"I'd like to work in biglaw for a while..." Forum

[jbagelboy]

not sure why we're still stuck on the whole "raising your own children" thing. we should just deposit kids at a facility where robots raise them in groups of 6-8 until age 6 or so. some startup bro needs to get on this.

Why do you think "babysitting/nannying" is like NYC's 3rd largest profession

[patogordo]

not sure why we're still stuck on the whole "raising your own children" thing. we should just deposit kids at a facility where robots raise them in groups of 6-8 until age 6 or so. some startup bro needs to get on this.

Why do you think "babysitting/nannying" is like NYC's 3rd largest profession

yea but i don't want to entrust my children to a human being.

[rayiner]

Just because you don't remember learning a skill doesn't mean that the learning process was not important. And all I'm saying is that being a junior and midlevel isn't compatible with being present for that learning process.

Okay, but what skill is she going to learn before 10 that I need to be present for or influence? The daycare sends me an email every day with all the skills they're helping my daughter develop that I'd never have the patience to do.

This overparenting is a distinctly millennial thing. Our parents raised us (and by "us" I mean the cohort that was born in the early to mid 1980's) by parking us in front of the TV, and we turned out fine. Kids don't need more than that at an early age.

The amount of stimulation and interaction kids get at a modern daycare is far beyond what kids in our generation received even from stay at home moms.

[dead head]

The difference is that your friends or girlfriend can abandon you, while your kids will be a lot more flexible. Children are surprisingly resilient. As parents, we overestimate how much time kids really need at that age. Its more for us than for them. I say this as a parent and someone whose dad worked 80 hour weeks growing up. Yeah, my daughter cries when I drop her off at daycare, but she won't remember that 10 years from now. I don't remember jack from that phase of my childhood. What I remember is that my dad worked a lot, but always had time to talk to me and check in on me. I remember the love and the support, not the hours he was away. And my brother and I both have a great relationship with him.

Come on. If I remember, you were raised by your father alone, and although he worked a lot he was able to carve out times in the evenings and/or the weekends to make time for you. You can't make those kinds of commitments in biglaw. And for all you say about how kids don't remember their formative years, you have sure shared a lot on this forum about your father and growing up... and even here you're saying how he was always able to make time for you. So I'm not sure I quite buy this that kids don't need time, etc., especially since not all kids will react the same way to the same stimulus—some kids might be fine with limited parental involvement in their life, and some might not.

Also, I'm curious if your dad ever worked at a job where he got to take 2 hour lunches with drinks (especially when he was the age you were when you went to law school). Do you feel sorry for him like you feel sorry for k-JDs who haven't been able to do this? Do you think your did would have liked to work at biglaw for a few years, or would he prefer his career (or biglaw long-term)?

[PepperJack]

On the kids front, check out Freakonomics. Basically what they argue in one part of it is that it's impossible to know how much attention kids know at that age. People will point to the fact that statistically speaking the parents who are always around for their children tend to have healthier and better lives than children with the same IQ who had more absentminded parents. However, you need to be careful not to confuse causation with correlation. The parent who was readily attentive would also probably make sure a kid is properly fed, and is getting a good education. There's no evidence that "housekeeper babies" are worse off than non-"housekeeper babies". I'm just guessing but I'd imagine a dysfunctional marriage is much worse for a toddler than dad not being around during his waking hours more than one day a week.

[rayiner]

The difference is that your friends or girlfriend can abandon you, while your kids will be a lot more flexible. Children are surprisingly resilient. As parents, we overestimate how much time kids really need at that age. Its more for us than for them. I say this as a parent and someone whose dad worked 80 hour weeks growing up. Yeah, my daughter cries when I drop her off at daycare, but she won't remember that 10 years from now. I don't remember jack from that phase of my childhood. What I remember is that my dad worked a lot, but always had time to talk to me and check in on me. I remember the love and the support, not the hours he was away. And my brother and I both have a great relationship with him.

Come on. If I remember, you were raised by your father alone, and although he worked a lot he was able to carve out times in the evenings and/or the weekends to make time for you. You can't make those kinds of commitments in biglaw. And for all you say about how kids don't remember their formative years, you have sure shared a lot on this forum about your father and growing up... and even here you're saying how he was always able to make time for you. So I'm not sure I quite buy this that kids don't need time, etc., especially since not all kids will react the same way to the same stimulus—some kids might be fine with limited parental involvement in their life, and some might not.

