Crazy jealous of all these big law firm salaries!

[Anonymous]

If you are willing to sell your soul, and hand over your entire life to your employer, it’s a great gig.

You will pay for it very dearly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you work that many hours?

I work 9-6 with a 50 minute commute each way and I have a tough time getting everything done I want to get done in my evenings

Of course I don't do what I want in the evenings are you kidding

I have

1) Live in childcare
2) Laundry service
3) Maid service
4) Grocery delivery
5) Eat breakfast and lunch every day in the firm cafeteria
6) Carry out for dinner 3-4 nights a week
7) My school-aged kid doesn't get enough sleep waiting up for us to get home from work

But in exchange I max out retirement and we can help our aging parents. Plus private school.

Living the life!!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm in biglaw and envy my friends with 70-80k 9-5 jobs. Biglaw SUCKS

Why can't you change jobs then?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lol Biglaw lawyers complaining about 80 hours a week making 300+. You do know that there are bunch of jobs with similar hours but much less pay? Accountants for example? Ceiling 100k if you lucky, 4 months a year you forget you have home! Working till 2am with no weekends. And yeah you can't take "work home" as it is illegal actually to take anything home.
Think about it next time you complain.

What are you talking about? I'm an accountant, make $135k a year, but that will go up to at least $165k. Limited extended hours during certain reporting periods and I telework twice a week. I wouldn't trade it for biglaw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm in biglaw and envy my friends with 70-80k 9-5 jobs. Biglaw SUCKS

Why can't you change jobs then?

For the average biglaw associate (ie not at a T20 firm or otherwise a superstar), exit
options are damn scarce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Former biglawer here. Went to the fed because biglaw hours sucked. Well, hours at my underfunded agency suck nearly as much. And I make less than half of my former salary.

The best thing about my new life is not having to track every six minutes of my life.

And face the constant threat of being let go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:lol biglaw is one of the worst professions in the world

might as well do IB -> PE

nah they have a very "kill what you eat" mentality. It's very unstable.

If you want decent money + security, you should go into financial analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: If you are willing to sell your soul, and hand over your entire life to your employer, it’s a great gig.

You will pay for it very dearly.

Some do, some don’t. There are some great mommy track big law jobs.

[Anonymous]

For all the big law bashing in this thread, let me offer a different perspective. I am a nonequity partner at a t-20 firm in mergers and acquisitions. Every single day I count my lucky stars that I have the opportunity to work on some of the most challenging deals in the world. I am proud to work at this law firm. And why am I so appreciative of this opportunity while the vast majority of people who responded to this thread moaned, groaned, and complained about biglaw? My theory is that my background is very different from yours.

I didn't grow up in the DMV or any other wealthy upper middle class area. I grew up in a poor, largely rural, working class flyover, Trump loving part of the country. Growing up in that area you see a lot of social ills -- not a lot of good paying jobs, most people scrapping by on minimum wage or just above, out of control drug and alcohol abuse, rampant teenage pregnancy, chronic health issues, poor diets leading to weight gain and obesity, people finding every loophole in the disability program so they can declare themselves "disabled" and stop working all together, schools that are so-so at best and bad by the standards of people here but no private school options because well -- nobody in town has much money and so there is no market for private schools anyway. I could go on and on but suffice to say -- if you plopped down most of the people on this board into the town where I grew up, they would think they landed on Mars. My parents were outliers somewhat in this area -- both of my parents had college degrees and my dad had a unique job that didn't afford him much geographic mobility but was relatively stable anyway. That is until his employer had a major RIF a few years ago and he got the boot too. I never felt "poor" growing up but looking back on it now we were definitely lower middle class and my parents had to cobble things together to make it all work -- to the detriment of their own retirement savings.

In any event, this was where I grew up. And I would say that about 80% of the people I graduated high school with continue to live this lifestyle, only it has gotten worse over the last twenty years since I left. Because of the opoid crisis, the drugs are worse and more people die of overdoses. Because of the Great Recession and lack of an economic recovery and continued loss of blue collar jobs, unemployment is higher and wages are lower. Because more people have figured out how to game disability, more people are on disability. The health fitness fad that has captured DC certainly hasn't trickled down to these parts of the country. People aren't sprinting off to their power yoga class followed by Soul Cycle followed by brunch at a trendy restaurant. I see this everyday because my facebook feed may as well be a clash of civilizations. People I am know from high school and back home and people I am friends with in the DMV.

