I don’t know a single person making 7 figures

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of well paid lawyers on this thread. But reminder: No one on earth makes more money than successful business owners. The super rich don't get that way because someone is paying them a salary. They get rich from owning businesses that become incredibly valuable.

Very true.

Lawyers do, however, know how to read something, identify relevance, and respond accordingly.

You keep harping on business owners having a better chance of becoming “super rich”. No sh$t. It’s an entirely different risk-reward calculus: exponentially more absolute failures, proportionally much less likely to be a moderately successful low-level millionaire, and a slightly greater but still infinitesimally small likelihood of becoming “super rich”.

In any case, that’s not at all the subject of this thread, so I don’t know why you keep posting different variations of the same statement.

Oh wait, yes I do. Envy and insecurity.

PP here. This was actually the only post I wrote. I think you're confusing me with someone else who doesn't think being a lawyer would be incredibly boring. I'm not jealous. I own a TON of Nvidia stock I bought ten years ago so honestly I'm probably a lot wealthier than you.

It is hard to hold Nvidia for 10 years...so man ups-and-downs...you have some fortitude to hold. I was lucky that my kid who knows AI casually mentioned to me 18 months ago that he thought Open AI's new release may actually be something so buy Nvidia as a way to play it. What a ride since then.

I agree with you and I find the entire DC / BigLaw mentality to just be so silly. It reminds me of the scene in the Social Network when Sean Parker says "$1MM is not cool"...at which point the BigLaw partner would stand up and say "heck yeah it's cool" and walk out of the meeting.

I travel a ton to SFO and work with start-ups and the environment is electrifying and optimistic and people dream and think big...and DC BigLaw is all about just grinding to earn your $2MM per year.

FWIW, I know several BigLaw partners and NONE want their kids to follow in their path...a large part of that is because they know generative AI will be disruptive, because their own firms are figuring out how to incorporate it to make their lives richer, but cut down on the number of pesky associates. Anything to improve profits-per-partner baby!

They think reducing the number of associates is going to improve profits per partner? Do they not know how law firm profitability works? You need those associates billing hours to get those profits. No associates, no billable hours, no profits.

Believe me...they are figuring out how to maintain or raise billings and reduce their associates. They are also starting to experiment with fixed contracts / fixed monthly billings.

I always found BigLaw to be a weird antagonistic business model...partners seem to kind of despise most of their associates. Also the weird dynamic of partners not receiving any benefits from the firm, but all the associates and staff do...and again, they kind of despise staff for having to pay for those benefits.

Law firms have been trying out different billing arrangements for years. I started my legal career in biglaw over 20 years ago and they were saying back then that there were going to transition off the billable hour. It's never really worked.

I'm in house now. From what I've seen of AI so far, I'm very skeptical it can be very useful for anything other than pretty menial tasks. It produces professional-looking products, but the products are wrong more often than they are right. It's actually a big problem in my view because the documents look very convincing even though they have huge errors in them, But if it turns out that AI can do the work of the associates, then there is no need to hire these firms in the first place. I will just buy the software myself. Why would I pay a biglaw partner $1500 an hour to run software?

You realize your company and your department will start paying for customized LLMs that are attuned to your industry and your work. You won't just sign up for ChatGPT...you will employ a "custom ChatGPT" where you and the company will start populating the LLMs with correct data. As you train those custom models, it will be right far more than wrong.

Also, ChatGPT can spit out an entire brief in like 60 seconds...it is easier to edit and fact-check the work vs. creating the brief by a human.

If your company has any sense, you will start reducing your use of outside law firms. You won't pay a BigLaw partner $1500/hour to run software, you will use that partner for just the high-value/high-complexity work, obviously for any trials, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Early retired Biglaw partner here. I remember sitting in partner meetings in my old firm over a decade ago and thinking to myself “how surreal is it that every person in this room with me right now is making $1 million a year or more?”

They definitely were. No lying involved.

As for the posters who scoff at these lawyers as merely “servicing the rich” or having to work around the clock to make their money, that’s only true to an extent. After a few years as an equity partner most Biglaw partners have made enough money that they could walk away rich if they wanted to and just let the money that they’ve already earned work for them. They just choose not to because it’s not in their nature.

My own personal situation is a good illustration. When I left my law firm around a decade ago, in my early 50s, I had been an equity partner for about ten years. I was counsel for about 10 years before that. As counsel, I made in the low six figures. As an equity partner, I started in the mid six figures and finished at just under $1 million. I was one of the lowest paid equity partners in my firm - a very well known one in DC.

My current net worth is about $8 million. I haven’t worked at all since leaving Biglaw. My net worth is about double what it was since leaving my firm thanks to the market, etc.

So, no, personally I’m not rich but I have to figure that my former partners - who all made more money than me and who all keep working - have net worths well into 8 figures. It’s impossible for them not to have that much money at this point. That they are continuing to work is a personality thing. They just can’t stop themselves.

I wonder if your partners who continue to work really do have those net worth figures. A number of partners in my firm, who have been here for a while, have surprisingly little saved. At least the ones who will admit it. Notwithstanding the fact that they’ve been working as partners for 10+ years making easily more than $2 million a year, a handful of them said they don’t even have $2 million saved. One of them told me that he was hoping that he could save at least $300,000 this year, which will be the first time he’s ever been able to do that. It’s breathtaking.

But they each have multiple homes, they fly first class or private, kids are in private schools, they vacation overseas, at least once a year, so at deer valley and vail with private lessons and private chefs, etc. etc. etc. There’s no shortage of ways to spend your money, and these guys seemed to have found many of them.

Golden handcuffs at its finest.