Also, I'm curious if your dad ever worked at a job where he got to take 2 hour lunches with drinks (especially when he was the age you were when you went to law school). Do you feel sorry for him like you feel sorry for k-JDs who haven't been able to do this? Do you think your did would have liked to work at biglaw for a few years, or would he prefer his career (or biglaw long-term)?

1) I definitely wasn't raised by my father alone. My mother stayed at home until I was maybe 8-9? Like most parents in her generation, she parked me in front of a TV all day or let me run around with the other neighborhood kids. The over parenting that's in vogue these days, doing "enriching activities" with your kids, wasn't a thing back then. In any case, I assume we're not talking about single parenthood ITT.

2) My dad did make time in the evenings and weekends, and you can definitely make that time in big law. Indeed, the dreaded "works late senior associate" is usually a parent that checks out around 7 and logs back in around 10 after the kids are asleep. The great thing about young kids is that they don't have other plans. You don't have to "make a commitment." You just hang out with them when you have the time. And at least in litigation, you will have time. Averaged over a year, big law is a 60 hour/week job, not an 80 hour/week job.

3) My dad is an immigrant who was born in a village in Bangladesh. So no, no 2 hour lunches (though I had that luxury when I worked as an engineer). He has spent his whole life grinding. Big law would've been a walk in the park compared to his career (international development consulting). The big difference is the travel. When I was growing up he spent about half his time in-country, which meant living out of a third-world hotel room for weeks at a time. A job that requires a lot of travel is far more disruptive to home life than one that just has relatively demanding hours.

[IAFG]

On the kids front, check out Freakonomics. Basically what they argue in one part of it is that it's impossible to know how much attention kids know at that age. People will point to the fact that statistically speaking the parents who are always around for their children tend to have healthier and better lives than children with the same IQ who had more absentminded parents. However, you need to be careful not to confuse causation with correlation. The parent who was readily attentive would also probably make sure a kid is properly fed, and is getting a good education. There's no evidence that "housekeeper babies" are worse off than non-"housekeeper babies". I'm just guessing but I'd imagine a dysfunctional marriage is much worse for a toddler than dad not being around during his waking hours more than one day a week.

Yeah you don't need to read Freakonomics to learn causation =/= correlation. I would imagine most people know it instinctively if they don't learn it at 19 in stats 101.

[Anonymous User]

People who "love the law" should just do career clerk. But not bankruptcy clerks because they'll just get mad.

. Totally agree with this. BigLaw is the furthest thing from the academic circle jerk that was law school (which I personally appreciate).

But seriously, if you get stuck working for an asshole, you're going to hate your life, no matter whether it's BigLaw or MidLaw or ShitLaw. You just have to hope you get lucky and don't draw the "Tyrannical Midlevel" or "Asshole Senior" or "Crazy Partner" straw. The trick is finding the places where those people are few and far between, and that's basically not possible and comes down to luck too. And by luck I mean, imagine Russian Roulette where more than half of the chambers have bullets in them.

What's weird is a lot of firms want people who come off as intellectuals. I had very good grades at a t-14 but nobody would describe me as an intellectual. I also wasn't a very good interviewer but am personable enough to have gotten a lot of callbacks early on so by the second week of OCI I decided to just be honest instead of continuing to BS. I made a comment in one screener that I'm not an intellectual, and just want to serve clients instead of sitting around with a group of people wearing glasses discussing substantive legal theory. She said that on paper I seem like an intellectual, and I said that I was just smart, can apply stuff to real life and before law school thought that Nietzche was some Japanese toy. She gave a look and said that the firm prides itself on having an intellectual community. What I'm curious about is why firms would be so gung ho about the intellectual circle jerk if they really just want people who can do menial work good and quickly?