Against this backdrop, I was always something of an outlier and dreamed of "getting out." I ended up getting into a decent private university -- not Harvard or Yale, but a school people have heard of and has a good reputation. Still, my parents were never able to save much for my own college and so I was forced to take out about $30k in loans in undergrad alone. This was a mixture of some government loans (including a Perkins loan) as wells as private loans. But I made the most of undergrad, graduated summa cum laude, made tons of connections, and kissed butt with the right professors some of
Whom have helped me to this day. From there, I worked for a few years in a HCOL city in a couple of entry level jobs. The jobs were interesting, and one in particular piqued my interest more in going to law school. I ended up going to law school -- again not Harvard/Yale but a decent school on a partial scholarship (though some loan money) . I did very well in law school again -- finished at the top of my class, law review etc but also had the great misfortune of having graduated right after the Great Recession, so biglaw jobs were rare. I started my legal career working for a small law firm in a second tier city -- the money actually wasn't bad, the people were great to work with and excellent mentors, and I really devoted myself to learning the law -- not just as some 9 to 5 job, but as a true career. I got involved with bar committees, went to conferences, networked, etc. But after a few years I really started to wonder if I wanted to spend my whole life practicing law in this second tier city where I otherwise had no attachments and at this small law firm whose long term viability was a serious question. The economy had improved by that time, I got in touch with some recruiters, one thing led to another, and several lateral moves later, here I am.

People who complain about biglaw really have no clue how a lot of people live. There are plenty of people back in the town where I grew up who are working 50-70 hours each week at Wal-Mart for minimum wage. My own dad had to work that much in his white collar job and never broke the 100k. Mark. You think keeping track of your time in six minute increments is a problem? How about working in a coal mine where you might be killed at any moment? The problem is that our society has become so economically distant from each other and social mobility has dramatically decreased such to a point where blue collar people are people you read about online or you visit on some mission trip, like a an anthropological experiment. But these people aren't social creatures to me -- these are real people that I know. And yes I count myself extremely lucky that I was able to "get out of dodge" and have the chance to work at one of the best law firms in the world, make insanely good money (by any objective standard; I can't even tell my parents how much money I make now because they simply can't fathom it, even though I know the equity partners at my firm start out making 3x as much), pay off my loans on my own, and do work that I find interesting and challenging. What's more -- I have found that most of the people in big law who thrive and who make partner etc
-- a fair number of us have the same story. And it's the story I just told. We make lemonade out of the big law lemon because we know how unpleasant some of the alternatives are out there. We don't have upper middle class parents in big cities who can dial a few friends and bail us out and make all of our problems go away.

Biglaw isn't perfect by any means. But no job is. Instead of always looking for the greener grass, a lot of biglaw attorneys would be better served to appreciate how wonderful and blessed their lives truly are. Sorry for any typos here -- I typed this on my phone

[Anonymous]

I loved 75% of my Biglaw job (hated tracking time and a couple of my clients and one partner, but disliking colleagues can and does happen in any industry). I was billing around 2500 hours/year (and working more than that, of course), and I did some work most weekends and generally worked until 8 or 9 at night. It is a great job, but hard to sustain once you have kids if you have a partner with a similarly demanding job. I went to a fed agency for probably a 1/3 cut in hours worked and a 50%+ cut in pay. I note that most lawyers have substantial school debt and all took themselves out of the work force for 3 years for law school. People always seem to forget those factors when comparing law jobs to other jobs that are demanding but pay less.

[Anonymous]

Great post 9:10. Did your dad regain work after the RIF?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lol Biglaw lawyers complaining about 80 hours a week making 300+. You do know that there are bunch of jobs with similar hours but much less pay? Accountants for example? Ceiling 100k if you lucky, 4 months a year you forget you have home! Working till 2am with no weekends. And yeah you can't take "work home" as it is illegal actually to take anything home.
Think about it next time you complain.

THANK YOU.
I think lawyers forget that other people work a lot of hours, too. Those of us who work the same but for nonprofits, government, etc. (and yes we exist) make almost nothing comparatively. It's not that I want to be big law or any law, it sounds totally soul-sucking, but I think that many many lawyers in this town are myopic about the fact that not everyone is balancing their hours with the same salary.

