Biglaw associates: are any of us actually happy? Forum

[dixiecupdrinking]

Maybe you don't find investment grade financings meaningful but you have to be pretty stone cold not to find it 'meaningful' (whatever that means) to give your family a nice place to live and financial security.

I think this quote captures a lot of the disconnect in the thread. Working a ton on projects of questionable social value in exchange for piles of money feels very different when you're 28 and single than when you're 35, married, and have kids. When you're single (or at least when I was single), you're working to promote your own happiness. It's not enough for the rewards of work to outweigh the sacrifices -- you don't enjoy how you're spending the majority of your time. Maybe you can justify sticking around for a few more years under some sort of delayed happiness logic, but you can't consider yourself happy.

With a family, the analysis changes. You're earning enough money for your family to live exactly as they want to live. It no longer matters whether your work is "meaningful" because the money itself is meaningful. Now the question is whether the money is worth the hours and stress.

I feel precisely the opposite. On balance I don't mind doing this now, when I don't have a family. No way I want to be eating dinner in the office every night when I have kids at home.

[84651846190]

I must admit that I've never understood single folks who gun super hard in biglaw. If I were single, I would find a chill programming job and take care of myself so that I could have some semblance of a social life. I can't really relate to the kind of materialism needed to strive so hard as a single person.

[kcdc1]

Maybe you don't find investment grade financings meaningful but you have to be pretty stone cold not to find it 'meaningful' (whatever that means) to give your family a nice place to live and financial security.

I think this quote captures a lot of the disconnect in the thread. Working a ton on projects of questionable social value in exchange for piles of money feels very different when you're 28 and single than when you're 35, married, and have kids. When you're single (or at least when I was single), you're working to promote your own happiness. It's not enough for the rewards of work to outweigh the sacrifices -- you don't enjoy how you're spending the majority of your time. Maybe you can justify sticking around for a few more years under some sort of delayed happiness logic, but you can't consider yourself happy.

With a family, the analysis changes. You're earning enough money for your family to live exactly as they want to live. It no longer matters whether your work is "meaningful" because the money itself is meaningful. Now the question is whether the money is worth the hours and stress.

I feel precisely the opposite. On balance I don't mind doing this now, when I don't have a family. No way I want to be eating dinner in the office every night when I have kids at home.

I think having a family deemphasizes the need for "meaningful" work, but increases the importance of time at home. I think the pro-law firm people ITT are simply arguing that firm life is among the better ways to make the money they want for their families. It's hard to make $250k in any field without putting in a lot of hours -- biglaw is not unique in terms of its time requirements.

[Johann]

I think having a family deemphasizes the need for "meaningful" work, but increases the importance of time at home. I think the pro-law firm people ITT are simply arguing that firm life is among the better ways to make the money they want for their families. It's hard to make $250k in any field without putting in a lot of hours -- biglaw is not unique in terms of its time requirements.

But our point is if you look at the partners - the positions you are gunning so hard for - they are divorced and their kids hate them and have rebelled against them. They've seen their parents prioritize the millionth dollar that does absolutely nothing for them or their future over taking an interest in the kids life. The point is any smart person knows what it takes to raise a family, and biglaw provides much more than necessary at the very expense of those relationships. You can make $150k or $200k inhouse. You can make $150k in government. You can make $100k in regular corporate monkey jobs after 5-6 years if you are smart.

You aren't looking at the situation smartly or with a full understanding if you think your spouse will understand the travel and 80 hour weeks when you have 5 million of assets, and in theo ff chance you get lucky and your SO recognizes the sacrifice for the family, you can be 100% sure a kid will not understand because the world is much simpler to them - why is my parent in the office doing work again instead of watching me on the playground when we already have more than my friends and neighbors.

[Desert Fox]

[A. Nony Mouse]

The "meaningful" thing was going to the OP of this thread - I don't think I've ever seen DF complain about needing his work to have meaning. He's probably called his work meaningless, but that's not the same thing and given how much he shits on PI whenever possible, I don't think he cares. And the lit thing is clearly a lit/corp rivalry and not actually a serious complaint about biglaw, especially when the person making that comment is a litigator.

Besides, if he's not serious why on earth does it matter that he's said these things?

Because infrequent posters not privy to DF's lounge behavior have no reason to think that DF trolls at the level he does. Wons posting history indicates that he's clearly not a mega poster which makes it more than a little defensive on your part to take him to task just for taking DF's posts at face value.

And I say defensive be cause your whole polemic about "there are other jobs of there" clearly missed the point of what wons was saying to a degree that suggests you have some unrelated axe to grind.