Depends on the firm. But if you go through the rosters of the top NY or DC firms, a plurality-to-majority have highly vetted pedigree and went to top schools their entire life, where they were told & taught that culture was both inherently significant and played a large role in your interactions with your peers. If you went to Princeton and majored in philosophy before going corporate (kind of a median background at a top white shoe firm esp in the partner class), even if you land at a large firm, you're probably pretentious enough to consider yourself "intellectual" or at least pseudo-intellectual. It's also a class & networking issue. It could hurt you to not know or care who Nietzsche is in terms of building a book of business when the industries are other pretentious pseudo-intellectuals.

Biglaw attorneys might deny it, but many love it when they are asked sophisticated questions about legal theory or the evolution of a particular practice area and can lecture like professors. It's kind of funny actually. When you talk to them in private or out of the firm context, they also love to flex their cultural sensitivity and the depth of their extracurricular interest. I remember when a guy showed me his "extensive" 18th century continental architecture library collection. So I'm not surprised in New York at least by the "cultivate an intellectual atmosphere" stuff.

Compare this to, for example, some IP firms in California where having a background as an amateur programmer/tech geek will help a lot more in relating to clients than season tickets to the NYC ballet.

One sector I worked in involved a lot of interaction with people in the construction industry. These were project managers with technical degrees who had often built their careers from the work site up. A lot of them were actually former firefighters. The type of perspective and cultural expectation was completely different from other industries, and an over-sensitized interest in music, literature, foreign travel, ect. could be a turnoff for building a clientele. Even the politics tended more libertarian / anti-intellectual.

It takes all kinds.

That all makes sense. I could discuss legal theory intellectually on a test or in practice enough to get an A. However, I'd take more pride in being able to have beaten all the rich snobby kids than my analysis. I would prefer it no more, no less to shooting the shit talking about the weather and certainly much less than discussing the ballgame. I guess I don't fit into those intellectual places, and truthfully they seem terrible.

[DoveBodyWash]

question to the associates ITT, if you could do it again, would you have taken a lower-ranked school with money? Is it merely about hedging against getting lower grades a lower-ranked school? Assuming you could have gotten your BigLaw job from a lower ranked school with less debt, do you think there was any value to going the T14 with sticker? Is it just about getting to BigLaw as cheaply as possible?

[PepperJack]

question to the associates ITT, if you could do it again, would you have taken a lower-ranked school with money? Is it merely about hedging against getting lower grades a lower-ranked school? Assuming you could have gotten BigLaw from your T14 or a lower ranked school with less debt, do you think there was any value to going the T14 with sticker? Or is it just about getting to BigLaw as cheaply as possible?

I'm a 2L, but it's about the likelihood of big law. I regret not going to other more regional schools with large scholarships where if I got the same grades (not a crazy assumption) I'd have probably gotten big law in the same market. On the other hand, I have no way of knowing how much the name of my school factored in. To get the full ride I'd have had to dropped down from let's say 10 to let's say 50. I also don't know if they would have been stricter on interview performance from the regional school, and most big law firms don't really recruit from them so it'd just be mass mail. Honestly, I had some screeners that were terrible (no chemistry, terrible conversation, cut short) that resulted in CB's. For some people it was just a chance to escape for a few days and make sure you weren't insane. You would get a CB if you were above the cutoff, and not someone who looked like the prototype of a future sex offender. At a TT they might be stricter and you'll be f*ed even with great grades.

Additionally, the data I heard was that you have limited control over 1L grades but I didn't find that to necessarily be true. A lot of it is really just being able to objectively analyze what works for you/doesn't work, and if you could do that before LS you could do it in LS. Still, regression to the mean would suggest even knowing one can perform on an xxx level, they're not a good bet to perform there at any school given non-controllable variables like if you're sick at the wrong time, misread something, etc. Contrarily, you can perform even better if it happened again. It's always easy to assess things ex-ante. Honestly, it's really the giant pool of 30%-60% where the t-14 makes/breaks them. I think my friends at different firms will be really successful, and this has some value to me in the grand scheme of things. I wouldn't have met them but for attending the t-14. I just don't know how to put a value figure on it.

[rayiner]

question to the associates ITT, if you could do it again, would you have taken a lower-ranked school with money? Is it merely about hedging against getting lower grades a lower-ranked school? Assuming you could have gotten your BigLaw job from a lower ranked school with less debt, do you think there was any value to going the T14 with sticker? Is it just about getting to BigLaw as cheaply as possible?

