The golden handcuffs of biglaw

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why dont lawyers pushback against the boomers and demand to get paid the same for 40 hours a week. Millennials are doing it for all other industries including tech

? Bc if they’re only working 40 hrs/wk that’s all they’ll be bringing in. Do you not understand how partnerships work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Early retired Biglaw partner here. It’s difficult to avoid the golden handcuffs but it absolutely can be done. Don’t buy a expensive house. Send your kids to public schools and good state colleges. Avoid extravagant vacations and luxury automobiles. In short, just live reasonably.

I distinctly recall the reaction of one of my partners when I told him I was checking out: “I’m so jealous. I could never afford that.” The guy was probably making double what I was at the time - if I had to guess, I’d say between $1.5 and $2 million - and after taxes, mandatory retirement and capital contributions, health insurance, etc. he probably took home half of that. He had a $4 million house, a beach house, three and kids enrolled in top DC privates since kindergarten. My understanding from social media is that the kids ended up in colleges of the Tulane/NYU/Emory variety. If that’s the life you’re going to choose, it’s going to cost you. It’s that simple.

Curious how old you were when you retired and what your finances looked like when you made the decision? I am in BL and am looking for an early retirement (still have a ways to go as 39), but interested in hearing stories!

I was 53. I had spent 27 years (!) in Biglaw before retiring, basically 1/3 of the time an an associate, 1/3 of the time as counsel, and 1/3 of the time as (equity) partner. I married and had kids young, and made the decision to walk away after my youngest of four kids graduated from college. At the time of my retirement (just shy of a decade ago), I had a net worth of $4.7 million, about half of which was my retirement account (invested entirely in stock index funds) and the other half a combination of my brokerage account (also all index funds), real estate equity, and the cash value of my capital account with my law firm. With all of the kids out of college, our low interest monthly mortgage payments on our DC rowhome fully covered by our basement rental, and the firm allowing us continued access to its group health care plan (with us paying the full premium, obviously), I was confident that we could make it work.

Fast forward nearly a decade, our net worth is now $7 million (down from a high of $8 million a year or so ago), so we're doing just fine. The one big change that I've made since retiring is hiring someone (a little too late, in retrospect) to manage my retirement accounts, so I'm now much more diversified than when I first retired.

I haven't regretted my decision ever. Not once. Not even for a nanosecond. In fact, I've never actually met anyone who has left biglaw and regretted it.

[Anonymous]

^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

Honestly, I managed to carve out a pretty good amount of time for my family when I was working. My insistence on having as much of a life as possible outside of my job was probably why it took me a longer time than others to make partner in the first place. While my spouse obviously took on the lion's share of raising the kids, I was never an absent parent.

So, no, I don't regret missed time with my family. People have to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

NP. I second this, but I wonder if the truth is that PP probably came from a background where dad went out to work and provided resources for the family, and didn't get much more involved. I think a lot of guys of his generation and older were like that. So early retirement is more about himself and getting to do things he wants to do. So trading time with one's family when young for time for an early retirement that's probably focused on himself.

I think there is a generational shift happening where guys want to be much more involved with their kids. I know I do. Because I'm a government attorney, I get to WFH 4 days a week, eat lunch with my little girl at her school a couple of times a month, and I do things like Mystery Reader and chaperone. I spend all day Saturday and Sunday with her and my wife, and it's rare that either my wife and I have to work on weekends. Heaven on earth, my friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

Honestly, I managed to carve out a pretty good amount of time for my family when I was working. My insistence on having as much of a life as possible outside of my job was probably why it took me a longer time than others to make partner in the first place. While my spouse obviously took on the lion's share of raising the kids, I was never an absent parent.

So, no, I don't regret missed time with my family. People have to work.

I think the point is people don't have to work that much. People only have to work that much if they want outsized money and toys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

These days (esp since covid), law firm partnership generally means a LOT of flexibility on when and where you work. You still work a lot of hours, but partners today are with their kids ALOT. It's not like 2004.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

These days (esp since covid), law firm partnership generally means a LOT of flexibility on when and where you work. You still work a lot of hours, but partners today are with their kids ALOT. It's not like 2004.