Early Retired Biglaw partner here. I doubt you’re right. For one thing, most Biglaw firm force equity partners to contribute ungodly amounts to tax-deferred retirement plans. You wouldn’t believe the amount of forced savings. So, yea, there are without a doubt many Biglaw partners who don’t save a lot of their take home earnings, but those same lawyers are getting richer and richer just the same.

PP here. I am right. They told me. Why would anybody lie about not having any money saved? Plus the firm has an unfunded pension, which is why these guys aren’t saving anything in addition to the Measley tax advantage accounts that are available to them like a 401(k) and a Keogh plan. Yes, there is some forced savings, but these guys do the minimum and save nothing on top of it, and wait till they’re 60 and hope to God. The firm continues to fund the pension. Not me, I’m getting out early like you did.

Fair enough, but in my firm at least the forced savings wasn’t “measly” - it was well into six figures. When I left my firm I rolled over nearly a million dollars from the firm’s defined benefit plan that I had been forced to contribute to into my IRA. My IRA also had a couple million dollars in it. And, again, I was among the lowest paid partners and my firm didn’t have a reputation for being among the highest in terms of PPP.

These partners who tell you that they don’t have any money saved, generally speaking how long have they been at their firms as partners?

8+ years. And all who spoke of this are in NYC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of well paid lawyers on this thread. But reminder: No one on earth makes more money than successful business owners. The super rich don't get that way because someone is paying them a salary. They get rich from owning businesses that become incredibly valuable.

Very true.

Lawyers do, however, know how to read something, identify relevance, and respond accordingly.

You keep harping on business owners having a better chance of becoming “super rich”. No sh$t. It’s an entirely different risk-reward calculus: exponentially more absolute failures, proportionally much less likely to be a moderately successful low-level millionaire, and a slightly greater but still infinitesimally small likelihood of becoming “super rich”.

In any case, that’s not at all the subject of this thread, so I don’t know why you keep posting different variations of the same statement.

Oh wait, yes I do. Envy and insecurity.

PP here. This was actually the only post I wrote. I think you're confusing me with someone else who doesn't think being a lawyer would be incredibly boring. I'm not jealous. I own a TON of Nvidia stock I bought ten years ago so honestly I'm probably a lot wealthier than you.

It is hard to hold Nvidia for 10 years...so man ups-and-downs...you have some fortitude to hold. I was lucky that my kid who knows AI casually mentioned to me 18 months ago that he thought Open AI's new release may actually be something so buy Nvidia as a way to play it. What a ride since then.

I agree with you and I find the entire DC / BigLaw mentality to just be so silly. It reminds me of the scene in the Social Network when Sean Parker says "$1MM is not cool"...at which point the BigLaw partner would stand up and say "heck yeah it's cool" and walk out of the meeting.

I travel a ton to SFO and work with start-ups and the environment is electrifying and optimistic and people dream and think big...and DC BigLaw is all about just grinding to earn your $2MM per year.

FWIW, I know several BigLaw partners and NONE want their kids to follow in their path...a large part of that is because they know generative AI will be disruptive, because their own firms are figuring out how to incorporate it to make their lives richer, but cut down on the number of pesky associates. Anything to improve profits-per-partner baby!

They think reducing the number of associates is going to improve profits per partner? Do they not know how law firm profitability works? You need those associates billing hours to get those profits. No associates, no billable hours, no profits.

Believe me...they are figuring out how to maintain or raise billings and reduce their associates. They are also starting to experiment with fixed contracts / fixed monthly billings.

I always found BigLaw to be a weird antagonistic business model...partners seem to kind of despise most of their associates. Also the weird dynamic of partners not receiving any benefits from the firm, but all the associates and staff do...and again, they kind of despise staff for having to pay for those benefits.

Law firms have been trying out different billing arrangements for years. I started my legal career in biglaw over 20 years ago and they were saying back then that there were going to transition off the billable hour. It's never really worked.

I'm in house now. From what I've seen of AI so far, I'm very skeptical it can be very useful for anything other than pretty menial tasks. It produces professional-looking products, but the products are wrong more often than they are right. It's actually a big problem in my view because the documents look very convincing even though they have huge errors in them, But if it turns out that AI can do the work of the associates, then there is no need to hire these firms in the first place. I will just buy the software myself. Why would I pay a biglaw partner $1500 an hour to run software?

You realize your company and your department will start paying for customized LLMs that are attuned to your industry and your work. You won't just sign up for ChatGPT...you will employ a "custom ChatGPT" where you and the company will start populating the LLMs with correct data. As you train those custom models, it will be right far more than wrong.

Also, ChatGPT can spit out an entire brief in like 60 seconds...it is easier to edit and fact-check the work vs. creating the brief by a human.

If your company has any sense, you will start reducing your use of outside law firms. You won't pay a BigLaw partner $1500/hour to run software, you will use that partner for just the high-value/high-complexity work, obviously for any trials, etc.

We’ve tried out a number of these products already. The work product looks pretty but actually sucks. It may get better in the future, but I’m not impressed so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Early retired Biglaw partner here. I remember sitting in partner meetings in my old firm over a decade ago and thinking to myself “how surreal is it that every person in this room with me right now is making $1 million a year or more?”

They definitely were. No lying involved.

As for the posters who scoff at these lawyers as merely “servicing the rich” or having to work around the clock to make their money, that’s only true to an extent. After a few years as an equity partner most Biglaw partners have made enough money that they could walk away rich if they wanted to and just let the money that they’ve already earned work for them. They just choose not to because it’s not in their nature.

