Being a lawyer means being on all the time

[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 not the case for most in-house or government attorneys. The trick is finding a good niche practice area and lateral to the better positions. Pay won't be as good, but it will still be good. I did my time in the trenches for a decade after law school and moved into a great federal attorney job, non-supervisory GS-15. I get to spend so much time with my kids, and we travel a lot too.

But besides the good work hours, I function as both a legal and business advisor to the government decision-makers. As a PP said, these are good problems, helping to navigate and make good strategic decisions for the agency.

If my kids ever want to be lawyers, I will say federal government or bust.

[Anonymous]

I'm a government transactional attorney and we very much can leave work at work. I have a family member who is prosecutor and she can get called to homicide scenes in the middle of the night, it's rough.

There's a lot of variety within the legal profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Do in house leverage outside counsel or other less senior attorneys? Like when you say DH is home by 6 is it because either some outside counsel or someone more junior is probably working past six on something they can review when they get in at 8:30 am? Curious what they say if you ask…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Do in house leverage outside counsel or other less senior attorneys? Like when you say DH is home by 6 is it because either some outside counsel or someone more junior is probably working past six on something they can review when they get in at 8:30 am? Curious what they say if you ask…

I’m not that PP but it doesn’t work like this. You do utilize outside counsel but GCs of major corporations can’t check out at 5. Small companies, sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Do in house leverage outside counsel or other less senior attorneys? Like when you say DH is home by 6 is it because either some outside counsel or someone more junior is probably working past six on something they can review when they get in at 8:30 am? Curious what they say if you ask…

I’m not that PP but it doesn’t work like this. You do utilize outside counsel but GCs of major corporations can’t check out at 5. Small companies, sure.

Not a lawyer, but how do firms choose to go with outside counsel vs an in-house lawyer? I thought the purpose of in-house lawyers was to avoid the use of outside counsel?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Do in house leverage outside counsel or other less senior attorneys? Like when you say DH is home by 6 is it because either some outside counsel or someone more junior is probably working past six on something they can review when they get in at 8:30 am? Curious what they say if you ask…

I’m not that PP but it doesn’t work like this. You do utilize outside counsel but GCs of major corporations can’t check out at 5. Small companies, sure.

Not a lawyer, but how do firms choose to go with outside counsel vs an in-house lawyer? I thought the purpose of in-house lawyers was to avoid the use of outside counsel?

Typically outside counsel is used for specific specialties that in-house counsel doesn’t have. So, for instance, you would hire a firm to draft a complex merger agreement because corporate M&A is highly specialized. Often they work in tandem, so you might have an outside M&A team working with an in-house team that are specialists in other areas.

Another example is IP. It’s common in technically sophisticated companies with valuable IP to have in-house IP counsel who hire outside counsel to draft patent applications.

It’s less common to use outside counsel for commercial agreements where you might have an in-house lawyer with contract drafting experience.

[Anonymous]

Not for me!

I’m smoking pot and watching reruns of the Wire. I’m emphatically not “on all the time.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Exactly this.