Depends on the definition of "with". Being in the same house is not the same as actually paying attention to them and developing a deep relationship with them.

[Anonymous]

Married to big law equity partner who started in big law, went into the government, and now back in big law, so have had ups and downs with income. DH now says he will stay in private practice, but we will see.

We bought a house we could afford if we only made $300k combined income. I work (make about $200k), so that number made sense to us. That being said, we bought a large house, so the carrying costs are expensive. But we could afford for DH to leave big law and not have to move.

We will not buy a second home and do reasonable vacations. We own normal cars and buy clothes on sale/ at stores like Off fifth.

We did put our kids in private school. We discussed how that would be golden handcuffs as it would be stupid to pull money out of savings to pay for tuition ($150k per year). But we have a plan and set exit points for leaving private school and it will work for the kids if DH decides he doesn’t want to do it any more. It really isn’t fair to them to just pull them out, so if you have kids in private school, you really need to find a plan to get them back to public school.

I know this sounds really privileged, but it can be hard to maintain financial discipline when you are already saving a lot. DH makes $2M+, we save several hundred thousand each year, and sometimes I just want to buy direct flight to our vacation destination, or whatever. But we are trying to maintain low carrying costs for our lifestyle, so need to watch all the pennies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

NP. I second this, but I wonder if the truth is that PP probably came from a background where dad went out to work and provided resources for the family, and didn't get much more involved. I think a lot of guys of his generation and older were like that. So early retirement is more about himself and getting to do things he wants to do. So trading time with one's family when young for time for an early retirement that's probably focused on himself.

I think there is a generational shift happening where guys want to be much more involved with their kids. I know I do. Because I'm a government attorney, I get to WFH 4 days a week, eat lunch with my little girl at her school a couple of times a month, and I do things like Mystery Reader and chaperone. I spend all day Saturday and Sunday with her and my wife, and it's rare that either my wife and I have to work on weekends. Heaven on earth, my friends.

I'm the early retired partner. I guess you didn't read my response. I was not a "dad who went to work and didn't get much more involved." Far from it. One anecdote to illustrate the point: the very first day of my job as an associate happened to coincide with my oldest kid's first day of first grade. I told the firm I'd be late for new associate orientation because I wanted to be with my kid at the bus stop to see them off. That's the tone I set.

When my kids were growing up I did virtually everything that you describe yourself now doing with your kid -- except the WFH part -- and I had four of them and not just one. I made it work because it was important to me. You don't know me or how involved I was or wasn't in my family upbringing, your generalization about my "generation's" approach to fatherhood is both inaccurate and even if it were accurate it doesn't apply to me specifically. Bottom line: Your choices are fine, you should feel confident about them, and you shouldn't feel the need to belittle mine or anyone else's to justify them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

Honestly, I managed to carve out a pretty good amount of time for my family when I was working. My insistence on having as much of a life as possible outside of my job was probably why it took me a longer time than others to make partner in the first place. While my spouse obviously took on the lion's share of raising the kids, I was never an absent parent.

So, no, I don't regret missed time with my family. People have to work.

I think the point is people don't have to work that much. People only have to work that much if they want outsized money and toys.

Right. In my case, I didn't want outsized money and toys. That's why we so easily lived below our means for all those years. Now I don't have to work at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

NP. I second this, but I wonder if the truth is that PP probably came from a background where dad went out to work and provided resources for the family, and didn't get much more involved. I think a lot of guys of his generation and older were like that. So early retirement is more about himself and getting to do things he wants to do. So trading time with one's family when young for time for an early retirement that's probably focused on himself.

I think there is a generational shift happening where guys want to be much more involved with their kids. I know I do. Because I'm a government attorney, I get to WFH 4 days a week, eat lunch with my little girl at her school a couple of times a month, and I do things like Mystery Reader and chaperone. I spend all day Saturday and Sunday with her and my wife, and it's rare that either my wife and I have to work on weekends. Heaven on earth, my friends.