?

I've never heard of a non-profit/government position that consistently runs at big law hours (short of being at the absolute top of the food chain). Sure, some of those positions may occasionally run as busy as big law, but not on a daily basis.

I worked full time in a real career that was paying me six figures while doing law school part time. I graduated in the top 10% of my class, made law review, etc.... I likened it to having two full time jobs and I was operating on about 5 hours of sleep per night.

I eventually left big law for investment banking.

Those four years in law school were a total cake walk compared to my time in big law and I've found investment banking to be less stressful than big law, though the hours can get up there.

The things that are tough to appreciate about big law until you do it:

1. Big law is perfectly positioned. The only bad thing for big law is the status quo. As long as general economic conditions are improving or deteriorating, big law firms will have work to do. The vast majority of industries and service providers are much more sensitive to economic conditions, but it also means those industries can build into down time into their economic models.

2. Big law firms sell the delivery of perfection on a substantive and procedural basis with the promise of a quick turn around. A few weeks ago, I was under a time crunch and called my outside counsel in a Friday morning. I asked counsel to deliver work product in final form to me by the following Tuesday morning. Ordinarily, it would take four weeks to do what I was asking for.

3. There is virtually nothing gained from getting better at your job. Because you bill by the hour, efficiencies that come with experience accrue no gains to the individual lawyer. In the vast majority of professional fields, getting good at your job means your life gets better in some form or fashion. Want to leave early on Ftiday to get a head start on a vacation or the holiday weekend? In many jobs that just means working harder during the week. In big law, especially at junior levels, it's almost impossible to pull this off.

4. Vacations: Even in banking, when I go on vacation, my boss expects me to be offline. In fact, I'm now willing vacation in remote places. In big law, at a junior level going on vacation means taking your laptop, being available and regularely checking in. As you become more senior it really means taking your family on vacation while you work from the hotel/office in your vacation home. This of course assumes that you didn't decide at the last second that your family would go on the big family vacation without you.

5. The proof is in the pudding: big law people age badly. As collective groups, I've been around engineers, doctors, accountants, investment bankers and commercial bankers. Nobody looks as worn out as the big law folks and it's the only profession I know of where grey hairs regularly show up for people in their late 20s and full heads of grey hair by late 30s are not a rare occurrence.

I think with #3 PP finally may have answered the age old DCUM question of how so many lawyers find time to be here during the day. DCUM time = the offset for the efficiency they’ve gained that doesn’t get rolled into overall productivity improvement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For all the big law bashing in this thread, let me offer a different perspective. I am a nonequity partner at a t-20 firm in mergers and acquisitions. Every single day I count my lucky stars that I have the opportunity to work on some of the most challenging deals in the world. I am proud to work at this law firm. And why am I so appreciative of this opportunity while the vast majority of people who responded to this thread moaned, groaned, and complained about biglaw? My theory is that my background is very different from yours.

I didn't grow up in the DMV or any other wealthy upper middle class area. I grew up in a poor, largely rural, working class flyover, Trump loving part of the country. Growing up in that area you see a lot of social ills -- not a lot of good paying jobs, most people scrapping by on minimum wage or just above, out of control drug and alcohol abuse, rampant teenage pregnancy, chronic health issues, poor diets leading to weight gain and obesity, people finding every loophole in the disability program so they can declare themselves "disabled" and stop working all together, schools that are so-so at best and bad by the standards of people here but no private school options because well -- nobody in town has much money and so there is no market for private schools anyway. I could go on and on but suffice to say -- if you plopped down most of the people on this board into the town where I grew up, they would think they landed on Mars. My parents were outliers somewhat in this area -- both of my parents had college degrees and my dad had a unique job that didn't afford him much geographic mobility but was relatively stable anyway. That is until his employer had a major RIF a few years ago and he got the boot too. I never felt "poor" growing up but looking back on it now we were definitely lower middle class and my parents had to cobble things together to make it all work -- to the detriment of their own retirement savings.