I'm very familiar with wons' posting, thanks.

I get your point about financial security, but I don't think I'm moving the goalposts when one of the earliest questions in this thread was about whether the satisfaction of supporting your family is enough or you have to enjoy the work too. I think saying "what other job can you get where you make this amount of money is better?" has already moved the goalposts by starting from a premise that of course you will go for the highest paying job around so that's the only thing worth comparing. It assumes some of the very issues people are questioning - that is, the relative value of that security (which has mostly been couched in the importance of supporting your family) over other kinds of work satisfaction.

I know this isn't strictly my fight, but as I've said before, I find the "you don't like biglaw because you wouldn't like any work" argument kind of insulting and galling (mostly because I used to be in the work=life camp that seems to characterize the biglaw defenders and have now come to believe that's pretty unhealthy for most people).

Edit: meant to add that wanting to support your family is a perfectly great reason to be satisfied in biglaw, but that reason isn't going to get everyone through the day to day - again, not because they're lazy but because of different values (like wanting to spend more time with your kids than the job allows). Neither attitude (money v. time) is wrong, just different values.

[kcdc1]

But our point is if you look at the partners - the positions you are gunning so hard for - they are divorced and their kids hate them and have rebelled against them. They've seen their parents prioritize the millionth dollar that does absolutely nothing for them or their future over taking an interest in the kids life. The point is any smart person knows what it takes to raise a family, and biglaw provides much more than necessary at the very expense of those relationships. You can make $150k or $200k inhouse. You can make $150k in government. You can make $100k in regular corporate monkey jobs after 5-6 years if you are smart.

You aren't looking at the situation smartly or with a full understanding if you think your spouse will understand the travel and 80 hour weeks when you have 5 million of assets, and in theo ff chance you get lucky and your SO recognizes the sacrifice for the family, you can be 100% sure a kid will not understand because the world is much simpler to them - why is my parent in the office doing work again instead of watching me on the playground when we already have more than my friends and neighbors.

Two points:

(1) The partners at my firm are not divorced (can't speak to their relationships with their kids). I interviewed at firms where partners seemed to live as you describe, but that lifestyle does not appear to be mandatory.

(2) When you have $5M in assets, you can move into semi-retirement. If you're still working 80 hour weeks, that's a personal choice. There's a survivorship bias involved here. You look around and see needlessly rich partners with unhappy family lives, but those are the guys who keep working like crazy even after they've made their lot. The people who hit the brakes when they're financially secure aren't as visible.

[dixiecupdrinking]

Maybe you don't find investment grade financings meaningful but you have to be pretty stone cold not to find it 'meaningful' (whatever that means) to give your family a nice place to live and financial security.

I think this quote captures a lot of the disconnect in the thread. Working a ton on projects of questionable social value in exchange for piles of money feels very different when you're 28 and single than when you're 35, married, and have kids. When you're single (or at least when I was single), you're working to promote your own happiness. It's not enough for the rewards of work to outweigh the sacrifices -- you don't enjoy how you're spending the majority of your time. Maybe you can justify sticking around for a few more years under some sort of delayed happiness logic, but you can't consider yourself happy.

With a family, the analysis changes. You're earning enough money for your family to live exactly as they want to live. It no longer matters whether your work is "meaningful" because the money itself is meaningful. Now the question is whether the money is worth the hours and stress.

I feel precisely the opposite. On balance I don't mind doing this now, when I don't have a family. No way I want to be eating dinner in the office every night when I have kids at home.

I think having a family deemphasizes the need for "meaningful" work, but increases the importance of time at home. I think the pro-law firm people ITT are simply arguing that firm life is among the better ways to make the money they want for their families. It's hard to make $250k in any field without putting in a lot of hours -- biglaw is not unique in terms of its time requirements.

No shit. But who says you need that much money to be happy?

[kcdc1]

No shit. But who says you need that much money to be happy?

Depends where you live. There are areas of the country where $250k income with a family of four puts you squarely in "comfortable upper middle class" territory. If both parents work, you can hit comfortable upper middle class with lower pressure jobs.

[A. Nony Mouse]

And you can't be happy if you're not comfortable upper middle class, of course.

[kcdc1]

And you can't be happy if you're not comfortable upper middle class, of course.

Not a requirement for everyone obviously, but I don't think it would be unreasonable for some people to balance their hours/money at that point. It's personal preference. I'm arguing that law firm life makes sense for some people, not that it makes sense for everyone.