My own personal situation is a good illustration. When I left my law firm around a decade ago, in my early 50s, I had been an equity partner for about ten years. I was counsel for about 10 years before that. As counsel, I made in the low six figures. As an equity partner, I started in the mid six figures and finished at just under $1 million. I was one of the lowest paid equity partners in my firm - a very well known one in DC.

My current net worth is about $8 million. I haven’t worked at all since leaving Biglaw. My net worth is about double what it was since leaving my firm thanks to the market, etc.

So, no, personally I’m not rich but I have to figure that my former partners - who all made more money than me and who all keep working - have net worths well into 8 figures. It’s impossible for them not to have that much money at this point. That they are continuing to work is a personality thing. They just can’t stop themselves.

I wonder if your partners who continue to work really do have those net worth figures. A number of partners in my firm, who have been here for a while, have surprisingly little saved. At least the ones who will admit it. Notwithstanding the fact that they’ve been working as partners for 10+ years making easily more than $2 million a year, a handful of them said they don’t even have $2 million saved. One of them told me that he was hoping that he could save at least $300,000 this year, which will be the first time he’s ever been able to do that. It’s breathtaking.

But they each have multiple homes, they fly first class or private, kids are in private schools, they vacation overseas, at least once a year, so at deer valley and vail with private lessons and private chefs, etc. etc. etc. There’s no shortage of ways to spend your money, and these guys seemed to have found many of them.

Golden handcuffs at its finest.

Early Retired Biglaw partner here. I doubt you’re right. For one thing, most Biglaw firm force equity partners to contribute ungodly amounts to tax-deferred retirement plans. You wouldn’t believe the amount of forced savings. So, yea, there are without a doubt many Biglaw partners who don’t save a lot of their take home earnings, but those same lawyers are getting richer and richer just the same.

PP here. I am right. They told me. Why would anybody lie about not having any money saved? Plus the firm has an unfunded pension, which is why these guys aren’t saving anything in addition to the Measley tax advantage accounts that are available to them like a 401(k) and a Keogh plan. Yes, there is some forced savings, but these guys do the minimum and save nothing on top of it, and wait till they’re 60 and hope to God. The firm continues to fund the pension. Not me, I’m getting out early like you did.

Fair enough, but in my firm at least the forced savings wasn’t “measly” - it was well into six figures. When I left my firm I rolled over nearly a million dollars from the firm’s defined benefit plan that I had been forced to contribute to into my IRA. My IRA also had a couple million dollars in it. And, again, I was among the lowest paid partners and my firm didn’t have a reputation for being among the highest in terms of PPP.

These partners who tell you that they don’t have any money saved, generally speaking how long have they been at their firms as partners?

DH is full equity partner at big law firm. He makes low seven figures, but hoping to hit $5M within a few years (yes, he is good a business development).

There is plenty of forced saving for law partners - we save $300K-$500k per year, but DH opted into max savings plans. This year we plan to save an additional $800-$1M (post tax).

We live a very nice lifestyle (large home, kids in private school, multiple overseas vacations) but no second home and I am not into luxury stuff. I also work (a real job/career) so I think people assume DH makes less than he does.

Most of the partners DH works with (and he’s not in a super lucrative specialty) have vacation homes, travel a lot, and have SAH partners. He doesn’t know what individual partners make, but the majority of partners make less than $1M - only those who are really good at business development or are really senior make more. So I can fully believe they aren’t saving a lot.

Also, our kids are in private school, and I would guess the majority of parents there don’t make $1M, but mid to high six figure incomes. They live as nicely as we do, so I really think you can’t tell past a certain point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of well paid lawyers on this thread. But reminder: No one on earth makes more money than successful business owners. The super rich don't get that way because someone is paying them a salary. They get rich from owning businesses that become incredibly valuable.

Very true.

Lawyers do, however, know how to read something, identify relevance, and respond accordingly.

You keep harping on business owners having a better chance of becoming “super rich”. No sh$t. It’s an entirely different risk-reward calculus: exponentially more absolute failures, proportionally much less likely to be a moderately successful low-level millionaire, and a slightly greater but still infinitesimally small likelihood of becoming “super rich”.

In any case, that’s not at all the subject of this thread, so I don’t know why you keep posting different variations of the same statement.

Oh wait, yes I do. Envy and insecurity.

PP here. This was actually the only post I wrote. I think you're confusing me with someone else who doesn't think being a lawyer would be incredibly boring. I'm not jealous. I own a TON of Nvidia stock I bought ten years ago so honestly I'm probably a lot wealthier than you.

It is hard to hold Nvidia for 10 years...so man ups-and-downs...you have some fortitude to hold. I was lucky that my kid who knows AI casually mentioned to me 18 months ago that he thought Open AI's new release may actually be something so buy Nvidia as a way to play it. What a ride since then.

I agree with you and I find the entire DC / BigLaw mentality to just be so silly. It reminds me of the scene in the Social Network when Sean Parker says "$1MM is not cool"...at which point the BigLaw partner would stand up and say "heck yeah it's cool" and walk out of the meeting.

I travel a ton to SFO and work with start-ups and the environment is electrifying and optimistic and people dream and think big...and DC BigLaw is all about just grinding to earn your $2MM per year.

FWIW, I know several BigLaw partners and NONE want their kids to follow in their path...a large part of that is because they know generative AI will be disruptive, because their own firms are figuring out how to incorporate it to make their lives richer, but cut down on the number of pesky associates. Anything to improve profits-per-partner baby!

They think reducing the number of associates is going to improve profits per partner? Do they not know how law firm profitability works? You need those associates billing hours to get those profits. No associates, no billable hours, no profits.