In any event, this was where I grew up. And I would say that about 80% of the people I graduated high school with continue to live this lifestyle, only it has gotten worse over the last twenty years since I left. Because of the opoid crisis, the drugs are worse and more people die of overdoses. Because of the Great Recession and lack of an economic recovery and continued loss of blue collar jobs, unemployment is higher and wages are lower. Because more people have figured out how to game disability, more people are on disability. The health fitness fad that has captured DC certainly hasn't trickled down to these parts of the country. People aren't sprinting off to their power yoga class followed by Soul Cycle followed by brunch at a trendy restaurant. I see this everyday because my facebook feed may as well be a clash of civilizations. People I am know from high school and back home and people I am friends with in the DMV.

Against this backdrop, I was always something of an outlier and dreamed of "getting out." I ended up getting into a decent private university -- not Harvard or Yale, but a school people have heard of and has a good reputation. Still, my parents were never able to save much for my own college and so I was forced to take out about $30k in loans in undergrad alone. This was a mixture of some government loans (including a Perkins loan) as wells as private loans. But I made the most of undergrad, graduated summa cum laude, made tons of connections, and kissed butt with the right professors some of
Whom have helped me to this day. From there, I worked for a few years in a HCOL city in a couple of entry level jobs. The jobs were interesting, and one in particular piqued my interest more in going to law school. I ended up going to law school -- again not Harvard/Yale but a decent school on a partial scholarship (though some loan money) . I did very well in law school again -- finished at the top of my class, law review etc but also had the great misfortune of having graduated right after the Great Recession, so biglaw jobs were rare. I started my legal career working for a small law firm in a second tier city -- the money actually wasn't bad, the people were great to work with and excellent mentors, and I really devoted myself to learning the law -- not just as some 9 to 5 job, but as a true career. I got involved with bar committees, went to conferences, networked, etc. But after a few years I really started to wonder if I wanted to spend my whole life practicing law in this second tier city where I otherwise had no attachments and at this small law firm whose long term viability was a serious question. The economy had improved by that time, I got in touch with some recruiters, one thing led to another, and several lateral moves later, here I am.

People who complain about biglaw really have no clue how a lot of people live. There are plenty of people back in the town where I grew up who are working 50-70 hours each week at Wal-Mart for minimum wage. My own dad had to work that much in his white collar job and never broke the 100k. Mark. You think keeping track of your time in six minute increments is a problem? How about working in a coal mine where you might be killed at any moment? The problem is that our society has become so economically distant from each other and social mobility has dramatically decreased such to a point where blue collar people are people you read about online or you visit on some mission trip, like a an anthropological experiment. But these people aren't social creatures to me -- these are real people that I know. And yes I count myself extremely lucky that I was able to "get out of dodge" and have the chance to work at one of the best law firms in the world, make insanely good money (by any objective standard; I can't even tell my parents how much money I make now because they simply can't fathom it, even though I know the equity partners at my firm start out making 3x as much), pay off my loans on my own, and do work that I find interesting and challenging. What's more -- I have found that most of the people in big law who thrive and who make partner etc
-- a fair number of us have the same story. And it's the story I just told. We make lemonade out of the big law lemon because we know how unpleasant some of the alternatives are out there. We don't have upper middle class parents in big cities who can dial a few friends and bail us out and make all of our problems go away.

Biglaw isn't perfect by any means. But no job is. Instead of always looking for the greener grass, a lot of biglaw attorneys would be better served to appreciate how wonderful and blessed their lives truly are. Sorry for any typos here -- I typed this on my phone

Thanks for posting this. Do you have kids? If so, any thoughts on passing on some of the perspective you have to kids growing up in this area?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you work that many hours?

I work 9-6 with a 50 minute commute each way and I have a tough time getting everything done I want to get done in my evenings

Of course I don't do what I want in the evenings are you kidding

I have

1) Live in childcare
2) Laundry service
3) Maid service
4) Grocery delivery
5) Eat breakfast and lunch every day in the firm cafeteria
6) Carry out for dinner 3-4 nights a week
7) My school-aged kid doesn't get enough sleep waiting up for us to get home from work

But in exchange I max out retirement and we can help our aging parents. Plus private school.

Living the life!!!!

NP.

Can't tell if you are bring facetious. Because aside from the financial stability and being able to hire out some household tasks, this sounds miserable and sad.

[Anonymous]

You should enjoy your time, it's worth much more than money!