Actually, such a lifestyle is not for “most” (as most voluntarily leave after 3-4 years).
One of the best things about the knowledge sharing on the internet, and such sites at Law School Transparency and Law School Numbers. With real time information, students should not have to incur much debt. There is always a lower-ranked school available for cheaper.
The internet has been around for a while. Yet student loan debt continues to climb. So although there are lower ranked cheaper options available in most instances, students are not taking them. I remember talking with a lot of people who got the biglaw jobs with the idea of being in them to pay off student loans. Plan was to go into something “serving the public good” after the loans were repaid. But by then they fell into many of the financial trappings that come along with biglaw (big house, fancy cars, private schools for kids, etc.) and the ending up staying in biglaw (or at least working for good sized firms).
And while attending lower-ranked schools with good scholarships is a plan for some (see the advice above re: being sure you want to practice in the locale and the availability of jobs in that market), it’s not always the best plan for those who want to do high level government or public service work. In those cases, researching the schools’ loan forgiveness or repayment plans, where available, can be very important. @saillakeerie, you are right that the information is out there, but every person’s situation is different and Biglaw, for even a few years, may be a steppingstone to other opportunities. And to be honest, those starting salaries (along with the kind of work and training) are a big draw, even with the knowledge that you are essentially turning your life over to the firm for a period of time.
“Cheap” is often expensive. Many if not most law school rankings factor in employment rates of grads at law related jobs and median salary data. If I were about to enter law school, and finances were important to me, getting employment data of recent grads would be at the top of my to do list.
When my husband was an associate, he was billing 2200-2400 hours a year. He even worked Christmas Day (from home, but it was still work). It was one of the main reasons we only had one child-he was rarely home.
When my child was born, I did 2700 hours that year. You can get an awful lot of work done with a sleeping newborn on your lap. The hours are long, but most firms have plenty of flexibility on where you do them.
Sleeping newborn?? I have only read about those in books. Never had one live in my house.
My sister worked in a corporation before going to a Wall Street firm (not on Wall street, in a western office). I remember being at her house on Christmas morning and the FedEx man arriving with a set of docs she needed to fly to Australia the next day. She also took a conference call in the bathroom a few weeks after her daughter was born because it was the only place you couldn’t hear my niece screaming (she was one of those non-sleeping babies referred to in post #26).
With the crazy hours also comes the crazy pay and some really nice opportunities. Travel the world, work on interesting projects, big parties and events.
And the number of law schools continues to climb, as well. But its only been in the past few years that law schools have been forced to publish real job stats – thank you, LST. It’s one thing to borrow money to attend a LS that claims it has a top “IP” or “Enviro” program, its quite another to then look at real numbers and see that only half of their graduates even have a job that requires a JD. Its the latter data that has been missing for nearly forever.
Moreover, unfortunately, most college grads are financially illiterate, and have no idea what $300k in debt will do to their lives, so they are easily sucked into the marketing spin of law school websites.
No doubt that a top law school matter to these types of organizations, but those jobs can be extremely hard to come by, and unless you are a top grad (decile, quartile?)…you are stuck with debt and have no choice to “sell your soul” as one Partner of a V10 tells it.
I don’t see that Biglaw is any better or worse than other law firm jobs; as lawyers, we’re always at someone else’s beck and call. Biglaw pays well, you can learn a tremendous amount and you can make invaluable career contacts (and accumulate significant financial assets).
The Yale description of billable time really only applies if you’re a junior associate working on a few matters. If you’re senior, you have to spend so much time managing people and dealing with non-billable client development that a far smaller portion of hours are actually billable. Plus I get interrupted literally every 10 minutes with one of the zillions of clients I’ve come across in years of practicing, junior people asking questions, another new crisis of the moment, etc.–with the constant interruptions and the ensuing exhaustion from the constant ping-pong of my day, a huge portion of my time isn’t billable.
@HappyAlumnus, so I’ve heard from my friends who stuck around and became Biglaw partners…I left before that became an issue and they are all now reaching mandatory retirement age. However, for students contemplating law school and thinking that the gold ring is being an associate at one of these firms, I think the Yale breakdown is a good thing to read. No one believes it if they haven’t lived it. Even members of our family don’t get it when my daughter tells them how she can sit in her office doing non-billable things all day and then get a call at 4;30pm that will keep her in the office until 2am, or that she’s literally cancelled dinner with her boyfriend who is already sitting at the bar waiting for her on a Saturday night at 7:30pm. She knew what she was getting into - I had the same job 35 years ago and those partner friends of mine have been part of her life since she was born, but the billable hour threshold still looms large for her and her fellow junior associates, and it’s not always so easy to achieve. And yes, the financial remuneration and experience are valuable, but at what cost.
@bluebayou, I agree about the financial illiteracy - going into that kind of debt with little hope of getting the soul-sucking Biglaw job is even more insane. Yes, those special snowflake government or public interest jobs that will be loan forgiveness-eligible will also require attendance at top schools, but so will most market-salary Biglaw jobs.
@runnersmom I agree with you. My point is that the Yale article overstates what portion of Time is actually billable. I’d be thrilled if I could bill 10 hours out of 12 per day. I did that when I was a junior associate. Now I bill maybe 8 out of 12.