Believe me...they are figuring out how to maintain or raise billings and reduce their associates. They are also starting to experiment with fixed contracts / fixed monthly billings.

I always found BigLaw to be a weird antagonistic business model...partners seem to kind of despise most of their associates. Also the weird dynamic of partners not receiving any benefits from the firm, but all the associates and staff do...and again, they kind of despise staff for having to pay for those benefits.

Law firms have been trying out different billing arrangements for years. I started my legal career in biglaw over 20 years ago and they were saying back then that there were going to transition off the billable hour. It's never really worked.

I'm in house now. From what I've seen of AI so far, I'm very skeptical it can be very useful for anything other than pretty menial tasks. It produces professional-looking products, but the products are wrong more often than they are right. It's actually a big problem in my view because the documents look very convincing even though they have huge errors in them, But if it turns out that AI can do the work of the associates, then there is no need to hire these firms in the first place. I will just buy the software myself. Why would I pay a biglaw partner $1500 an hour to run software?

You realize your company and your department will start paying for customized LLMs that are attuned to your industry and your work. You won't just sign up for ChatGPT...you will employ a "custom ChatGPT" where you and the company will start populating the LLMs with correct data. As you train those custom models, it will be right far more than wrong.

Also, ChatGPT can spit out an entire brief in like 60 seconds...it is easier to edit and fact-check the work vs. creating the brief by a human.

If your company has any sense, you will start reducing your use of outside law firms. You won't pay a BigLaw partner $1500/hour to run software, you will use that partner for just the high-value/high-complexity work, obviously for any trials, etc.

We’ve tried out a number of these products already. The work product looks pretty but actually sucks. It may get better in the future, but I’m not impressed so far.

It doesn't sound like you have, or you wouldn't say "we tried out a number of these products"...because these products would involve many months of training the LLMs to your business and your department needs. Sounds like your company or your department is trying to use something off-the-shelf...do you have any in-house Machine Learning or LLM-trained developers even doing any customization?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of well paid lawyers on this thread. But reminder: No one on earth makes more money than successful business owners. The super rich don't get that way because someone is paying them a salary. They get rich from owning businesses that become incredibly valuable.

Very true.

Lawyers do, however, know how to read something, identify relevance, and respond accordingly.

You keep harping on business owners having a better chance of becoming “super rich”. No sh$t. It’s an entirely different risk-reward calculus: exponentially more absolute failures, proportionally much less likely to be a moderately successful low-level millionaire, and a slightly greater but still infinitesimally small likelihood of becoming “super rich”.

In any case, that’s not at all the subject of this thread, so I don’t know why you keep posting different variations of the same statement.

Oh wait, yes I do. Envy and insecurity.

PP here. This was actually the only post I wrote. I think you're confusing me with someone else who doesn't think being a lawyer would be incredibly boring. I'm not jealous. I own a TON of Nvidia stock I bought ten years ago so honestly I'm probably a lot wealthier than you.

It is hard to hold Nvidia for 10 years...so man ups-and-downs...you have some fortitude to hold. I was lucky that my kid who knows AI casually mentioned to me 18 months ago that he thought Open AI's new release may actually be something so buy Nvidia as a way to play it. What a ride since then.

I agree with you and I find the entire DC / BigLaw mentality to just be so silly. It reminds me of the scene in the Social Network when Sean Parker says "$1MM is not cool"...at which point the BigLaw partner would stand up and say "heck yeah it's cool" and walk out of the meeting.

I travel a ton to SFO and work with start-ups and the environment is electrifying and optimistic and people dream and think big...and DC BigLaw is all about just grinding to earn your $2MM per year.

FWIW, I know several BigLaw partners and NONE want their kids to follow in their path...a large part of that is because they know generative AI will be disruptive, because their own firms are figuring out how to incorporate it to make their lives richer, but cut down on the number of pesky associates. Anything to improve profits-per-partner baby!

They think reducing the number of associates is going to improve profits per partner? Do they not know how law firm profitability works? You need those associates billing hours to get those profits. No associates, no billable hours, no profits.

Believe me...they are figuring out how to maintain or raise billings and reduce their associates. They are also starting to experiment with fixed contracts / fixed monthly billings.

I always found BigLaw to be a weird antagonistic business model...partners seem to kind of despise most of their associates. Also the weird dynamic of partners not receiving any benefits from the firm, but all the associates and staff do...and again, they kind of despise staff for having to pay for those benefits.

Law firms have been trying out different billing arrangements for years. I started my legal career in biglaw over 20 years ago and they were saying back then that there were going to transition off the billable hour. It's never really worked.

I'm in house now. From what I've seen of AI so far, I'm very skeptical it can be very useful for anything other than pretty menial tasks. It produces professional-looking products, but the products are wrong more often than they are right. It's actually a big problem in my view because the documents look very convincing even though they have huge errors in them, But if it turns out that AI can do the work of the associates, then there is no need to hire these firms in the first place. I will just buy the software myself. Why would I pay a biglaw partner $1500 an hour to run software?

You realize your company and your department will start paying for customized LLMs that are attuned to your industry and your work. You won't just sign up for ChatGPT...you will employ a "custom ChatGPT" where you and the company will start populating the LLMs with correct data. As you train those custom models, it will be right far more than wrong.

Also, ChatGPT can spit out an entire brief in like 60 seconds...it is easier to edit and fact-check the work vs. creating the brief by a human.

If your company has any sense, you will start reducing your use of outside law firms. You won't pay a BigLaw partner $1500/hour to run software, you will use that partner for just the high-value/high-complexity work, obviously for any trials, etc.