[A. Nony Mouse]

And you can't be happy if you're not comfortable upper middle class, of course.

Not a requirement for everyone obviously, but I don't think it would be unreasonable for some people to balance their hours/money at that point. It's personal preference. I'm arguing that law firm life makes sense for some people, not that it makes sense for everyone.

I agree with you on that.

[krads153]

I must admit that I've never understood single folks who gun super hard in biglaw. If I were single, I would find a chill programming job and take care of myself so that I could have some semblance of a social life. I can't really relate to the kind of materialism needed to strive so hard as a single person.

My parents are programmers and they ran their own business, so they'd start work at like 11 am or something and then work until they wanted to. They pretty much set their own hours, and they never pulled late nights. It's pretty awesome, because it's so easy to start your own company as a programmer and you could literally do it from anywhere (like your house). You can also hit it super big as a programmer if you sell your business for millions/billions, which is not really something you can do in law or medicine, etc. My in laws are also programmers (apparently programming ilk attract each other), who sold their business for like 20 million. My programming friend from college sold his business for a few million when he was only 24, and he ran his business out of his apartment with his roommate. This is the kind of stuff you could never do when you work for someone else, and it's so much easier making something marketable as a programmer than in any other profession. In retrospect, I probably should have stuck with programming.

I don't really get the gunning either, but I think they are still soul searching. Also some people are stuck int he "straight and narrow" path of life and don't really think outside of the box, so they will do the same thing, for life. And then die. I don't think they realize how fleeting youth is - you should spend your youth (and I should have) doing crazy stuff/live abroad, etc. before settling down. You have the rest of your life to work, but your youth only lasts like 20 years.

[nouseforaname123]

Count me in the happy camp. The work environment can be stressful at times, but, realistically, I work about an average of 65 hours a week making great money. That allows my spouse to be a stay at home parent. If I were in a less demanding job, my spouse and I would probably have to work a combined 90 hours a week to bring in the same household income and our kids would be in daycare.

Also, this is not meant to insult, troll or flame, but I think people should be realistic. I struggle to understand how people who spend significant time online (posting or lurking) are worried about the quality/meaningful use of their time.

[PMan99]

No one person has said all those things, which is what you implied when you lumped them together as litigator/PI wanna be/doesn't like stress and talked about one definition of happiness. Different people have each said different parts of that, but that's just different people valuing different things, not everyone who doesn't like biglaw creating a self-defeating definition of happiness.

And I don't agree that "well other jobs are just as bad if not worse so really people just have a problem with working, not with biglaw." I actually think that's a bullshit response. There are a zillion other kinds of jobs out there. Some people probably would rather work for a boss than a bunch of different partners, if it was a good boss and the partners suck. WRT to meaningful work, it's not like the only alternatives are a corporation or a firm, even if you're only looking at law. There are jobs in the universe where no one yells at you at all, and you make it sound like people not in law firms have way less job security than those in law firms, which doesn't make any sense to me - you can get fired anywhere, but barring specific writing on the wall, no one spends their day worrying about getting fired. Where you get the idea that everywhere else you work, more experience turns things into rote monotony, I have no idea - lots of fields allow for more responsibility and more learning as you advance.

And I agree, there are a lot of advantages about working at a big firm (though being your own boss is not really one I've heard people bring up unless you make it to partner, which everyone always describes as a laughable goal due to its difficulty). I'm certainly not telling you you shouldn't be enjoying it, and it's great that you do. I do think a lot of the problem is that law school is terrible prep for working and that top firms tend to hire out of law schools who have an awful lot of students who've spent their lives collecting brass rings and don't really know what it is that they would find satisfying in a job, and biglaw is the path of least resistance and has a great salary, so they do biglaw and end up miserable, and no, that's not the fault of biglaw. It's just that these kinds of arguments often turn into the pro-biglaw crowd saying that the anti-crowd just doesn't like working, period, which I think is a crappy straw man answer. Other people don't value the things you value. That doesn't mean they're never going to be happy working.

First, the notion that making partner is a "laughable" goal is just untrue. At a top NYC firm, transactional associate . . . I'd guess they have a 50/50 shot of being an equity partner at a big law firm if they want to be a partner, which of course is a big if. You have to remember that a big chunk of voluntary attrition is truly voluntary - women retiring young to have kids, folks getting the in-house job of their dreams. And a big chunk of the partnership at biglaw firms throughout the country started at the usual names in NY. It's of course very, very hard to start at Cravath and make partner at Cravath, but Cravath is not the only law partnership in the country.

