How many hours do most biglaw lawyers work per week when aiming for Partner? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

Oh god, just chill. Because OP is probably male and is referring to himself, not because he thinks women can't make partner. Relax.

I mean, I get your point, but people here do do this (default to male) all the time and it gets pretty old after a while.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

Oh god, just chill. Because OP is probably male and is referring to himself, not because he thinks women can't make partner. Relax.

If you read the comments, OP is a woman.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

In any event, I'm a partner-track senior associate who is up soon. My billable hours as a mid-senior associate have consistently hovered in the 2600-2950 range. I agree with the posters who have said that billable hours are not the most important thing, however. You have to find significant time (ideally several hundred hours a year extra) for business development and networking. Most years, I've added 300-600 hours of pitches, other client development, and networking. I can probably leave unsaid the impact on my personal life, but I love the job and realize that this extreme pace is temporary. (I agree with the posters who have noted that even partners have to be on call constantly, but overall hours almost always drop.)

FWIW, I do not believe this level of frenetic pace is required to make partner at my firm. My best guess as to a good baseline for a senior associate who is an aspiring partner is 2300-2400 billable + 300 business promotion.

You love the job? How? Please share because I'm miserable and I'd probably rage quit if I had a single year at 2950. Are you married? Do you have kids? I mean, how does that ACTUALLY work?

[totesTheGoat]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

Oh god, just chill. Because OP is probably male and is referring to himself, not because he thinks women can't make partner. Relax.

I mean, I get your point, but people here do do this (default to male) all the time and it gets pretty old after a while.

Wouldn't default to female be just as "problematic," or would that be the "woke" thing to do? Maybe default Xe or Xhe or they? I can't keep up anymore.

Either way, let me be the first to pat you on the back for being a right thinking, progressive grammarian. I hope that OP is embarrassed and metaphorically flogged for using the wrong pronoun. He's The person I'm referring to is worse than Hitler.

[nixy]

Default/universal "he" is grammatically dead (check style guides), so yeah, people could just say she for a change, or use they, which is really common and frequently recommended. It's actually not at all difficult. And people on this site regularly assume users are male until proven otherwise, so small changes would make it easier for people to avoid doing that.

But gosh, thanks for the pat on the back, that's really what I was going for, I was worried you wouldn't think I was sufficiently grammatically progressive! And flogging the OP was *exactly* what I was going for, that's why I was so immoderate in my language. Good catch.

[jrc223]

What does grammatically dead even mean

[nixy]

What does grammatically dead even mean

It means that in official style guides it's disapproved of. Maybe that should have said stylistically dead, apologies for the imprecision.

[oblig.lawl.ref]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

In any event, I'm a partner-track senior associate who is up soon. My billable hours as a mid-senior associate have consistently hovered in the 2600-2950 range. I agree with the posters who have said that billable hours are not the most important thing, however. You have to find significant time (ideally several hundred hours a year extra) for business development and networking. Most years, I've added 300-600 hours of pitches, other client development, and networking. I can probably leave unsaid the impact on my personal life, but I love the job and realize that this extreme pace is temporary. (I agree with the posters who have noted that even partners have to be on call constantly, but overall hours almost always drop.)

FWIW, I do not believe this level of frenetic pace is required to make partner at my firm. My best guess as to a good baseline for a senior associate who is an aspiring partner is 2300-2400 billable + 300 business promotion.

You love the job? How? Please share because I'm miserable and I'd probably rage quit if I had a single year at 2950. Are you married? Do you have kids? I mean, how does that ACTUALLY work?

Agreed. I work with senior associates that I like, respect, and think of as 95% pretty normal people. That 5%, absurdly psychotic, thing they do, though, is want to be partner. Junior partners at my firm may see a small drop but not that much the first few years. Probably another small drop over the next handful of years or so. At the end of the day, for all but the luckiest, it still seems like a pretty shitty gig to me when you realize you only have a finite amount of time on earth.

Also those numbers are pretty absurd where I am. I will leave it at that.

[Anonymous User]

The drop in billables is made up for by the expansion in non-billable firm citizenship work, which includes not only business development, but also committee work, running the hiring process, and managing associate workloads and meting out discipline when necessary. At my firm, the junior partners (and this can include people well into their 40s who don’t have a book) basically run the OCI process including flying around to different schools, do the bulk of the interviewing, serve as assigning partners (meaning they have to be on-call to staff up a matter 24/7), do reviews for the whole department, supervise the submissions to the various trade publications, etc. Now they can delegate a lot of the work to various non-attorney staff but ultimately when you add up all those responsibilities it is a lot of time. If your firm is heavy into pro bono a lot of junior partners do that work as well As a senior associate you can opt-out of all of that if you don’t want to do it and do not have any desire to make partner.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

In any event, I'm a partner-track senior associate who is up soon. My billable hours as a mid-senior associate have consistently hovered in the 2600-2950 range. I agree with the posters who have said that billable hours are not the most important thing, however. You have to find significant time (ideally several hundred hours a year extra) for business development and networking. Most years, I've added 300-600 hours of pitches, other client development, and networking. I can probably leave unsaid the impact on my personal life, but I love the job and realize that this extreme pace is temporary. (I agree with the posters who have noted that even partners have to be on call constantly, but overall hours almost always drop.)

