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[quote=Anonymous]I haven't gone through all posts in the thread, but I think quite a lot of helpful advice has been given.

My wife and I are DINK, I am still in biglaw while she bailed to an inhouse role as a second year. The first 5-7 years are brutal - you are learning the ropes and working horrible hours for (sometimes) horrible clients and partners. To be honest, I am not sure how I made it through those years. I have moved two firms in my 12+ years in biglaw (both at V5 firms) in the naive expectation that culture would make a difference. I would say that the long hours on the job are absolutely essential to becoming a great lawyer - it was once explained to me that the reason why Wachtell partners were made up so early was because they had much more experience than an equivalent associate at another biglaw firm, by virtue of billing 3500 hrs year in and year out every year (close to double the usual 1800hrs requirement at a "normal" biglaw firm) - whether or not this is true, I don't know.

When the prior posters said things get better as you get more senior, that is true in some ways. Things are better now in the sense that I know what I am doing and I have a reasonably good estimate of how long the work is going to take me and I can better manage my time. I can now delegate work to juniors but many times I will need to amend and correct drafts to ensure that they are "client ready". The aggressive deadlines and the unreasonable requests haven't gone away, and probably have gotten worse - the only thing that has changed is that I am now better equipped to handle them (for example, I generally have a sense of what the "right" answer would be, and most times clients would be happy with a preliminary answer followed up by advice in writing at a later stage). I also have my own clients now who trust me to deliver work product on time and on point, which makes it easier to manage the workload of the associates that work with me, since I can tell the client that we do need just that extra bit of time to make sure our advice is correct. The biglaw firm I am at now requires each partner to generate enough work to keep their team busy - which means that the pressure has changed from being an associate (and it is probably more intense). Instead of constantly worrying about meeting deadlines, whether I would need to cancel my plans or whether I had drafted a document correctly or missed out a major point, I worry about where my next transaction is going to come from, and whether I would have enough work to keep the team busy throughout the year.

I don't know how I would have handled having a baby and biglaw during the early years. It is tough, and I am truly impressed by all who manage it. DW and I made a conscious decision not to have kids until my career was more "settled", so that we would not have the additional stress or pressure while trying to make partner (if I didn't, I would have just gone to an in-house role). It is doable, though, and I have seen some associates manage it, but of course as the pp have mentioned, the key is to outsource the various housekeeping chores as much as you can. It is very easy to tell from work product whether an associate has put in 100% or has done a sloppy job (and you do not want to have the reputation of being the associate that no one is able to rely on). Don't think otherwise, but many people that biglaw firms hire are ambitious, driven and have big aspirations (at least in the early years). Work product from an ambitious, driven associate that spends hours making sure every last typo has been picked up reads vastly different to an associate who does "just enough" and seems to be distracted by life outside the office. I am not saying that this is bad, but merely just a fact, and that is why there is so much attrition over the years. Leaving biglaw is a personal choice and many people do not want this lifestyle which is entirely fair enough. I don't know of any career (other than big tech, which attracts similar personalities) which pays a graduate with no experience $190k plus a $15k bonus in their first year out, so I guess commitment to the job should be expected. I could think of other jobs that require the same or similar amount of time commitment, which pays much less (single mom having to work two minimum wage jobs perhaps)? So I think in some ways, biglaw attorneys do have it "easy".

My only advice is that whatever you decide, do it soon. Any decision to leave biglaw should be made in the early years (years 1-3). Grinding it out for 8-10 years in biglaw and then realizing you do not want to be in private practice for the long haul feels to me like a waste of time - you would have sacrificed so much personal time with family (particularly a young family) and friends that it is just not worth it. And I have seen it happen. Senior associates who have billed 2500 hours a year for years suddenly lifting their heads up from their desk and suddenly realizing, this is not what I want. They spent the past few years chasing deadlines, churning work product constantly that it has become the "norm" and they never really had the time to think about what they wanted to do in life. Being in biglaw was just a rite of passage, just like getting good grades at school, getting into law school, getting a biglaw job...

I know this may not be helpful, but just my 2 cents as a fellow biglaw attorney. I wish you the very best of luck OP, and I hope it all works out!
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