If you find a job that pays remotely as well as biglaw that has materially less stress / hours, then awesome. My experience has been that those jobs are rare indeed. More likely, you step down into your sinecure, stress goes down, hours go down, pay goes down. So whether or not biglaw is for you isn't a question of whether some jobs are better on a per-minute basis than others, but a question you need to find out for yourself about how many minutes of work you want to do in a given day. If folks here think that working 55 hour weeks at the voting rights center for $50K is a "better" job for a 45 year old to have in any sort of objective way, then there's not really a discussion to be had - it's different, and it may be better for some personalities, but it's not objectively better. And the premise of this thread has been really, that biglaw jobs are objectively worse than other options.

I fully agree that the biggest problem with biglaw jobs is that it throws folks into the deep end, and many of those folks have de minimis professional experience before they go to law school. I guess by the time you're posting in this forum, that ship has sailed, but I think my pre-LS work experience helped me immensely in succeeding in a firm environment, and I'd urge anyone thinking about law school to take a few years off to do nothing more than learn how to work in a professional setting, which is a heck of a lot more difficult than it seems from outside.

50% chance. Lol. See what I mean when I said seniors are almost all delusional.

The temptation of <><breakfast><> keeps them churning through 2500 hrs a year before they get that 8th-yr talk.

If something like 5% of a class becomes equity at the firm they're at, even if half self selects out (way too high) and an equal amount make partner somewhere else (too high) you still end up with only 20%.

[thesealocust]

If something like 5% of a class becomes equity at the firm they're at, even if half self selects out (way too high) and an equal amount make partner somewhere else (too high) you still end up with only 20%.

That's roughly the right number - I've definitely seen the statistic that just under 20% of those who go into big firms jobs from T14 schools wind up making partner somewhere, even if not the firm they start at. Can't remember where the stat was from, but I've always had it in the back of my head.

[jbagelboy]

No one person has said all those things, which is what you implied when you lumped them together as litigator/PI wanna be/doesn't like stress and talked about one definition of happiness. Different people have each said different parts of that, but that's just different people valuing different things, not everyone who doesn't like biglaw creating a self-defeating definition of happiness.

And I don't agree that "well other jobs are just as bad if not worse so really people just have a problem with working, not with biglaw." I actually think that's a bullshit response. There are a zillion other kinds of jobs out there. Some people probably would rather work for a boss than a bunch of different partners, if it was a good boss and the partners suck. WRT to meaningful work, it's not like the only alternatives are a corporation or a firm, even if you're only looking at law. There are jobs in the universe where no one yells at you at all, and you make it sound like people not in law firms have way less job security than those in law firms, which doesn't make any sense to me - you can get fired anywhere, but barring specific writing on the wall, no one spends their day worrying about getting fired. Where you get the idea that everywhere else you work, more experience turns things into rote monotony, I have no idea - lots of fields allow for more responsibility and more learning as you advance.

And I agree, there are a lot of advantages about working at a big firm (though being your own boss is not really one I've heard people bring up unless you make it to partner, which everyone always describes as a laughable goal due to its difficulty). I'm certainly not telling you you shouldn't be enjoying it, and it's great that you do. I do think a lot of the problem is that law school is terrible prep for working and that top firms tend to hire out of law schools who have an awful lot of students who've spent their lives collecting brass rings and don't really know what it is that they would find satisfying in a job, and biglaw is the path of least resistance and has a great salary, so they do biglaw and end up miserable, and no, that's not the fault of biglaw. It's just that these kinds of arguments often turn into the pro-biglaw crowd saying that the anti-crowd just doesn't like working, period, which I think is a crappy straw man answer. Other people don't value the things you value. That doesn't mean they're never going to be happy working.

First, the notion that making partner is a "laughable" goal is just untrue. At a top NYC firm, transactional associate . . . I'd guess they have a 50/50 shot of being an equity partner at a big law firm if they want to be a partner, which of course is a big if. You have to remember that a big chunk of voluntary attrition is truly voluntary - women retiring young to have kids, folks getting the in-house job of their dreams. And a big chunk of the partnership at biglaw firms throughout the country started at the usual names in NY. It's of course very, very hard to start at Cravath and make partner at Cravath, but Cravath is not the only law partnership in the country.

