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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was recently chatting with a very senior Big Law partner and he told me that he thinks[b] if you want to practice law at a high level (so basically any AmLaw 200 firm, I think was his frame of reference) [/b][b]you need to expect as a partner that you will be putting in about 2500 billable hours a year.[/b] 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.

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.[/quote]
Definitely not all BigLaw partners are billing 2,500 hours. Some are rainmakers who do very little of the actual billable legal work. If you have that business development skill set, you'll be able to control your destiny more in BigLaw. [/quote]

Sure but you are talking about a very small percentage of Big Law partners. Being a rainmaker at a Big Law firm means you have the ability to bring in enormous billables for the firm, and that takes a huge amount of time even if it's mostly not billable work. And often that work requires a lot of travel, dinners, last minute pitches, PLUS being the person holding the client's hand and working that relationship when things are tough.

Partners like this might not literally be billing 2500 hours but the idea that they have relaxing lives with good work/life balance? Nah. They might have more flexibility because they aren't tied to their desks as much and their work is not driven so much by client deadlines, but they are putting in the time.

When you meet a Big Law partner who seems really happy and who seems to be enjoying their life, you know what the key pretty much always is? They like their job. Because they are all working a lot, it's just a question of whether they enjoy that work or not.[/quote]

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