Being a lawyer means being on all the time

[Anonymous]

It has taken me more than a decade to realize that people don't usually call their lawyers when they are all happy and things are going great. No, they call their lawyers when shit has hit the fan and they need help with something. No wonder why lawyers work all the time. It is always "life and death" or a company will lose billions of dollars if you don't fix this immediately and everybody will lose their jobs.

[Anonymous]

Not all lawyers are on all the time. DH is general counsel and stops at 6pm and doesn't start again until 8:30 the next morning. Weekends are almost always his own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not all lawyers are on all the time. DH is general counsel and stops at 6pm and doesn't start again until 8:30 the next morning. Weekends are almost always his own.

Same. I'm a transactional attorney with a niche practice in a small firm and I make my own schedule. I work maybe two weekends a year. I only work at night from home on days when I took a big chunk of time off, usually to do something with or for my kids.

[Anonymous]

Even in litigation there’s few situations where anything needs to happen RIGHT THIS MINUTE. It’s really just people being pushy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even in litigation there’s few situations where anything needs to happen RIGHT THIS MINUTE. It’s really just people being pushy.

Yes and people wanting to feel very self important, like everything is so urgent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even in litigation there’s few situations where anything needs to happen RIGHT THIS MINUTE. It’s really just people being pushy.

Yes and people wanting to feel very self important, like everything is so urgent.

Right? I remember learning about ethics exemptions for “lawyering emergencies” when studying for the MPRE. The only examples were like writing a dying person’s will or preventing an execution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It has taken me more than a decade to realize that people don't usually call their lawyers when they are all happy and things are going great. No, they call their lawyers when shit has hit the fan and they need help with something. No wonder why lawyers work all the time. It is always "life and death" or a company will lose billions of dollars if you don't fix this immediately and everybody will lose their jobs.

Very brave to admit how colossally slow you were to get to that realization

[Anonymous]

Maybe law firm lawyers or trial lawyers?

My DH is in-house at a fintech and he works hard, but he's eating with us each night at 6pm and doesn't log back on most nights unless he wants to. About every few months something happens and he's working more and very late and it's awful, but it lasts less than a week and it's over.

[Anonymous]

You need a back up. Trade with another attorney for vacations etc.

[Anonymous]

I figured this out in law school when I participated in a legal clinic and my opposing counsel purposefully filed motions to destroy a vacation he knew I had planned. That was the end of my aspirations to be a litigator -- it sucks being at the mercy of someone who may be motivated to screw you over. Some lawyers operate on a "gentleman's agreement" to prevent stuff like this, but many lawyers just want to win and don't care what tactics they use to make it happen.

I went into policy work and then later into business consulting focused on the legal sector. I also know people who work in regulatory practices or commercial transactions who have more predictable schedules. IP is appealing for this reason as well. All of these are areas where clients often come to you proactively with "good problems" -- they want to grow their business, they want change the law to benefit their industry, they want to protect their intellectual property. It's very different from working in litigation, corporate compliance, or white collar defense (or any kind of defense), where clients are coming to you because someone has wronged them, or because they screwed up, or because someone has accused them of screwing up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not all lawyers are on all the time. DH is general counsel and stops at 6pm and doesn't start again until 8:30 the next morning. Weekends are almost always his own.

General Counsel of what? I find it very hard to believe he's GC of a major corporation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not all lawyers are on all the time. DH is general counsel and stops at 6pm and doesn't start again until 8:30 the next morning. Weekends are almost always his own.

General Counsel of what? I find it very hard to believe he's GC of a major corporation.

Definitely not a major corporation.

[Anonymous]

Yes, and lawyers too may lose their jobs if they screw up one thing. The most miserable profession.

[Anonymous]

Here's the thing: you're on all the time even if you don't have to be. Because when you're not actually working, you're thinking about having to work, or you're worried that you're not working enough and that others are noticing, etc. So work is always on your mind. Always.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It has taken me more than a decade to realize that people don't usually call their lawyers when they are all happy and things are going great. No, they call their lawyers when shit has hit the fan and they need help with something. No wonder why lawyers work all the time. It is always "life and death" or a company will lose billions of dollars if you don't fix this immediately and everybody will lose their jobs.

That’s why clients pay so much, it’s risk management.