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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

I know people who switched practice areas in their 4th or 5th year at a large law firm. I also know people who went in house or moved to a smaller firm before they got locked into a career as, say, an insurance litigator (because that's how their big firm made money and that's where everyone was pushed) because they had some idea of what that would mean for their career down the road and did not want to get trapped in career they hated.

You get that working for a Big Law firm is at-will employment, right? Not indentured servitude? Move to another firm. Move to another market. Do what you need to do to craft a career that works for you, and do this early in your career.

The issue is that a lot of Big Law attorneys are people who have let life happen to them. They went to the most prestigious law school they got into, they took a job with the most prestigious firm who gave them an offer, then they did what that firm told them to do. And then they wake up one day and are like "huh, I'm not happy at all, it must be my job's fault."

It's you. You're the problem.[/quote]

As in any profession, if you go into it for the money, you are bound at some point to be dissatisfied. [b]If you love the law, you'll be happy in your chosen career.[/b] The people who OP says complain to her have only themselves to blame. They have choices, but they'd have to take a pay cut, and they don't want to. Hence the whining. I have no sympathy. I've never wanted to make a lot of money, and I don't care that I don't. [/quote]

I don't think that's true at all.  There are a number of aspects of practicing law that are entirely different than loving the law.  Marketing to clients, for example and, particularly in smaller firms, clients being able/willing to pay what it costs to represent them adequately in a matter.  There are a lot of lawyers out there maybe not working biglaw hours but working pretty hard and not making much money in the smaller firm market.[/quote]

This.  If I could just practice law, and not worry about firm economics, I'd be a lot happier (not that I'm unhappy now).  Maybe that's why Fed Attorneys express more satisfaction - they don't have to deal with those non-legal elements of the practice.  [/quote]

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