<p>I was shocked by many threads here indicating that a typical lawyer in a law firm would be [informally] required to work about 2200+ billable hours a year on average.</p>
<p>The problem is that I would rather earn less and spend more time with my family etc.</p>
<p>Is it possible for a lawyer (especially intellectual property attorney) to work for 1800 billable hours (or something similar to that) per year?</p>
<p>P.S: I am a college freshman wondering if I should prepare myself for a law school or not.</p>
<p>You have to understand law, medicine, top business jobs all require tons of work.</p>
<p>Medicine requires 3 years med school, 4 years residency + whatever years specialization. ibankers work 100+ hour weeks. Lawyers likewise have to put in the motions after college as well.</p>
<p>You can work less (public lawyers or nonprofit) but you'll make much less as well and have less upward mobility chances. Nothing is free in the world.</p>
<p>Sadly, beginning in most professions including law does require you to put in grueling hours for several years. Clerking for a year or two, you can probably lead a pretty decent life. Once you become an associate at a law firm, you'll likely put in very long hours for several years at least. In my 5 years as an associate, I could never now for certain if & when I'd be able to take a vacation--they were generally contingent on a case settling rather than going to trial. When we were in trial, the only time my spouse would see me is if he would come & eat dinner with our law firm & then he'd see me crawl into bed very late in the evening & disappear early in the morning--back to the office.</p>
<p>Don't really know much about intellectual property law & suggest you contact folks in that field to learn more--not sure how many openings there are or how competitive the field is, but I suspect it's extremely competitive.</p>
<p>of course you can work 1800 hours. but that generally means you're also not making six figures. and severely less than six figures, especially fresh out of law school. to a point that you might wonder "why the hell did i sacrifice three years of my life and $150,000 to go to law school when i could have made a comparable salary without a JD?" especially if you don't go into public sector and have your loans forgiven.</p>
<p>unless you really pimp the system at law school and go into an inhouse legal team within a large corporation. you'll make comparatively good salary (still not six figures), have a 9-6 schedule (cept in the instances when **** hits the fan), etc.
but again, in order to do so, you really gotta pimp it during law school.</p>
<p>what you have to understand is that the hours you work are often outside of your control -- and i don't just mean in terms of a senior partner telling you what you have to do.</p>
<p>law is a service industry -- it is a lawyers job to serve the client. even if you work for the gov't, in-house for a corp, or for a public interest entity, you have a client -- and your client makes demands that determine your workload. your workload is also influenced by factors such as whether your practice has third party time limitations -eg, if you are in litigation, a court will be setting time requirements; if you are in corporate law, you will have certain filing requirements; if you are in labor law, a strike deadline may loom, etc. i know a patent attorney who works crazy hours - can't say if that is typical or not.</p>
<p>in considering what your hours are likely to be, you have to consider: 1) who will be your client and what types of demands will they likely make (some govt and public interest law jobs can be just as demanding as private firm ones) (2) what inherent time factors are generated by the type of practice (3) at what point in your career within this field would you have autonomy over your workload, eg. the ability to say "no" or the ability to delegate work to others.</p>
<p>prior to quiting the practice of law entirely, i worked "part time" for several years. it wasn't easy. clients still wanted things done when they wanted them done. court filings were still due when they were due. hearings were scheduled was or not it was my day off. i did work fewer hours than i had while fulltime - put friends laughed when i called my hours "part time." </p>
<p>people contemplating law school often look at the intellectual aspect or it. few really stop and think about the reality of serving ones clients -- that is what the practice of law is about.</p>
<p>as for working in house -- i don't know what a prior poster means about "pimping" it in law school.
but what i do know -- corporations often want lawyers with big firm experience. lawyers hired in-house without that experience can often be relegated to the bottom of the in-house legal totem pole. same can also be true in some areas of gov't practice - where politics can also play a role.</p>
<p>When they say, "The law is a jealous mistress," they really mean it. Timelines can be very stressful in law--I know a lot of burned out former attorneys. It can be a great field for the right folks & a horrible field for many others, like any other profession.</p>
<p>unbelievablem -- essentially what i meant, was that it would be hard as hell to get a good inhouse job straight out of law school, since paying dues at a biglaw doesn't seem to be an option for the OP</p>
<p>First of all, I completely agree that you aren't going to make $125,000 straight out of law school and work 50 hours per week. If you're 25, have no work experience, that translates to (50 hours * 50 weeks per year = 2500 hours) = $50/hour if I can do my math. That's a lot of money for someone without work experience.</p>
<p>Now, there are certainly jobs that will give you a lower salary but better quality of life. If you're able to get them, consider the prosecutor's office, government jobs, or firms in smaller cities (even rural, if you can take it). </p>
<p>Problem is that a lot of IP work is done in big firms, located in big cities (both of which correspond to more hours) - if you wanted to do real estate law, I think you would have a better shot at having the quality of life you want.</p>
<p>Would you be able to tolerate paying your dues for a few years, then switching over to a less demanding job? Big firm work will open a lot of doors for you.</p>
<p>I got what I felt & my employer felt was a fair wage at the time, for my experience. They also gave me a month off to study for & take the HI bar + one week off afterwards to recover. I never compared my salary to anyone else at the time, so I'm not sure how it matched up to be honest--I loved the firm. It was full of supportive partners & they gave me all the unusual cases & lots of authority & responsibility--I was put in sole charge of a multi-million dollar case & was present at all negotiations leading up to its eventual settlement, one of our firm's biggest. I grew a great deal in my 5 years working for them & they gave me 5 weeks off for my honeymoon!</p>
<p>A friend who recently quit practicing as an insurance defense attorney after 10 years was making over $100,000/year, but I never found out the exact amount. My friend who was working as a research attorney for the legislature says the starting pay there is about $30-40,000. Public Defenders & Prosecutors in Hawaii start out with pretty low wages, but it does increase. State judges make about $100,000 & up.</p>