I'm the early retired partner. I guess you didn't read my response. I was not a "dad who went to work and didn't get much more involved." Far from it. One anecdote to illustrate the point: the very first day of my job as an associate happened to coincide with my oldest kid's first day of first grade. I told the firm I'd be late for new associate orientation because I wanted to be with my kid at the bus stop to see them off. That's the tone I set.

When my kids were growing up I did virtually everything that you describe yourself now doing with your kid -- except the WFH part -- and I had four of them and not just one. I made it work because it was important to me. You don't know me or how involved I was or wasn't in my family upbringing, your generalization about my "generation's" approach to fatherhood is both inaccurate and even if it were accurate it doesn't apply to me specifically. Bottom line: Your choices are fine, you should feel confident about them, and you shouldn't feel the need to belittle mine or anyone else's to justify them.

I'm the PP. I understand what you are saying, but it is not physically possible for you to have worked the kinds of hours you would have had to work in a firm and be really present for four children, plus a spouse. It's just not. I spend every Sat and Sunday with my family...there's no way you could do that. I'm sure you did the best you could and I don't doubt that you believe it was sufficient. What you're really saying is that you found the time with your kids sufficient enough for you, because you also had this personal goal of early retirement...to live a life you enjoy as an empty nester. I'm not judging you, I'm simply stating the facts. To each his own. Many in my generation, including myself, are just not choosing that road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Early retired Biglaw partner here. It’s difficult to avoid the golden handcuffs but it absolutely can be done. Don’t buy a expensive house. Send your kids to public schools and good state colleges. Avoid extravagant vacations and luxury automobiles. In short, just live reasonably.

I distinctly recall the reaction of one of my partners when I told him I was checking out: “I’m so jealous. I could never afford that.” The guy was probably making double what I was at the time - if I had to guess, I’d say between $1.5 and $2 million - and after taxes, mandatory retirement and capital contributions, health insurance, etc. he probably took home half of that. He had a $4 million house, a beach house, three and kids enrolled in top DC privates since kindergarten. My understanding from social media is that the kids ended up in colleges of the Tulane/NYU/Emory variety. If that’s the life you’re going to choose, it’s going to cost you. It’s that simple.

Curious how old you were when you retired and what your finances looked like when you made the decision? I am in BL and am looking for an early retirement (still have a ways to go as 39), but interested in hearing stories!

I was 53. I had spent 27 years (!) in Biglaw before retiring, basically 1/3 of the time an an associate, 1/3 of the time as counsel, and 1/3 of the time as (equity) partner. I married and had kids young, and made the decision to walk away after my youngest of four kids graduated from college. At the time of my retirement (just shy of a decade ago), I had a net worth of $4.7 million, about half of which was my retirement account (invested entirely in stock index funds) and the other half a combination of my brokerage account (also all index funds), real estate equity, and the cash value of my capital account with my law firm. With all of the kids out of college, our low interest monthly mortgage payments on our DC rowhome fully covered by our basement rental, and the firm allowing us continued access to its group health care plan (with us paying the full premium, obviously), I was confident that we could make it work.

Fast forward nearly a decade, our net worth is now $7 million (down from a high of $8 million a year or so ago), so we're doing just fine. The one big change that I've made since retiring is hiring someone (a little too late, in retrospect) to manage my retirement accounts, so I'm now much more diversified than when I first retired.

I haven't regretted my decision ever. Not once. Not even for a nanosecond. In fact, I've never actually met anyone who has left biglaw and regretted it.

Thank you for your post. Is the participation in group health plan in retirement even offered anymore? Please forgive me my cynicism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing I'm always surprised about in these golden handcuff discussions is what the lawyers plan to do in the far more likely scenario of getting pushed out of big law?

I mean, if you look at the summer associate class you started with, probably half of them are out of biglaw within 5 years. Fifteen years later, maybe 20% are still in biglaw? And then the jump to equity partner you lose probably half of those people. Some people leave voluntarily, but a lot of the times people are pushed out or it's "mutual" (as in, writing on the wall that there aren't promotion opportunities, or you don't have a supporting partner, or whatever).

