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
Thank you for posting this. I am one generation away from exactly what you explained, and spent a lot of time back in my parent's coal mining town. My family immigrated from Eastern Europe for the great pleasure of working in the mines at the turn of the century, and my grandfather served in the second war, and died of black lung (the other was exempted since he ran a small farm). My dad was the first person in our family to be educated at a university (as far as we know), which was a blessing, and we lived in a prosperous small city when my parents moved there. So, I had a different experience before going to law school and joining my big law firm, but I still have that background, which as you say is not something shared by many around us. Like, they have never seen an outhouse or experienced a septic tank that doesn't accept toilet paper (can you imagine!). I am also a non-equity partner at a ~ t-30 firm.
That said, biglaw is pretty horrendous and it is a matter of comparison for some. For me, yeah, it is way better than working in a coal mine, but is sucks compared to if I had just remained an engineer. And, it is not the work. The work itself is fine, it is the environment that is toxic and non-collaborative. The constant reworking of written work product is particularly annoying and stupid (if you are a litigator). There is also the stress of always making your hours or collection/billing targets. That means, when you are slow, you are stressed, when you are not slow, you are stressed doing the work. For me, I am looking to join some former colleagues in a smaller more collaborative environment, with far lower overhead. Biglaw makes sense as a training model, and works for M&A, but for many other practices it simply doesn't work, and is outdated at this point and massive suckage. My 0.02.
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