I found this article which may be helpful for those interested in working at Biglaw. If these working conditions are not to your liking, perhaps Biglaw is not for you and be mindful of your school debt.
Most firms set a minimum for annual bonus at 1800-2000 billable hours.
Indeed. Big Law is a way of life, not for quality of life (which many millennials aspire to).
In my experience, the real issue in BigLaw isn’t so much the number of hours. That’s actually pretty manageable. It’s the consistency of those hours. One week you might bill 80 hours, the next 10. Makes it extremely hard to plan anything and you’re constantly exhausted from your last firedrill.
1800 hours is nothing. I know people who regularly had 2500 per year and they weren’t necessarily the movers and shakers of the world. A big litigation case can result in many 10 hour days. Some firms allow you to bill for every second of your day and if the clients don’t object, it continues on. I was told to bill every minute and if the partner felt it was too much he’d reduce the hours. Never happened.
My favorite quote from one of my favorite law school prof’s on the practice of law, “it is a pie eating contest where the prize is a pie.”
In my experience, if you want to be on the partnership track and are talented and lucky enough to get on the track, for transactional or litigation departments at Big Law, 2200-2400 billable hours is more the norm because you will always be “in demand” for the next big deal/case and it will be hard to say “no” to certain influential partners, who are the ones who tend to land the high profile deals/cases.
1800 hours is 35 hours per week over 52 weeks.
When one refers to “Biglaw”, are they talking about any firms in particular or just large firms (over a certain size) in general?
But 1800 billable hours is different from 1800 hours. You’ll have pro bono hours, professional development hours, goofing off hours that aren’t billable. You might even be sick a day or two. The issue is whether you have a client to bill the 1800 hours to. 2000 is more normal at smaller firms. 2200-2600 is more likely in a big firm.
In 2008 when the economy tanked, there just weren’t any clients to bill the hours to. The partners took the available hours and the newer associates had nothing.
@Muad_dib , my point of reference was major full service firms in large financial hub cities, e.g. NYC, LA, Chicago, DC, SF/Silicon Valley, whose clients are overwhelmingly institutions or corporations. How you get to the “billable” hours formulation in the linked article is pretty much on point. I rarely left work before 8:00 pm, worked half days 3 Saturdays a month and 1-2 Sundays a month back in the day. They say Wall Street life is measured in dog years (1=7), which is pretty accurate.
In the first year, at least at my firm, there is a learning curve where your time gets cut, and it would be tough to make a goal of 1800. Once you get past that, you get to be more efficient and less time is cut, and 1800 hours is not hard to do. I work at a firm of 25 attorneys, have a fairly flexible schedule (for an attorney), and I haven’t had any problem hitting 1800 in recent years. I usually have a lot more than that. What my friends in bigger law firms complain about is the other things you have to constantly do - being on this board and that one, constantly going to functions, marketing, etc - which is not necessarily billable and eats into your personal time.
1800 isn’t the requirement at what most people label “biglaw.” At least not in my experience.
I can recall being in NYC for a financing closing a number of years ago. Back in the day when people actually went to closings. Lobby of the building in which the lenders’ attorneys were located had a clothing shop. If an attorney worked overnight, he/she could buy a new shirt for the following day and expense it. There were several associates of the firm who were bragging how many new shirts they got that week.
I think Big Law is generally, 250+ attorneys (but sometimes down to 100 if they pay BL rates) and top boutiques.
For some current information…a close relative was lucky enough to be made a partner in a Vault top 5 firm last year. For the 2 years preceding his partnership, he billed a minimum of 3500 hours in addition of being in several committees, pro-bono work and attending client events. He was working the moment he woke up till after midnight almost 7 days a week. Now, his life isn’t much better but he works less on weekends.
As the parent of a current 2nd year associate in NYC Biglaw, I can tell you that she hasn’t had a full day off, defined as as billing less than 3.5 hours (weekends included), since September 23. Her time is not her own and she is at the mercy of timelines and deadlines set by clients. She currently is working on a deal (she’s in corporate) where the client inevitably sends comments on Friday at 6pm and wants documents turned by Sunday morning. In one case, she returned home at 111:30pm but couldn’t sleep and saw an email from said client at 2:30am asking for revisions by 7am. She was up, so she did it. She wasn’t expected to have done it, but rather than go back to sleep, she did it. Believe me, it’s well-paid, but the life of a young Biglaw associate leaves no time to enjoy the financial benefits, have a meaningful relationship( if you’re not already part of one), buy clothes, sleep, or eat anywhere but at your desk. She’s learning a lot, seems to, on the whole, enjoy doing what she’s doing with the people with whom she’s doing it, but as her mother, I worry.
I was once a young Biglaw associate (in the dark ages), but there was no such thing as 24/7 availability - the biggest change in my working life was when the fax machine began to be used. Before then documents had to be mailed or couriered…there was down time in a deal. Now, everything is, well, now.
If you’re working too much to enjoy the financial benefits, what’s the point? Leaving it for your children?
^If your daughter is “lucky” enough to work on an international transaction, as a junior associate, she will have the joy of working with local counsel at 1 am. On the other hand, I remember the thrill as a 27 year old “kid” taking the Concorde back from London to make an SEC filing deadline. Bob Geldorf sat across the aisle and a guy who was obviously a money launderer was next to me explaining how he moved money for his clients between Europe and friendly jurisdictions in the Caribbean. He showed me the small gold and platinum bars he kept in his briefcase for “emergencies”. There was definitely stuff I saw that you can’t make up.
@BKSquared, been there, done that - when I was working, my primary client was in London. I spent many hours on planes and having phone calls in the middle of the night. Never took the Concorde, however…but I do remember long nights at the printer, and hand-delivering SEC documents when time was of the essence. It’s a whole new world today. Apparently EDGAR (the online SEC filing system) was down last week and the poor lawyers were trying to figure out how to hand-file documents…oh how the world has changed!
@Muad_dib, let’s see, paying off student loans, building a career, supporting your family in a high cost of living area,…I can think of many reasons. Whether to subject oneself to the exigencies of Biglaw is a personal decision for those who have the option. I stayed until after my second child was born, and that was prior to the 24-7 cycle. When I got a call from a client two hours after giving birth to my second child, I realized this might not be the best long term option for me and my family.
@runnersmom - I don’t disagree. Such a lifestyle is not for everyone.
On that we agree - it most certainly is not.