Lawyers employed part time, tell us how your compensation is structured.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my friends tried working p.t. and took a 25% pay reduction in order to take Fridays off. She ended up working from home on her "off days" because there was always something urgent that she needed to work on. She ended working the same schedule for less hours. She's back to FT now.

This pretty much describes my current situation. I am a non-equity partner at a mid-sized firm, came back from maternity leave at 80% so I could theoretically take a day off each week. In reality, because of my practice area, I can't really take a day off many weeks, so I still have child care for part of the day on my "day off" so I can deal with anything that comes up. I am paid 80% of the base salary I'd otherwise be paid, with an agreement stipulating that if I end up billing 1800 hours my pay will be "trued up" at the end of the year. Bonus is completely discretionary and based in part on hours. What is annoying is that many partners at my firm (and other firms) bill less than the expected number of hours and are still paid at 100% salary -- so I basically took a pay cut and am working more hours than many of the partners in the firm. It is still worth it to me at this particular point in time because of the immense flexibility I have, but still...not exactly fair.

In my view, the main things you should be concerned with are (a) will they pay you fairly based on hours worked even if you exceed whatever your actual commitment is, and (b) how unhappy will you be if you end up working more than part-time (i.e., how will you deal with childcare, etc.).

I saw a partner comp chart from my old firm (apparently they didn't realize it was on the intranet and accessible to everyone...oops!) and I was amazed at how certain partners that neither billed nor originated a lot of business were still being paid in the $400s.

Old white-shoe, lock-step firm?

Not like a Cravath or a Skadden, no. The people that generated business were definitely well paid, I was just surprised that they carried so much dead weight.

[Anonymous]

I work part time in the government (80%). Currently that means I'm "off" one day a week. However, I often end up working at least part of that day, and many evenings each week, because there's no way for my actual work to just be reduced by 20% (ie, if I'm handling a project with a deadline and there are related meetings/previous deadlines/etc, I have to do the work, even if it requires more than 80% in a given week). My benefits are reduced and my leave is reduced. I love my job, especially the subject matter, but am actually considering moving to a part time counsel position in big law because I am working a ton and could make more money working not much more than I am now doing similarly interesting work. I'm interested to see what other responses you get.