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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They may have a SAH spouse or a spouse without a lot of earning potential.  If you make 20% of a biglaw salary and are slightly the breadwinner I would ballpark your salary at $150K and your spouse's salary at $125K which is a really good HHI.  About the same as ours actually.

Also, I think some fields don't lend themselves as well to in-house or govt work so they may be legitimately choosing between biglaw or medium law where the workload is about the same between them.

[/quote]

Still a choice! How many people in this situation had a working spouse who then quit their job when they realized that their Big Law spouse wasn't going to be available at all as a parent. I've seen this happen a lot. I know women who quit impressive careers making very good money because they had kids and while they made adjustments to their career to make sure their kids got what they needed, their Big Law spouse didn't. Often having kids seems to coincide with the Big Law spouse suddenly working more hours and moving to a higher level of stress and responsibility at work.

That's a choice, too. [b]So is choosing a practice area that doesn't lend itself to pivoting to in-house or moving into a position with better work/life balance. Everyone knows which practice areas and sub-specialties are more demanding and less conducive to those kinds of changes. You might not know as a 1st or 2nd year associate, but after that, you should know and should be making thoughtful decisions based on what you want in life.[/b]

This didn't just happen to you.[/quote]

What are you… talking about. What firm in this day and age allows associates to pick any practice area they want?

Yes, I knew which practice areas were the best for exiting. So did all the other associates. They were full. Firms push you into practice areas that are busy and they don’t GAF you want to plan an exit.

And those areas are extremely hard to get as a lateral for the same reasons. [/quote]

When I accepted an offer, it was in a specific practice group of my choosing, even though it was in the middle of a recession.  I picked a transactional practice because I knew litigation wouldn't work for me once I wanted to have kids.  When did the rest of you start?  I found it was quite easy to exit in-house or to a small firm.  [/quote]

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