So when people say that in year 6 or 8 or 12 that their spending habits are such that they don't know how they can leave biglaw, I always think: why would you have done that?? Ignore the fact that you're statistically likely to hate it. Just moreso, you're statistically unlikely to be able to stay in biglaw for 25 years. So buying the $4m house and beach house, what's your plan when you're told you're not making equity partner? This isn't some long shot odds; it's really reasonable or even likely to assume you're going to lose your job.

This. I learned this the hard way (no $4m house etc) but had I been really honest with myself about the odds I would have used my $100k bonuses to buy rentals or invest rather than whatever stupid thing I spent them on. It turned out ok but sometimes I wish I could do a redo on those years. I actually left maybe 1-2 years before I really would have been pushed out but that’s the thing also—you don’t want to be trying to make moves under pressure or need to leave during a fed hiring freeze etc. Plus employers can smell the desperation. After I was told that I was “valued” but not making partner or counsel it felt like some clock had started.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Don't you regret missing all that time with your family? I dunno, early retirement is great and I'm all a out it but it seems like you paid a heavy price for it.

NP. I second this, but I wonder if the truth is that PP probably came from a background where dad went out to work and provided resources for the family, and didn't get much more involved. I think a lot of guys of his generation and older were like that. So early retirement is more about himself and getting to do things he wants to do. So trading time with one's family when young for time for an early retirement that's probably focused on himself.

I think there is a generational shift happening where guys want to be much more involved with their kids. I know I do. Because I'm a government attorney, I get to WFH 4 days a week, eat lunch with my little girl at her school a couple of times a month, and I do things like Mystery Reader and chaperone. I spend all day Saturday and Sunday with her and my wife, and it's rare that either my wife and I have to work on weekends. Heaven on earth, my friends.

I'm the early retired partner. I guess you didn't read my response. I was not a "dad who went to work and didn't get much more involved." Far from it. One anecdote to illustrate the point: the very first day of my job as an associate happened to coincide with my oldest kid's first day of first grade. I told the firm I'd be late for new associate orientation because I wanted to be with my kid at the bus stop to see them off. That's the tone I set.

When my kids were growing up I did virtually everything that you describe yourself now doing with your kid -- except the WFH part -- and I had four of them and not just one. I made it work because it was important to me. You don't know me or how involved I was or wasn't in my family upbringing, your generalization about my "generation's" approach to fatherhood is both inaccurate and even if it were accurate it doesn't apply to me specifically. Bottom line: Your choices are fine, you should feel confident about them, and you shouldn't feel the need to belittle mine or anyone else's to justify them.

I'm the PP. I understand what you are saying, but it is not physically possible for you to have worked the kinds of hours you would have had to work in a firm and be really present for four children, plus a spouse. It's just not. I spend every Sat and Sunday with my family...there's no way you could do that. I'm sure you did the best you could and I don't doubt that you believe it was sufficient. What you're really saying is that you found the time with your kids sufficient enough for you, because you also had this personal goal of early retirement...to live a life you enjoy as an empty nester. I'm not judging you, I'm simply stating the facts. To each his own. Many in my generation, including myself, are just not choosing that road.

Not the PP you’re responding to, but another big law partner. I never work weekends. Ever. Like never. Well I guess once or twice a year some random call comes up requested by a client that lasts ten minutes. But my husbands non legal job has that too. I’m not saying that’s all biglaw jobs, but it’s not an anomole. Im aware that with that kind of schedule im unlikely to be a super start rainmaker that beaks $2m or whatever. But im 17 years out and still doing this, and the messaging im getting from the firm is nothing but good - so I definitely have at least five more years.

I think dcum is populated by a lot of women who either are sahm married to biglaw partners who are the types who do work a lot of hours, or are women who left biglaw and are defensive about it. So both those categories are likely to paint a narrative about it being an unbearable horrible place, because they need to believe that to rationalize where their life landed. But their picture only describes a part of biglaw.