If you find a job that pays remotely as well as biglaw that has materially less stress / hours, then awesome. My experience has been that those jobs are rare indeed. More likely, you step down into your sinecure, stress goes down, hours go down, pay goes down. So whether or not biglaw is for you isn't a question of whether some jobs are better on a per-minute basis than others, but a question you need to find out for yourself about how many minutes of work you want to do in a given day. If folks here think that working 55 hour weeks at the voting rights center for $50K is a "better" job for a 45 year old to have in any sort of objective way, then there's not really a discussion to be had - it's different, and it may be better for some personalities, but it's not objectively better. And the premise of this thread has been really, that biglaw jobs are objectively worse than other options.

I fully agree that the biggest problem with biglaw jobs is that it throws folks into the deep end, and many of those folks have de minimis professional experience before they go to law school. I guess by the time you're posting in this forum, that ship has sailed, but I think my pre-LS work experience helped me immensely in succeeding in a firm environment, and I'd urge anyone thinking about law school to take a few years off to do nothing more than learn how to work in a professional setting, which is a heck of a lot more difficult than it seems from outside.

50% chance. Lol. See what I mean when I said seniors are almost all delusional.

He doesn't mean at your first firm; he means at any large law firm. I can believe that a V5 transactional associate who both makes the subjective choice to stay at the firm and not look for exits for as long as possible and is willing to lateral as far 'down' as necessary to become partner has an okay shot at doing so; maybe not 50%, but at least one in five. If they don't drop dead or rage-quit first.

[UnicornHunter]

If something like 5% of a class becomes equity at the firm they're at, even if half self selects out (way too high) and an equal amount make partner somewhere else (too high) you still end up with only 20%.

That's roughly the right number - I've definitely seen the statistic that just under 20% of those who go into big firms jobs from T14 schools wind up making partner somewhere, even if not the firm they start at. Can't remember where the stat was from, but I've always had it in the back of my head.

I think 20% is on the high end, and that's not taking into account changes in the structure of the legal market. I'm pretty sure it's significantly more difficult to become an equity partner today than it was for the classes who graduated 20 years ago on which those numbers were based.

[krads153]

If something like 5% of a class becomes equity at the firm they're at, even if half self selects out (way too high) and an equal amount make partner somewhere else (too high) you still end up with only 20%.

That's roughly the right number - I've definitely seen the statistic that just under 20% of those who go into big firms jobs from T14 schools wind up making partner somewhere, even if not the firm they start at. Can't remember where the stat was from, but I've always had it in the back of my head.

I think 20% is on the high end, and that's not taking into account changes in the structure of the legal market. I'm pretty sure it's significantly more difficult to become an equity partner today than it was for the classes who graduated 20 years ago on which those numbers were based.

Supposedly back in the day when we were kids and before, a ton of the big firms were not "big" firms yet and you never got pushed out. At some firms, most people made partner. Partners also got paid a lot less back then.

Nowadays, it's like a billion times harder to become equity partner.

[Desert Fox]

[Desert Fox]

[Desert Fox]

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

Also, this is not meant to insult, troll or flame, but I think people should be realistic. I struggle to understand how people who spend significant time online (posting or lurking) are worried about the quality/meaningful use of their time.

180

[PMan99]

If something like 5% of a class becomes equity at the firm they're at, even if half self selects out (way too high) and an equal amount make partner somewhere else (too high) you still end up with only 20%.

That's roughly the right number - I've definitely seen the statistic that just under 20% of those who go into big firms jobs from T14 schools wind up making partner somewhere, even if not the firm they start at. Can't remember where the stat was from, but I've always had it in the back of my head.

I think 20% is on the high end, and that's not taking into account changes in the structure of the legal market. I'm pretty sure it's significantly more difficult to become an equity partner today than it was for the classes who graduated 20 years ago on which those numbers were based.

It's probably not that far off is somewhere really means somewhere. But if somwhere means Amlaw 350 or whatever, no way.

A lot of small firm partners don't make a lot of money compared to biglaw.

Even in lower end biglaw, when you factor in partnership spreads of 4:1 to 20:1, a generic service partner on the low end of that spread isn't going to be making that much more, if anything more, than a comparably senior in house person.

To summarize:
Making partner is an illusion (no one does)
Partnership is an illusion (with ever growing non-equity partnerships)
Equity partnership is an illusion (even at an old school all-equity places like Cravath there's a 3:1 spread, and most firms aren't Cravath)

[krads153]

Also, this is not meant to insult, troll or flame, but I think people should be realistic. I struggle to understand how people who spend significant time online (posting or lurking) are worried about the quality/meaningful use of their time.

180

Maybe because it's more enjoyable?

My spouse and I spend a lot of our free time playing video games online (we're both lawyers), doing a little programming on the side, and writing music. Not exactly useful or meaningful, but it's way better than working.