<p>I understand that one of lawyers main complaints about their jobs is the amount of hours they work. I also understand that most lawyers work 50+ hours a week, with around 60 hours a week at big law firms. Most of the top law schools average starting salary in the private sector is $140k. I was wondering if a person graduating from a top law school with that kind of salary average could work a job for less like $100k and work less hours. Is there any way to make that work?</p>
<p>this question comes up a lot and it never ceases to amaze me that people talk about ANY six figure incomes as if they'd be settling for a "lower" salary -- expectations as to what that law degree will get you just seem awfully high. especially for those who find working 50+ a week "a lot." see this thread for some of the relevant issues discussed -- <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/600349-alternatives-big-law.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/600349-alternatives-big-law.html</a></p>
<p>how many hours would you like to work to earn your $100,000? after how many years do you expect to be worth what that works out to as an hourly rate? what type of clients do you expect to be able to pay enough that you can net that hourly rate (ie after the firm or other employer has paid the overhead, the partners' draw, etc.)?</p>
<p>my guess is that you also do not realize just what it means for a lawyer to work 50-60 hours a week. lawyers' hours are generally measured by "billable" hours -- the hours you can account for on a timesheet that the client will pay the firm for. not every hour you are at the office is a billable hour. in order to bill 50-60 hours a week, you are generally there considerably more time. </p>
<p>the basic underlying fact is that law is a service industry -- clients pay for you to get their work done when it needs to be done. this not only affects the overall number of hours, but also the predictability of hours. you may think things are under control and have plans for the weekend. the client calls friday afternoon. or you get a court filing that has to be answered in a ridiculously short time frame. or a partner just simply wants an answer to something. and you're at the office thru the weekend. </p>
<p>the intensity and demands of different practices vary. so do the salaries -- there are many lawyers earning well less than your goal of $100,000 - and many of them are still working 50+ hours a week.</p>
<p>is it possible to find the type of job you are describing? maybe. but realize also that if during the interview process you spend a lot of time asking about the hours and just how regularly you will be able to leave by 5 and enjoy your weekends, you may well be undermining your chances for that job. who would you rather hire? the lawyer who is concerned about his/her hours or the one willing to put in however many hours it takes to get the job done, however many that may be?</p>
<p>Probably in the 80-90+ hour range/week on average to meet 2,000 billable hours.</p>
<p>^^This is absolutely false. Both my dad and my brother work in BIGLAW and they said it is completely untrue that you have to work 80-90 hours/wk. in order to reach 2000 billables. They said that SOMETIMES you are forced to work 80-90 hours for a week or two, but that is not the norm by any means. Think about it dude: if you take 2 weeks off during the year (i.e. your working for 50 weeks) and you work 80 hours per week (thats the low end of you estimate...you said it could be 90 or more), that comes out to 4000 hours. Do you really think that only half the hours you spend at work are billable? </p>
<p>Bottom line: dont scare people by spreading bad info.</p>
<p>To answer the OP's question, in order to reach 2000, my brother said you have to put in 60-70 hours/wk. on average</p>
<p>Bottom line: you're much less likely to burn out if you expect to work 80-90+ hours a week and actually work 60-70 then if you expect to work 60-70 and actually work 80-90+. I suspect with salaries going up, billables are going to go up and by the time I finish law school I'll have to do 2400 billables.</p>
<p>You may not end up working that much week in and week out but be prepared to work that much every week, that's my point.</p>
<p>I'd wager that the salary war is over for the foreseeable future, and that it will be years before you hear about any Biglaw firm raising its associates' salaries.</p>
<p>Almost everyone has cut bonuses this year.</p>
<p>I'm an in-house attorney who just put in a 60-hour week, which is about 10 hours more than is typical for me. I'll confess to being tired and cranky now.</p>
<p>70-hour work weeks are bad for the body and soul if you have too many of them.</p>
<p>I'll take $160k, as long as they don't raise billables. Although for the first three years, given the choice, I'll take the payraise and extra billables.</p>
<p>Well said, unbelievablem.</p>
<p>Look, the reality is that you likely won't work 70+ hours every single week of the year in BIGLAW, but the biggest problem is that you won't know when you are going to have to work those hours. You will have weeks where you bill 70+ hours per week (which means that you worked at least 80+ hours, if you are incredibly efficient), you and you will have weeks where you bill more or less than that.</p>
<p>For me, the biggest challenge in BIGLAW has always been that the very high hour weeks tend to be clustered, so that you will work 7 days a week, an average of 15 hours a day, for two months at a time. By the time you are through those months, you are absolutely brain dead, I promise. </p>
<p>The second biggest challenge is that your hours are not evenly spread throughout the week. You could go to work on a Monday morning, pull an all nighter, and not go home until Tuesday afternoon. You might work for a few hours Tuesday evening, then have a fairly normal 10-12 hour day on Wednesday. Thursday morning you could go into work and then pull another all nighter, staying on Friday evening then until 10 p.m. Saturday morning it is back in the office by 10 a.m. for a 10-hour workday. Sunday, you work again from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. This is not at all unusual, and, in fact, is what one week looked like for me last month. </p>
<p>The predictability does get a bit better once you are senior (7th - 8th year associate or partner), as you can control when things get done. However, if you have a client who insists that something be done by morning, you will be staying all night until that work gets done regardless of your seniority. Can you say, "client service industry"?</p>
<p>As a junior and mid-level associate, you will get paid well in BIGLAW because you are making sacrifices, not necessarily because you are such a brilliant lawyer.</p>
<p>I don't mean this to be an insult to anyone, but do clients realize that some of these reported hours on the bill were produced by people continuously working 15-hours/day for 3+ days? Working as an engineer, I don't know anyone who has pulled repeated all-nighters and been 100% productive through the whole time. </p>
<p>A lot of consulting in the engineering field is done on a contract (work-product) basis, as opposed to a billable-hour basis. </p>
<p>Generally, contract customers start to question the organization/effectiveness of their consultants, if they see repeated all-nighters, because every technical manager knows real productivity drops off once people go beyond 36 hours in a 3 day-period. Some of the work contracts have built-in caps to prevent the total billing exceeding an agreed-upon rate (at which point, the service agency provides an outlook on what options and costs are to continue the work to completion.)</p>
<p>As always, it's always a moving target, since every project is different, some have cost overruns (i.e. take more work than originally projected), and some are just plain stupid because the customer supplied bad documentation.</p>
<p>Maybe law firms can standardize a 'tiered-billing' system:</p>
<p>"overnight express service $1000/hr"
"2nd-day service $800/hr"
"guaranteed 3-day delivery $600/hr"
"miser saver billing $400/hr"</p>
<p>(As you can see, I know nothing about the real practice of law :))</p>
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<blockquote> <p>7th - 8th year associate or partner</p> </blockquote>
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<p>sallyawp, is it normal for an associate to remain an associate for that long? Is it like the academic world where associates face an ultimatum: make partner (by X years), or leave and go somewhere?</p>