<p>I am interested in law school and working as a lawyer, but before I make the commitment, I am wondering, is it true that pretty much all non-public jobs coming out of law school make you work 80hrs/week? I am hard-working (3.9 GPA at UC Davis right now) and willing to work hard after I graduate, but these kind of extreme hours frighten me! For any lawyers /law graduates out there, are there any options for lawyers that allow them to have a life (40-50 hours/wk) and still make a good salary? Thanks!!</p>
<p>Yes. Aim for a job in-house in a corporation instead of working in a law firm.</p>
<p>i'm not sure if this is still true but i will throw it out as something to think about or for others to clarify.</p>
<p>back when i was fresh out of law school (lets just say, quite a few years ago) - those who ultimately wanted the saner life of an in-house counsel faced the problem that companies often wanted lawyers who had big firm experience for their in-house counsel - especially at the higher levels. so if you started in-house, your chance for advancing in-house was more limited than if you slaved in a big firm for a few years and then moved in-house.</p>
<p>What kind of law do you want to practice? If you work for a big firm, then most likely you will have to put in an awful lot of hours. Smaller firms, not so much.</p>
<p>I am not entirely sure exactly which type of law I want to do, but I am interested in corporate law (specifically in the medical or entertainment industry). Is there such a thing as a 'lifestyle' firm? How much do they pay? Keep the good advice coming--thanks so much!!</p>
<p>Concentrate on different areas of the country. If you work in NYC, generally, you're going to work 80 hour weeks. The West Coast, Chicago, and some other areas will have kinder working hours.</p>
<p>Generally, smaller cities or less cosmopolitan areas have saner lifestyles. Everyone here keeps saying that Delaware is great for firm life. </p>
<p>This does come at a price - literally.</p>
<p>what you always have to bear in mind if you want to be a lawyer is the basic fact that law is a service industry. a lot of people who decide to enter law do so because of the intellectual challenge - but you have to remember that a lawyer's job is ultimately to serve the client - whether you work for a firm, a corporation, or the government, you are providing counsel to a client. </p>
<p>some types of clients will demand more of your time and energy. there will be deadlines - sometimes very real ones (the court requires something be a given date, a filing is due a certain time, the client needs a decision by a given date in order to make its decision by a certain time); some seem less real (the senior partner says he/she wants it by a given time, the client wants an answer by a certain time) but as a practical matter can be just as real. it is these types of demands that in turn affect the workload of the attorney. By the very nature of the work, it can be hard for an attorney to put his/her own lifestyle interests first, because it is their job to put their client's intersts first. </p>
<p>i've known people who have worked for small firms, in-house at corporations, or for the government, who all ended up working crazy hours. you have to look at what the nature of the practice is like and what the "client" demands are likely to be.</p>
<p>there are lawyers who manage to find a balance -- there was a thread several months ago where lawyers expressed their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the legal practice - many of the ones who seemed happy seemed to work in government jobs or small practices where they dealt with people (not corporations) though there was certainly no univeral consensus.</p>
<p>i really think it is crucial for anyone contemplating a legal career to really stop and ask themselves what they mean by that. a legal career generally is not about satisfying your own intellectual curiousity -- it is about doing what a client is paying you to do.</p>