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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was recently chatting with a very senior Big Law partner and he told me that he thinks if you want to practice law at a high level (so basically any AmLaw 200 firm, I think was his frame of reference) you need to expect as a partner that you will be putting in about 2500 billable hours a year. And then he said that on top of that you need to be putting in the hours on business development, plus contributing to firm or practice management as is appropriate for your level. So that would come out to an average of 60 hours a week, minimum. Plus if you want vacations or holidays, that's going to push the average up for the other weeks. Client work and BD demand ebbs and flows a bit, so you might have some weeks at 40 but you will definitely have some at 80. And this is for a partner, so you need to assume the work you're doing is not some piddling little low level memo or something -- we're talking high level, difficult work, including client management and managing demands/egos/etc., plus the management aspect of the job in terms of guiding the team that sits under you.

If that is not of interest to you, do not pursue a partnership at a Big Law firm. Don't pursue a job that operates as I just described and then spend your time whining to other people about how you don't have enough free time or whatever. Either that sounds appealing to you (presumably because you actually like work, it charges you up, you'd rather be practicing law and pursuing clients than other things), or it doesn't.

[b]I don't understand why law attracts so many people who don't seem to want to do the job they signed up for. Are doctors like this? I am aware of downsides to practicing medicine (dealing with insurance, the time pressures that the corporatization of medicine put on practitioners, paperwork and document, etc.) but I have personally never heard any of the doctors I know complain about how miserable their jobs are the way so many lawyers do. They seem to have understood what they were getting into, I guess[/b].[/quote]

I have noticed this too. I wonder if some of it is that the barrier to entry to law is lower than for a doctor? The fact that you can get into law school from any major with good grades and decent LSAT score means that people who might not understand or be interested in the actual practice can do it. I am not as familiar with the path to be a doctor but you definitely have to have done an appropriate major and then get through longer training. [/quote]

Med school can be any major as long as you have the required courses.  In fact a Spanish major probably will get you into med school faster than anything else these days if you have the required courses and are otherwise a top student.

I think it has to do more with the fact that law is not at all what people think it is.  No one in law school understands what the practice is like.  You do not even get an idea as a summer associate.  You are 2-3 years in when you see it for what it is not what you thought it would be.  At Biglaw by that point you are living a more expensive lifestyle and it is hard or impossible to make the switch unless you are forced to.  It is not bait and switch but it is like you do not see it for a long time.  When you see it you either like it or are okay with it.  But if not then it is hard to earn 100k after earning 300k.  Some do it but it is hard.  I had a friend that did downsize (was a more senior associate) -- apartment, car, eliminate student debt, limited new clothes, no trips.  She did that for two years and then went to DOJ with no debt in a lifestyle she could afford with a great 401k and a couple hundred grand.  Not many people can do that.[/quote]

Not many people *want* to do that. But trust me, all these Big Law attorneys who just can't possible see how they could ever live on 100k a year? They could do it easily if forced.

Which is the whole point. They are entitled. They want to be allowed to complain about how hard their jobs are regardless of how much they make (or how much the person they are complaining to makes) because they feel that they are entitle to make that much.

Also, while I get the reality might not set in until later, it's not like this is a secret. I remember being in law school and having a professor say to me "so many corporate attorneys complain about the hours but come on -- why do you think they are paying you so much? because they think you're special?" It was a valuable comment that reminded me that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Of course a job offering you 150k or whatever right out of school (for me it was more like 100-120k, I'm old) is going to ask a lot of you. As a lawyer, you should be able to logic that out.[/quote]

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