We’ve tried out a number of these products already. The work product looks pretty but actually sucks. It may get better in the future, but I’m not impressed so far.

It doesn't sound like you have, or you wouldn't say "we tried out a number of these products"...because these products would involve many months of training the LLMs to your business and your department needs. Sounds like your company or your department is trying to use something off-the-shelf...do you have any in-house Machine Learning or LLM-trained developers even doing any customization?

I don't think they spent months training them and they were not custom built. I'm no AI expert. If it's true that these tools are only good when they are customized on a particular company's or department's data, then that makes my point even more that these tools aren't going to be driving up profits-per-partner at law firms. Each company would be buying and training the models for themselves, and law firms would get cut out of the equation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Early retired Biglaw partner here. I remember sitting in partner meetings in my old firm over a decade ago and thinking to myself “how surreal is it that every person in this room with me right now is making $1 million a year or more?”

They definitely were. No lying involved.

As for the posters who scoff at these lawyers as merely “servicing the rich” or having to work around the clock to make their money, that’s only true to an extent. After a few years as an equity partner most Biglaw partners have made enough money that they could walk away rich if they wanted to and just let the money that they’ve already earned work for them. They just choose not to because it’s not in their nature.

My own personal situation is a good illustration. When I left my law firm around a decade ago, in my early 50s, I had been an equity partner for about ten years. I was counsel for about 10 years before that. As counsel, I made in the low six figures. As an equity partner, I started in the mid six figures and finished at just under $1 million. I was one of the lowest paid equity partners in my firm - a very well known one in DC.

My current net worth is about $8 million. I haven’t worked at all since leaving Biglaw. My net worth is about double what it was since leaving my firm thanks to the market, etc.

So, no, personally I’m not rich but I have to figure that my former partners - who all made more money than me and who all keep working - have net worths well into 8 figures. It’s impossible for them not to have that much money at this point. That they are continuing to work is a personality thing. They just can’t stop themselves.

I wonder if your partners who continue to work really do have those net worth figures. A number of partners in my firm, who have been here for a while, have surprisingly little saved. At least the ones who will admit it. Notwithstanding the fact that they’ve been working as partners for 10+ years making easily more than $2 million a year, a handful of them said they don’t even have $2 million saved. One of them told me that he was hoping that he could save at least $300,000 this year, which will be the first time he’s ever been able to do that. It’s breathtaking.

But they each have multiple homes, they fly first class or private, kids are in private schools, they vacation overseas, at least once a year, so at deer valley and vail with private lessons and private chefs, etc. etc. etc. There’s no shortage of ways to spend your money, and these guys seemed to have found many of them.

Golden handcuffs at its finest.

Early Retired Biglaw partner here. I doubt you’re right. For one thing, most Biglaw firm force equity partners to contribute ungodly amounts to tax-deferred retirement plans. You wouldn’t believe the amount of forced savings. So, yea, there are without a doubt many Biglaw partners who don’t save a lot of their take home earnings, but those same lawyers are getting richer and richer just the same.

PP here. I am right. They told me. Why would anybody lie about not having any money saved? Plus the firm has an unfunded pension, which is why these guys aren’t saving anything in addition to the Measley tax advantage accounts that are available to them like a 401(k) and a Keogh plan. Yes, there is some forced savings, but these guys do the minimum and save nothing on top of it, and wait till they’re 60 and hope to God. The firm continues to fund the pension. Not me, I’m getting out early like you did.

Fair enough, but in my firm at least the forced savings wasn’t “measly” - it was well into six figures. When I left my firm I rolled over nearly a million dollars from the firm’s defined benefit plan that I had been forced to contribute to into my IRA. My IRA also had a couple million dollars in it. And, again, I was among the lowest paid partners and my firm didn’t have a reputation for being among the highest in terms of PPP.

These partners who tell you that they don’t have any money saved, generally speaking how long have they been at their firms as partners?

DH is full equity partner at big law firm. He makes low seven figures, but hoping to hit $5M within a few years (yes, he is good a business development).

There is plenty of forced saving for law partners - we save $300K-$500k per year, but DH opted into max savings plans. This year we plan to save an additional $800-$1M (post tax).

We live a very nice lifestyle (large home, kids in private school, multiple overseas vacations) but no second home and I am not into luxury stuff. I also work (a real job/career) so I think people assume DH makes less than he does.

Most of the partners DH works with (and he’s not in a super lucrative specialty) have vacation homes, travel a lot, and have SAH partners. He doesn’t know what individual partners make, but the majority of partners make less than $1M - only those who are really good at business development or are really senior make more. So I can fully believe they aren’t saving a lot.

Also, our kids are in private school, and I would guess the majority of parents there don’t make $1M, but mid to high six figure incomes. They live as nicely as we do, so I really think you can’t tell past a certain point.

Ok, shrug. I guess I have to take all of you at your word. I just find it hard to believe that I (we) were such a unicorn. I guess we were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of well paid lawyers on this thread. But reminder: No one on earth makes more money than successful business owners. The super rich don't get that way because someone is paying them a salary. They get rich from owning businesses that become incredibly valuable.

Very true.

Lawyers do, however, know how to read something, identify relevance, and respond accordingly.

You keep harping on business owners having a better chance of becoming “super rich”. No sh$t. It’s an entirely different risk-reward calculus: exponentially more absolute failures, proportionally much less likely to be a moderately successful low-level millionaire, and a slightly greater but still infinitesimally small likelihood of becoming “super rich”.

In any case, that’s not at all the subject of this thread, so I don’t know why you keep posting different variations of the same statement.

Oh wait, yes I do. Envy and insecurity.