FWIW, I do not believe this level of frenetic pace is required to make partner at my firm. My best guess as to a good baseline for a senior associate who is an aspiring partner is 2300-2400 billable + 300 business promotion.

You love the job? How? Please share because I'm miserable and I'd probably rage quit if I had a single year at 2950. Are you married? Do you have kids? I mean, how does that ACTUALLY work?

Not the anon above, but nothing got me over the idea that I might want to make a run for partner faster than billing 3000 hours in a year (and I had a 12 month period where it was more like 3250). It wasn’t even the sheer amount of work but just the fact that I was spending 16 hrs+ a day dealing largely with people I do not like or who stressed me out/caused me total anxiety at the cost of not being able to spend time with important people in my life. (Including multiple blown vacations/weekends away). The other thing is that when you are working that much, the money starts to not feel like that much especially when you break it out hourly. You start to think is biglaw is really the most productive way to spend your time, from an economic standpoint, given that there is so much more you could accomplish with less of a time investment. Like the poster above said, you ultimately realize that you have a finite amount of time on this earth and it’s more important to spend that time where you want.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

In any event, I'm a partner-track senior associate who is up soon. My billable hours as a mid-senior associate have consistently hovered in the 2600-2950 range. I agree with the posters who have said that billable hours are not the most important thing, however. You have to find significant time (ideally several hundred hours a year extra) for business development and networking. Most years, I've added 300-600 hours of pitches, other client development, and networking. I can probably leave unsaid the impact on my personal life, but I love the job and realize that this extreme pace is temporary. (I agree with the posters who have noted that even partners have to be on call constantly, but overall hours almost always drop.)

FWIW, I do not believe this level of frenetic pace is required to make partner at my firm. My best guess as to a good baseline for a senior associate who is an aspiring partner is 2300-2400 billable + 300 business promotion.

You love the job? How? Please share because I'm miserable and I'd probably rage quit if I had a single year at 2950. Are you married? Do you have kids? I mean, how does that ACTUALLY work?

Not the anon above, but nothing got me over the idea that I might want to make a run for partner faster than billing 3000 hours in a year (and I had a 12 month period where it was more like 3250). It wasn’t even the sheer amount of work but just the fact that I was spending 16 hrs+ a day dealing largely with people I do not like or who stressed me out/caused me total anxiety at the cost of not being able to spend time with important people in my life. (Including multiple blown vacations/weekends away). The other thing is that when you are working that much, the money starts to not feel like that much especially when you break it out hourly. You start to think is biglaw is really the most productive way to spend your time, from an economic standpoint, given that there is so much more you could accomplish with less of a time investment. Like the poster above said, you ultimately realize that you have a finite amount of time on this earth and it’s more important to spend that time where you want.

So, are you still at your firm? What's your next move? Are you corporate or litigation?

[throwaway11234125410]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

I guess the jokes about feminists always looking for something to be angry about is true for god sake were on a law forum.

I'm the OP and I'm a guy so I don't know where people got the idea I'm a woman.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

I guess the jokes about feminists always looking for something to be angry about is true for god sake were on a law forum.

I'm the OP and I'm a guy so I don't know where people got the idea I'm a woman.

Probably got it from another “anon” user that was asking questions about the lack of time with family/kids when you’re gunning for partner directly saying “I am a woman”.

[nixy]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

I guess the jokes about feminists always looking for something to be angry about is true for god sake were on a law forum.

I'm the OP and I'm a guy so I don't know where people got the idea I'm a woman.

Why does this being a law forum make the tiniest bit of difference?

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

In any event, I'm a partner-track senior associate who is up soon. My billable hours as a mid-senior associate have consistently hovered in the 2600-2950 range. I agree with the posters who have said that billable hours are not the most important thing, however. You have to find significant time (ideally several hundred hours a year extra) for business development and networking. Most years, I've added 300-600 hours of pitches, other client development, and networking. I can probably leave unsaid the impact on my personal life, but I love the job and realize that this extreme pace is temporary. (I agree with the posters who have noted that even partners have to be on call constantly, but overall hours almost always drop.)

FWIW, I do not believe this level of frenetic pace is required to make partner at my firm. My best guess as to a good baseline for a senior associate who is an aspiring partner is 2300-2400 billable + 300 business promotion.

