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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m jealous of the spouses who married the well-respected partners in humane practice areas who are flush with business and yet are secure in their client relationships. It’s a fine line I never quite figured out in my time in Biglaw, but I know they are out there.

-In-house counsel [/quote]

This rings true. It is great to hear about several partners who have it all figured out and are working only 50 hours per week. Those people just are not the general rule though, which those partners would probably quickly tell you, especially when including junior partners in the equation.[/quote]

I work on the business side at a major firm and part of that story may also be enormous resentment from other partners, who will argue that a partner who is not billing a lot, delegating most of the heavy lifting to associates and junior partners, but then claiming origination credit on the client because they brought them in 10 years ago, is dead weight and should be sharing origination credit with the partners actually doing the work, or even transitioning the client.

This is a huge fight at many firms. There is no firm where ALL equity partners are working 50 hours a week (and billing far less since partners have more administrative tasks that take up time). So you have major inequities in hours and that tends to come up when it's time for the Comp Committee to figure out everyone's draw.[/quote]

This is very true. I’ve been a partner at firms like this, it’s sort of miserable. Just a never ending negative feedback loop. Who’s getting more than you? Who deserves what? That guy doesn’t work hard. Blah blah.

I’m now at a lockstep firm and it is staggering how much better the environment is. It’s as close as you can get to the “everyone working 50 hours” mentality. There’s almost no incentive to horde credit, act as a bottleneck with clients, all the crap that comes with most firm comp structures. You do your work, you go home, you get paid like everyone else.

True, you leave a little money on the table, but not being surrounded by Dbags relentlessly focused on their own comp in every interaction has honestly saved my career. [/quote]

True, this can work. But then sometimes at lockstep firms you get people who coast and this results in resentment from people who are really driving new businesses or billing a lot.

Look, law firms are very profitable businesses. But most of them are run as true partnerships and have to figure out how to divide up those profits, and this does not lend itself well towards people who want to work less but make more. A lot of what people on this thread are talking about are kind of niche situations where they are able to hide a bit and still pull in high salaries. That happens, but it's not the norm.

If you really want something resembling work-life balance, while still making very good money (though not multi-million annual take-home, admittedly), I recommend looking for a firm that will let you transition from associate to a permanent counsel position where you trade high quality work and experience with major clients for more reasonable billing expectations (these roles do exist), OR go become a partner at a midwest or southern firm with lower profits per partner but a more collegial, less workaholic culture.[/quote]

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