PP here. This was actually the only post I wrote. I think you're confusing me with someone else who doesn't think being a lawyer would be incredibly boring. I'm not jealous. I own a TON of Nvidia stock I bought ten years ago so honestly I'm probably a lot wealthier than you.

It is hard to hold Nvidia for 10 years...so man ups-and-downs...you have some fortitude to hold. I was lucky that my kid who knows AI casually mentioned to me 18 months ago that he thought Open AI's new release may actually be something so buy Nvidia as a way to play it. What a ride since then.

I agree with you and I find the entire DC / BigLaw mentality to just be so silly. It reminds me of the scene in the Social Network when Sean Parker says "$1MM is not cool"...at which point the BigLaw partner would stand up and say "heck yeah it's cool" and walk out of the meeting.

I travel a ton to SFO and work with start-ups and the environment is electrifying and optimistic and people dream and think big...and DC BigLaw is all about just grinding to earn your $2MM per year.

FWIW, I know several BigLaw partners and NONE want their kids to follow in their path...a large part of that is because they know generative AI will be disruptive, because their own firms are figuring out how to incorporate it to make their lives richer, but cut down on the number of pesky associates. Anything to improve profits-per-partner baby!

They think reducing the number of associates is going to improve profits per partner? Do they not know how law firm profitability works? You need those associates billing hours to get those profits. No associates, no billable hours, no profits.

Believe me...they are figuring out how to maintain or raise billings and reduce their associates. They are also starting to experiment with fixed contracts / fixed monthly billings.

I always found BigLaw to be a weird antagonistic business model...partners seem to kind of despise most of their associates. Also the weird dynamic of partners not receiving any benefits from the firm, but all the associates and staff do...and again, they kind of despise staff for having to pay for those benefits.

Law firms have been trying out different billing arrangements for years. I started my legal career in biglaw over 20 years ago and they were saying back then that there were going to transition off the billable hour. It's never really worked.

I'm in house now. From what I've seen of AI so far, I'm very skeptical it can be very useful for anything other than pretty menial tasks. It produces professional-looking products, but the products are wrong more often than they are right. It's actually a big problem in my view because the documents look very convincing even though they have huge errors in them, But if it turns out that AI can do the work of the associates, then there is no need to hire these firms in the first place. I will just buy the software myself. Why would I pay a biglaw partner $1500 an hour to run software?

You realize your company and your department will start paying for customized LLMs that are attuned to your industry and your work. You won't just sign up for ChatGPT...you will employ a "custom ChatGPT" where you and the company will start populating the LLMs with correct data. As you train those custom models, it will be right far more than wrong.

Also, ChatGPT can spit out an entire brief in like 60 seconds...it is easier to edit and fact-check the work vs. creating the brief by a human.

If your company has any sense, you will start reducing your use of outside law firms. You won't pay a BigLaw partner $1500/hour to run software, you will use that partner for just the high-value/high-complexity work, obviously for any trials, etc.

We’ve tried out a number of these products already. The work product looks pretty but actually sucks. It may get better in the future, but I’m not impressed so far.

It doesn't sound like you have, or you wouldn't say "we tried out a number of these products"...because these products would involve many months of training the LLMs to your business and your department needs. Sounds like your company or your department is trying to use something off-the-shelf...do you have any in-house Machine Learning or LLM-trained developers even doing any customization?

I don't think they spent months training them and they were not custom built. I'm no AI expert. If it's true that these tools are only good when they are customized on a particular company's or department's data, then that makes my point even more that these tools aren't going to be driving up profits-per-partner at law firms. Each company would be buying and training the models for themselves, and law firms would get cut out of the equation.

Except a BigLaw firm is going to train their LLM for a wide number of practices. Your company may be involved say with lots of environmental compliance stuff in the oil & gas industry, so maybe you stop outsourcing some of the low-level compliance work to BigLaw.

However, your company probably only does one acquisition per year, or maybe only raises 3rd party capital every couple of years...there are lots of things requiring legal help that aren't core to your business and you will probably hire Skadden that does 1,000 M&A deals per year.

You are correct that it could impact Skadden's profits...Skadden can't just keep with the tons of associates model, when Kravath decides they can do the work faster and cheaper (not lower rate, but fewer hours) because they know how to leverage Generative AI. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out in the legal industry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of well paid lawyers on this thread. But reminder: No one on earth makes more money than successful business owners. The super rich don't get that way because someone is paying them a salary. They get rich from owning businesses that become incredibly valuable.

Very true.

Lawyers do, however, know how to read something, identify relevance, and respond accordingly.

You keep harping on business owners having a better chance of becoming “super rich”. No sh$t. It’s an entirely different risk-reward calculus: exponentially more absolute failures, proportionally much less likely to be a moderately successful low-level millionaire, and a slightly greater but still infinitesimally small likelihood of becoming “super rich”.

In any case, that’s not at all the subject of this thread, so I don’t know why you keep posting different variations of the same statement.

Oh wait, yes I do. Envy and insecurity.

PP here. This was actually the only post I wrote. I think you're confusing me with someone else who doesn't think being a lawyer would be incredibly boring. I'm not jealous. I own a TON of Nvidia stock I bought ten years ago so honestly I'm probably a lot wealthier than you.

It is hard to hold Nvidia for 10 years...so man ups-and-downs...you have some fortitude to hold. I was lucky that my kid who knows AI casually mentioned to me 18 months ago that he thought Open AI's new release may actually be something so buy Nvidia as a way to play it. What a ride since then.

