he hoped to find work-life balance, but that was not the case. He alleges his first supervisor was a junior partner "who just hated my guts, just loathed me." He claims he later had another boss who was frequently verbally abusive. He alleged that if he picked up the phone to ask a partner for clarification on an assignment, "there's a 50-50 chance I would get screamed at."

Cole Schotz declined to comment on the specific allegations.

'Manic episode'

Before long MacDonald began a relationship with a woman who lived in New York. Denied a transfer to Cole Schotz's New York office, he took a job at Lowenstein Sandler in New York.

He claimed that at Lowenstein he worked with colleagues to bring in a new client, the committee of unsecured creditors in the 2019 Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Bumble Bee Foods. He claimed the Lowenstein team beat out three other law firms that gave pitches, even though they lacked prior connections to the committee. By then, he was five years out of law school.

But MacDonald and the firm had disagreements about strategy in the case, and instead of assigning others to help him work on the matter, he claimed he was left on his own, putting in long hours. Before long, he was fired, and he says he was not given a reason.

MacDonald said he collapsed from stress during that period in what he now recognized was a sign he was becoming manic.

He believed he was let go for not staying within the narrow confines of Lowenstein's concept of what an associate is. "I was being a partner, not an associate. They didn't like that I originated cases," he said.

'Disappointed'

After Lowenstein let him go, MacDonald returned to his hometown of Nashville, where he was hired by Waller. He said he liked working there but only lasted three months before he suffered "a major manic episode" and was dismissed.

He said in hindsight that his posting of Cole Schotz documents was an early manifestation of his mental illness, and he learned he was bipolar sometime later. He now takes medication, receives regular treatment and is stable, he said.

In response to MacDonald's account of his experience at the firm, Cole Schotz said: "We take the welfare of our associates very seriously, but Mr. MacDonald's behavior required us to seek intervention in federal court, which resulted in the entry of a temporary restraining order. Given the pending litigation we have no further comment."

Lowenstein Sandler said, in response to MacDonald's allegations about his experience at the firm, "We are disappointed by and disagree with Myles' mischaracterization of associate life at Lowenstein. His personal struggles described in your report call for compassion. We are proud of our firm's culture and the broad range of health and wellness programs available to all of our colleagues. We offer our lawyers competitive compensation packages that incentivize and reward those who introduce new clients to our firm. We wish Myles a speedy and complete restoration to good health and greater success in his future professional endeavors."

'I want to do big things'

MacDonald says he was undone by his reluctance to play the role of a worker bee.

"Everywhere I've gone in Big Law, I was too big for my britches," he said. "I want to do big things. I don't want to be an associate, I want to be a partner, a decision maker."

In the future, he says, he's considering becoming a writer or legal consultant on strategy or project management. The notion of project management gets little respect in Big Law, he says, because no one wants to make time for it. The challenge, he says, is figuring out a way to make money from those ideas.

"I just have to figure it out and I'll be fine," he says.

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