What's a "Big Law" job like?
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Anonymous
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This is purely to satisfy my own curiosity as I'm well established in my own career (which is obviously not law).
For a late-30s / early 40s lawyer at a "Big Law" firm, what is the work life balance ... i.e., how many hours of 'at work' work & how many hours of 'at home' work are required? What's the stress level? i.e., is it stressful from an existential point of view ("I've got to win more cases & more clients or I get fired") or just from a desire to continually climb the ladder & earn more? Assuming a top-ish performer, what's the annual comp look like? Maybe not for the top of the top person that's a super achiever & 100% career focused, but for someone that is very good at his/her job, but only puts a B+ effort into the internal politics side, and/or is satisfied doing enough to be top quartile but doesn't care about top decile? Is the work satisfying or intellectually stimulating? I've always wondered what this job would be like ... all the stress of 'making partner' and meeting billable hours targets turned me off back when I was pondering careers, but it certainly seems like a potentially lucrative gig for those that put the time in. |
Anonymous
| It's soul sucking and they aren't making many people partners anymore. Just search the archives here and you'll see. |
Anonymous
| Dh leaves at 6:30-7 am. He gets home between 7-8 on an average night. He works a little less than that on Saturdays and on Sundays goes nowhere without his phone. He is not litigation which would be longer hours. |
Anonymous
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Litigation isn't necessarily longer hours, which is partly good and partly crappy. (Before I left BigLaw for the feds, I did litigation.)
Litigation is all peaks and valleys. You're either up past your eyeballs in work (when I had trials, it was all-day, every-day, no rest for the weary) or it's slow.... in which case, you're stressed about not meeting your hours (if you're an associate) so you can't even enjoy the downtimes! |
Anonymous
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There are a bunch of threads about this if you're really interested. I think this post mostly summed it up:
[Post New]11/27/2013 08:58 Subject: big law--what are your billables for this year [Up] Anonymous Anonymous wrote: Not a lawyer, but I find this thread immensely depressing. So y'all bill on average 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year? Eight hours out of every single day you are working are billable! That sounds insane. Do you bill for lunch and bathroom breaks? Do BigLaw restrooms have places to plug in your laptop/phone in the stalls? Just curious. What I really want to know is how many hours do you actually spend at the office each year? I'm on pace for around 2500. During the week, I work from 8:30 - 7:00 in the office, put the kid to bed, and do a few more hours of work. I could probably cut back the hours during the work week a bit if I were willing to work most of the day one or both weekend days, but I'd rather protect the weekend (by which I mean, I try to bill under 2 hours per weekend day). It sounds kind of awful, but I enjoy my work, and I see my family most days and a lot on the weekends. I also do a fair amount of travel. The major downside is it feels like I don't have any hobbies or enough time to spend with friends. I work and I'm a parent and that's basically it. |
Anonymous
| You work a lot of hours. You make a lot of money. Some work is interesting; some is boring. Some people are nice, some are not. That's about it. |
Anonymous
What's "a lot" of money? Use the definition of worker's performance provided in the question. |
Anonymous
Do you spend any time with your spouse? Have any down time? |
Anonymous
| I used to work in BigLaw but got out when I started to think it was "normal" work every saturday and sunday and bill 240+ hrs every month. Left it behind for a new career where I get paid less but feel much happier and have a lot more free time. No regrets whatsoever. I got my life back and I'm so thankful. |
Anonymous
| 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. |
Anonymous
Is 70k even possible in big law? I would have thought a first year associate might be at $160 or $170. Mind you, I'm not a lawyer |
Anonymous
It depends on what you define as big law and what city. At an AmLaw 100 firm in DC, no, it's not possible . I think the bottom there is around $140. |
Anonymous
"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? |
Anonymous
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If you bill 220 (work 300) hours a month, you would generally have a six year shelf life if you wanted it. Your salary would grow from 160k to about 290k. If you billed 250 (worked 320) hours, at year ten you may be making between 350k and 500k. If you later make partner, you would start at around $700k but you take home would be less than when you made $500. In a few years, you may make closer to $900k. Rainmakers can make up to $5m/year.
This is a generalization about actual big law. Obviously it varies and there are many stories to prove me wrong. This is not what mid law or small law firms pay, those are all over the board, although typically (not always) lower, sometimes much lower. |
Anonymous
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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. |