I agree with you and I find the entire DC / BigLaw mentality to just be so silly. It reminds me of the scene in the Social Network when Sean Parker says "$1MM is not cool"...at which point the BigLaw partner would stand up and say "heck yeah it's cool" and walk out of the meeting.

I travel a ton to SFO and work with start-ups and the environment is electrifying and optimistic and people dream and think big...and DC BigLaw is all about just grinding to earn your $2MM per year.

FWIW, I know several BigLaw partners and NONE want their kids to follow in their path...a large part of that is because they know generative AI will be disruptive, because their own firms are figuring out how to incorporate it to make their lives richer, but cut down on the number of pesky associates. Anything to improve profits-per-partner baby!

They think reducing the number of associates is going to improve profits per partner? Do they not know how law firm profitability works? You need those associates billing hours to get those profits. No associates, no billable hours, no profits.

Believe me...they are figuring out how to maintain or raise billings and reduce their associates. They are also starting to experiment with fixed contracts / fixed monthly billings.

I always found BigLaw to be a weird antagonistic business model...partners seem to kind of despise most of their associates. Also the weird dynamic of partners not receiving any benefits from the firm, but all the associates and staff do...and again, they kind of despise staff for having to pay for those benefits.

Law firms have been trying out different billing arrangements for years. I started my legal career in biglaw over 20 years ago and they were saying back then that there were going to transition off the billable hour. It's never really worked.

I'm in house now. From what I've seen of AI so far, I'm very skeptical it can be very useful for anything other than pretty menial tasks. It produces professional-looking products, but the products are wrong more often than they are right. It's actually a big problem in my view because the documents look very convincing even though they have huge errors in them, But if it turns out that AI can do the work of the associates, then there is no need to hire these firms in the first place. I will just buy the software myself. Why would I pay a biglaw partner $1500 an hour to run software?

You realize your company and your department will start paying for customized LLMs that are attuned to your industry and your work. You won't just sign up for ChatGPT...you will employ a "custom ChatGPT" where you and the company will start populating the LLMs with correct data. As you train those custom models, it will be right far more than wrong.

Also, ChatGPT can spit out an entire brief in like 60 seconds...it is easier to edit and fact-check the work vs. creating the brief by a human.

If your company has any sense, you will start reducing your use of outside law firms. You won't pay a BigLaw partner $1500/hour to run software, you will use that partner for just the high-value/high-complexity work, obviously for any trials, etc.

We’ve tried out a number of these products already. The work product looks pretty but actually sucks. It may get better in the future, but I’m not impressed so far.

It doesn't sound like you have, or you wouldn't say "we tried out a number of these products"...because these products would involve many months of training the LLMs to your business and your department needs. Sounds like your company or your department is trying to use something off-the-shelf...do you have any in-house Machine Learning or LLM-trained developers even doing any customization?

I don't think they spent months training them and they were not custom built. I'm no AI expert. If it's true that these tools are only good when they are customized on a particular company's or department's data, then that makes my point even more that these tools aren't going to be driving up profits-per-partner at law firms. Each company would be buying and training the models for themselves, and law firms would get cut out of the equation.

Except a BigLaw firm is going to train their LLM for a wide number of practices. Your company may be involved say with lots of environmental compliance stuff in the oil & gas industry, so maybe you stop outsourcing some of the low-level compliance work to BigLaw.

However, your company probably only does one acquisition per year, or maybe only raises 3rd party capital every couple of years...there are lots of things requiring legal help that aren't core to your business and you will probably hire Skadden that does 1,000 M&A deals per year.

You are correct that it could impact Skadden's profits...Skadden can't just keep with the tons of associates model, when Kravath decides they can do the work faster and cheaper (not lower rate, but fewer hours) because they know how to leverage Generative AI. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out in the legal industry.

lol “Kravath”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of well paid lawyers on this thread. But reminder: No one on earth makes more money than successful business owners. The super rich don't get that way because someone is paying them a salary. They get rich from owning businesses that become incredibly valuable.

Very true.

Lawyers do, however, know how to read something, identify relevance, and respond accordingly.

You keep harping on business owners having a better chance of becoming “super rich”. No sh$t. It’s an entirely different risk-reward calculus: exponentially more absolute failures, proportionally much less likely to be a moderately successful low-level millionaire, and a slightly greater but still infinitesimally small likelihood of becoming “super rich”.

In any case, that’s not at all the subject of this thread, so I don’t know why you keep posting different variations of the same statement.

Oh wait, yes I do. Envy and insecurity.

PP here. This was actually the only post I wrote. I think you're confusing me with someone else who doesn't think being a lawyer would be incredibly boring. I'm not jealous. I own a TON of Nvidia stock I bought ten years ago so honestly I'm probably a lot wealthier than you.

It is hard to hold Nvidia for 10 years...so man ups-and-downs...you have some fortitude to hold. I was lucky that my kid who knows AI casually mentioned to me 18 months ago that he thought Open AI's new release may actually be something so buy Nvidia as a way to play it. What a ride since then.

I agree with you and I find the entire DC / BigLaw mentality to just be so silly. It reminds me of the scene in the Social Network when Sean Parker says "$1MM is not cool"...at which point the BigLaw partner would stand up and say "heck yeah it's cool" and walk out of the meeting.

I travel a ton to SFO and work with start-ups and the environment is electrifying and optimistic and people dream and think big...and DC BigLaw is all about just grinding to earn your $2MM per year.

FWIW, I know several BigLaw partners and NONE want their kids to follow in their path...a large part of that is because they know generative AI will be disruptive, because their own firms are figuring out how to incorporate it to make their lives richer, but cut down on the number of pesky associates. Anything to improve profits-per-partner baby!