@HappyAlumnus, sorry, I misunderstood the point. I agree. The Yale article assumes the associate has work to do. For young associates, it can be even harder because they are at the mercy of senior associates/partners/staffing people putting them on the deals/cases to get the work that actually generates billable hours. The “good” news for this generation (and that “good” is offered with a large dose of sarcasm) is that all those billable hours don’t have to be generated in the office. With technology, a lot of the work can be done from home, an airport, a hotel room etc.
This life truly isn’t for everyone, but, as you mentioned there are definitely upsides for those that pursue this path. I guess the point of the article (written, of course, for Yale students who probably have the broadest spectrum of jobs available to them post-graduation - Biglaw, clerking, academia, BigFed, etc.) is buyer-beware.
@HappyAlumnus and @runnersmom, my experience in Biglaw (large NYC firm) was your billable hours stayed pretty constant even through the time I was a junior partner – about the only difference in responsibility I saw was having to personally sign the firm Note!. Unless the firm was really in a rocky position (we fortunately never were, and I was long gone by 2007), associates on a partnership track, including mid-senior (4-7 years out) were always busy. If your hours were dropping, it was almost always a bad signal.
How many deals you worked on did fluctuate based on tenure. As a young associate, you typically worked in a supporting role on a variety of matters and as you got more experience, you were expected to take on more responsibility per deal. At the 3-5 year level, you generally were the workhorse, depending of course on the size and complexity of the deal (and client demands) and therefore were on fewer deals. The number of deals increased as you became more senior and your role became more supervisory and quality control driven. My firm’s clients were generally established institutions and large public companies, so there was less emphasis on business development for associates. Of course it was expected for us to get close to the decision makers at our clients, but at least in my practice area, I wasn’t expected to hustle out and get new clients. It was a bonus if a friend or acquaintance got into a decision making role, and you helped get the firm in the door. I can well understand though that firms with a different client mix may have different expectations with respect to business development. One of my law school roommates went to work for a premier silicon valley firm, and he was hustling pretty early on. I also suspect that institutional loyalty to law firms has changed over time as it seems there is more musical chairs of top rainmakers and practice groups. It is now more critical it seems for a lawyer to lock in his/her book of business even at Biglaw. I started to see this towards the end of my legal career, and did notice the increasing competition within the firm. At a point since we were moving towards an eat what you kill model, I decided to go all in and jumped ship to the banking side. Similar hours but much higher compensation for a person of my age and experience. As to the other matters, my firm required pro-bono work and encouraged us to help with recruiting. Within certain limits, we were credited for those kinds of hours in our evaluation.
Based on @runnersmom posts on her daughter’s experience and other posts, it doesn’t seem as if Biglaw dynamics have changed much, especially for associates, other than how technology has unshackled you from your desk. Although I actually think it has chained you more to the job because there is no excuse that you cannot be reached anywhere at anytime.
Technology has provided a lot of flexibility (in terms of when/where you work). But it has come at a significant cost in terms of being expected to work 24/7/365. Attorneys do not typically set their schedule. Their clients do that (which makes a huge difference in terms of say doctors who largely do set their schedules). At one point, docs were sent via FedEx. Miss the FedEx cutoff time and its not going out until the next day so you could leave. Now you can send it out anytime. And if you sent something out at 3 am, there is a good chance you will get comments/response within 10-15 minutes.
Well, everything about schedules that’s been mentioned in this thread applies to structural engineers, too! The projects we work on involve a lot of money, and our clients are ALWAYS in a hurry for them. Everything is done electronically, and people seem to think that means we push a button and the engineering calculations and drawings magically appear. I have pulled quite a few all-nighters this year, trying to keep up with impossible deadlines. And we sure as heck don’t get paid as well as attorneys!
So true !! This has been my relative’s experience and he has had briefs delivered to his apartment after midnight on too many occasions.
I also think that my relative is the kind of type-A personality who would be frustrated if he wasn’t litigating big cases with top clients and top colleagues. So overall I would say the biglaw lifestyle is not for everyone, and it’s not as glamorous as people make it out to be, and it certainly does come with a lot of stress…but it can be a good fit for some people.
At least lawyers in big laws get paid. D2 is doing 2 years paralegal internship at an US Attorney’s office. She has done quite a few 80 hr week. It happens whenever they are going into trial. Those lawyers pulled those long hours and they get paid only a fraction of what those big law lawyers get paid. The good thing is D2 likes what she is doing and is excited about going to law school. She doesn’t complain about the hours and is always happy when get she gets put on a case that is going to trial.
My experience is very different. I own my own firm. It is eight attorneys. I live in the flyover. We are very concerned about quality of life. When we get calls from attorneys on the coast, they are shocked at our billable rate (its low), but it is what the market can afford. I eat most of my dinners with my kids and coached my daughter’s soccer team for seven years (two seasons a year). It’s a different life. Yes, sometimes it can get crazy, but not like BigLaw. Then, I have a much nicer house than any partner at any BigLaw firm would ever be able to afford, I just have to live in Memphis. There’s trade offs. So long as you are fine with it, make your path.
I’m no longer in Biglaw, although I was for a long time.
I work more now than I did in Biglaw, although the hours now are more regular (with fewer late nights and only an extremely rare all-nighter).
Now I like my co-workers more, and the job is “survivable”; I can see doing it for the rest of my career. In Biglaw, I just didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.