You love the job? How? Please share because I'm miserable and I'd probably rage quit if I had a single year at 2950. Are you married? Do you have kids? I mean, how does that ACTUALLY work?

Not the anon above, but nothing got me over the idea that I might want to make a run for partner faster than billing 3000 hours in a year (and I had a 12 month period where it was more like 3250). It wasn’t even the sheer amount of work but just the fact that I was spending 16 hrs+ a day dealing largely with people I do not like or who stressed me out/caused me total anxiety at the cost of not being able to spend time with important people in my life. (Including multiple blown vacations/weekends away). The other thing is that when you are working that much, the money starts to not feel like that much especially when you break it out hourly. You start to think is biglaw is really the most productive way to spend your time, from an economic standpoint, given that there is so much more you could accomplish with less of a time investment. Like the poster above said, you ultimately realize that you have a finite amount of time on this earth and it’s more important to spend that time where you want.

So, are you still at your firm? What's your next move? Are you corporate or litigation?

Lit, actively looking for non-legal jobs.

[Anonymous User]

Not sure why the OP's language assumes this aspiring partner will be male.

In any event, I'm a partner-track senior associate who is up soon. My billable hours as a mid-senior associate have consistently hovered in the 2600-2950 range. I agree with the posters who have said that billable hours are not the most important thing, however. You have to find significant time (ideally several hundred hours a year extra) for business development and networking. Most years, I've added 300-600 hours of pitches, other client development, and networking. I can probably leave unsaid the impact on my personal life, but I love the job and realize that this extreme pace is temporary. (I agree with the posters who have noted that even partners have to be on call constantly, but overall hours almost always drop.)

FWIW, I do not believe this level of frenetic pace is required to make partner at my firm. My best guess as to a good baseline for a senior associate who is an aspiring partner is 2300-2400 billable + 300 business promotion.

You love the job? How? Please share because I'm miserable and I'd probably rage quit if I had a single year at 2950. Are you married? Do you have kids? I mean, how does that ACTUALLY work?

Not the anon above, but nothing got me over the idea that I might want to make a run for partner faster than billing 3000 hours in a year (and I had a 12 month period where it was more like 3250). It wasn’t even the sheer amount of work but just the fact that I was spending 16 hrs+ a day dealing largely with people I do not like or who stressed me out/caused me total anxiety at the cost of not being able to spend time with important people in my life. (Including multiple blown vacations/weekends away). The other thing is that when you are working that much, the money starts to not feel like that much especially when you break it out hourly. You start to think is biglaw is really the most productive way to spend your time, from an economic standpoint, given that there is so much more you could accomplish with less of a time investment. Like the poster above said, you ultimately realize that you have a finite amount of time on this earth and it’s more important to spend that time where you want.

So, are you still at your firm? What's your next move? Are you corporate or litigation?

Lit, actively looking for non-legal jobs.

That makes two of us. It's a really tough spot to be in. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic that I'll find something that will validate my decision to go to law school.

[Anonymous User]

Lit, actively looking for non-legal jobs.

That makes two of us. It's a really tough spot to be in. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic that I'll find something that will have validate my decision to go to law school.

Have you saved a lot of money and paid off your loans? Thinking about it in terms of "this is how many months I can survive with my current liquid savings even if I got fired tomorrow" (which it is highly unlikely that you will) is a great way to think about it.

[Anonymous User]

[]

[Anonymous User]

Lit, actively looking for non-legal jobs.

That makes two of us. It's a really tough spot to be in. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic that I'll find something that will have validate my decision to go to law school.

Have you saved a lot of money and paid off your loans? Thinking about it in terms of "this is how many months I can survive with my current liquid savings even if I got fired tomorrow" (which it is highly unlikely that you will) is a great way to think about it.

I saved a significant amount of money (maybe $150k or so) and paid off my loans. I think I could live for ~2 years on my savings if I HAD to. But the bigger problem is...what's next? I don't have a good answer to that and there isn't really a light at the end of the tunnel. In an ideal world, I'd start over...I'd go back to school and choose a different career path.

[totesTheGoat]

Why does this being a law forum make the tiniest bit of difference?

Because it makes your grammatical critique rather off-topic. This thread is for a legal related issue. If you find something about a post inappropriate or otherwise offensive, please either report the offending post using the "report post" function or start a thread in the feedback forum to discuss broader issues in the forum.

[nixy]

You’re right and I won’t say anything more about it in this thread (ftr I didn’t bring it up, just agreed with the person who did), but I’m preeeeeeeetttttty sure that’s not what throwaway was going for and also, assumptions about gender in the legal profession (and grammatical expressions thereof) are legal related.