They think reducing the number of associates is going to improve profits per partner? Do they not know how law firm profitability works? You need those associates billing hours to get those profits. No associates, no billable hours, no profits.

Believe me...they are figuring out how to maintain or raise billings and reduce their associates. They are also starting to experiment with fixed contracts / fixed monthly billings.

I always found BigLaw to be a weird antagonistic business model...partners seem to kind of despise most of their associates. Also the weird dynamic of partners not receiving any benefits from the firm, but all the associates and staff do...and again, they kind of despise staff for having to pay for those benefits.

Law firms have been trying out different billing arrangements for years. I started my legal career in biglaw over 20 years ago and they were saying back then that there were going to transition off the billable hour. It's never really worked.

I'm in house now. From what I've seen of AI so far, I'm very skeptical it can be very useful for anything other than pretty menial tasks. It produces professional-looking products, but the products are wrong more often than they are right. It's actually a big problem in my view because the documents look very convincing even though they have huge errors in them, But if it turns out that AI can do the work of the associates, then there is no need to hire these firms in the first place. I will just buy the software myself. Why would I pay a biglaw partner $1500 an hour to run software?

You realize your company and your department will start paying for customized LLMs that are attuned to your industry and your work. You won't just sign up for ChatGPT...you will employ a "custom ChatGPT" where you and the company will start populating the LLMs with correct data. As you train those custom models, it will be right far more than wrong.

Also, ChatGPT can spit out an entire brief in like 60 seconds...it is easier to edit and fact-check the work vs. creating the brief by a human.

If your company has any sense, you will start reducing your use of outside law firms. You won't pay a BigLaw partner $1500/hour to run software, you will use that partner for just the high-value/high-complexity work, obviously for any trials, etc.

DP. My firm is partnering with a big private sector firm on AI, but it has huge - and I mean huge - hurdles. “Right far more often than wrong” means wrong a long means sued for professional negligence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Early retired Biglaw partner here. I remember sitting in partner meetings in my old firm over a decade ago and thinking to myself “how surreal is it that every person in this room with me right now is making $1 million a year or more?”

They definitely were. No lying involved.

As for the posters who scoff at these lawyers as merely “servicing the rich” or having to work around the clock to make their money, that’s only true to an extent. After a few years as an equity partner most Biglaw partners have made enough money that they could walk away rich if they wanted to and just let the money that they’ve already earned work for them. They just choose not to because it’s not in their nature.

My own personal situation is a good illustration. When I left my law firm around a decade ago, in my early 50s, I had been an equity partner for about ten years. I was counsel for about 10 years before that. As counsel, I made in the low six figures. As an equity partner, I started in the mid six figures and finished at just under $1 million. I was one of the lowest paid equity partners in my firm - a very well known one in DC.

My current net worth is about $8 million. I haven’t worked at all since leaving Biglaw. My net worth is about double what it was since leaving my firm thanks to the market, etc.

So, no, personally I’m not rich but I have to figure that my former partners - who all made more money than me and who all keep working - have net worths well into 8 figures. It’s impossible for them not to have that much money at this point. That they are continuing to work is a personality thing. They just can’t stop themselves.

This is really helpful to understand the economics of big law. You can do really, really well but it’s not tech or LBO money….but it’s really good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Early retired Biglaw partner here. I remember sitting in partner meetings in my old firm over a decade ago and thinking to myself “how surreal is it that every person in this room with me right now is making $1 million a year or more?”

They definitely were. No lying involved.

As for the posters who scoff at these lawyers as merely “servicing the rich” or having to work around the clock to make their money, that’s only true to an extent. After a few years as an equity partner most Biglaw partners have made enough money that they could walk away rich if they wanted to and just let the money that they’ve already earned work for them. They just choose not to because it’s not in their nature.

My own personal situation is a good illustration. When I left my law firm around a decade ago, in my early 50s, I had been an equity partner for about ten years. I was counsel for about 10 years before that. As counsel, I made in the low six figures. As an equity partner, I started in the mid six figures and finished at just under $1 million. I was one of the lowest paid equity partners in my firm - a very well known one in DC.

My current net worth is about $8 million. I haven’t worked at all since leaving Biglaw. My net worth is about double what it was since leaving my firm thanks to the market, etc.

So, no, personally I’m not rich but I have to figure that my former partners - who all made more money than me and who all keep working - have net worths well into 8 figures. It’s impossible for them not to have that much money at this point. That they are continuing to work is a personality thing. They just can’t stop themselves.

This is really helpful to understand the economics of big law. You can do really, really well but it’s not tech or LBO money….but it’s really good.

Early retired Biglaw partner here. Yea, I don’t regret walking away and am happy that none of my kids went into law, but I will say that posters who aren’t in Biglaw often underestimate how much Biglaw partners make or dismiss the numbers being reported here as fiction, which they definitely are not. Many Biglaw partners make insane money. And, yes, people in other fields - tech, etc - make even more money at the high end, but there’s always somebody making more.

[Anonymous]

Why is this thread about robot lawyers now, please circle back to fun things like private chefs and vacation concierges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know anyone who does either (I mean I know they make a lot but I’ve never discussed salary). But honestly 1M pre-tax isn’t that much in this area. It’s pretty easy to blow that much on a nice house with a good commute, a few kids in private school, kids activities, etc. I think that in this area you would need more like 2M to live the lifestyle you imagine you could get for 1M.

Stop it. Our HHI is about 750k and I honestly don’t know what to do with our money. I *could* spend it, but I am not careful with expenses and never look at my checking/credit card balances, and still my biggest challenge is staying disciplined with investing cash and not just letting it accumulate.