What's a "Big Law" job like?

[Anonymous]

I completely understand what pp is saying. It was a bit different for me because I am a parties and I had significant client contact. So I really loved a lot of it, and I stayed for 6 years. They wanted me to stay longer, but I knew I didn't want this life forever. I didn't sleep. I would break down and cry hysterically at least once a month wanting the work to just slow down for a minute, but half hour later I was always working again. I didn't see daylight. I couldn't make any plans. I had to tell those that I supervised that they had to cancel birthday plans. I called people on their honeymoons and asked them work questions by the pool. My period would stop for months because I was messing up my body by switching timezones so frequently and often working from 6am in DC to midnight in LA and then going out for a couple hours with a partner for a couple hours before starting meetings at 8, repeated in some way every day. I would have skipped the going out but 1. It was my job and 2. It was the only fun I could have, ever. I loved it. I hated it. I knew I couldn't do it forever and I was watching partners did young from it on a regular basis. I have a much more sustainable life as a government attorney now, but I only make $130k and I can't bounce from VIP club to VIP club anymore. I'm not working today though, which is something I never could have said at the firm - sure there were a handful of days in which I didn't work during that time, but I never knew they would occur until after they had passed.

[Anonymous]

I tell kids that if their aim is to make money, try out Wall Street before law school. Law school will always be there.....

[Anonymous]

What's it like? Imagine hell. Then think of something that is a million times worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's it like? Imagine hell. Then think of something that is a million times worse.

The drama queens don't last long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nobody is answering the comp question because the comp ranges from about $70,000 to about $20,000,000. Maybe we can narrow it a bit if OP specifies a year out of law school.

"Late 30s /early 40s" implies ~10-15 years out of law school I'd think (don't flame me with 'everyone takes a different path'). Assume that's early partner stage. What's comp there?

not early partner stage anymore, necessarily .... fewer partners being made, most of them/many non-equity ... could easily be associate of "of counsel" time ...

and btw, so far no one has mentioned the complete lack of job security whether you're an associate, of counsel, or even an equity partner....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was there out of law school for a couple years, then left to do consulting. I was well-liked by the partners. It was wrong for me, for the following reasons:

I felt trapped in my office (in a large city, in a skyscraper). I used to fantasize about cutting a small hole in the window to get fresh air.

The fabulous and expensive suits are fun until the novelty wears off. I just didn't like dressing up every day for a date with books and computers and copy machines. (I wasn't senior enough to get out from behind the desk work and meet clients and go to the courtroom)

I used to wish I could file my documents in alphabetical order, or have some other time to just zone out--my secretary said, "No, that's what I'm here for; your job is to do the heavy thinking." I can do heavy thinking, but didn't want to do it ten hours a day…

I did not date for two years. I was very attractive and I'm not weird, but am not a partier and don't go to bars. I just couldn't meet anybody in the few hours a week I had off (I was working on the weekends, too).

At one point I called my mom and begged her to drive over (2.5 hour drive) to do my laundry for me while I worked. After that, I went and bought 100 pairs of underwear so I wouldn't have to do my laundry.

Billing my time, every 6 minutes, is some sort of hell to me. Hell. My uncle, who had ran a few small companies and who was very entrepreneurial, had told me basically not to pick a profession where you trade your time for money. He had told me the better way is to make widgets, because if there is twice the demand for widgets, you can produce this without giving up twice the time in your life. I was young and didn't know what the heck he was talking about. I remember asking what a widget was. Years later, when I got that first timesheet, that conversation came back to me and I understood.

Uncle was right. The model is broken. Time is your inventory (in 99% of the cases) and you can never make more of it.