The answer is: retake.

[Anonymous User]

It seems extreme to say no one in biglaw should have kids until they reach partner. Then we'll just have a lot of rich down syndrome babies.

To be clear, I haven't suggested that anybody wait until they make partner to have kids. Biglaw Associate V20 (or whatever his handle is) posted that once you accept you aren't going to make partner your quality of life greatly improves (or something to that effect). I'm saying something similar: once you give up on the Lean-In/Boomer-you-can-have-it-all bullshit, you will be in a better position to understand biglaw.

I'm not bashing rayiner or what he proposed. Only pointing out that there is no "one secret trick" that erases the fact that sacrifices have to be made to work in biglaw. The specifics can be rearranged, but sacrifices still have to be made.

[rayiner]

It seems extreme to say no one in biglaw should have kids until they reach partner. Then we'll just have a lot of rich down syndrome babies.

To be clear, I haven't suggested that anybody wait until they make partner to have kids. Biglaw Associate V20 (or whatever his handle is) posted that once you accept you aren't going to make partner your quality of life greatly improves (or something to that effect). I'm saying something similar: once you give up on the Lean-In/Boomer-you-can-have-it-all bullshit, you will be in a better position to understand biglaw.

I'm not bashing rayiner or what he proposed. Only pointing out that there is no "one secret trick" that erases the fact that sacrifices have to be made to work in biglaw. The specifics can be rearranged, but sacrifices still have to be made.

I didn't say sacrifices didn't have to be made. I said I'd rather do big law at 30 with a kid than at 25 while trying to date. Families are a lot more flexible in terms of making compromises once you get past the millennial baby-wearing bullshit.

[ggocat]

It seems extreme to say no one in biglaw should have kids until they reach partner. Then we'll just have a lot of rich down syndrome babies.

To be clear, I haven't suggested that anybody wait until they make partner to have kids. Biglaw Associate V20 (or whatever his handle is) posted that once you accept you aren't going to make partner your quality of life greatly improves (or something to that effect). I'm saying something similar: once you give up on the Lean-In/Boomer-you-can-have-it-all bullshit, you will be in a better position to understand biglaw.

I'm not bashing rayiner or what he proposed. Only pointing out that there is no "one secret trick" that erases the fact that sacrifices have to be made to work in biglaw. The specifics can be rearranged, but sacrifices still have to be made.

Also, I've never heard of any partner having more time than he/she did as a senior associate, unless you're talking about ones at age 65+. It's not like partnership stops the workhorse. The reward for working hard is more hard work. (Though I'm no biglaw associate; perhaps others who made that life decision can comment.)

[PepperJack]

How's maternity leave work? With women's groups being so prevalent among many partners you would imagine that many firms have approaches to allow one to both raise a kid and have a successful career.

[rayiner]

How's maternity leave work? With women's groups being so prevalent among many partners you would imagine that many firms have approaches to allow one to both raise a kid and have a successful career.

I took paternity leave my second month in. Nobody blinked an eye. That said, its harder for a woman, but mainly because of gender roles. Even big law women tend to disproportionately be primary care givers when most big law men have wives who don't have demanding jobs (lots of partners have stay at home wives). If your arrangement causes you to take on more child care duties than the average man, you risk getting mommytracked.

[ggocat]

I took paternity leave my second month in.

2 weeks paternity leave?

[rayiner]

I took paternity leave my second month in.

2 weeks paternity leave?

I took 2 weeks because I was worried about taking it so soon. Everyone thought I was an asshole for not taking the full four weeks.

[banjo]

Did anyone here actually meet someone new and build a grown-up relationship while working in big law? I didn't even think about how hard that would be...

[A. Nony Mouse]

How's maternity leave work? With women's groups being so prevalent among many partners you would imagine that many firms have approaches to allow one to both raise a kid and have a successful career.

The thing is that maternity leave isn't really a solution for work-life balance. It's great to have, don't get me wrong, but it's not a long-term solution. It's anecdata, but I know a few women who have worked at big firms and taken generous maternity leave and appreciated it, and still ultimately left their firms for family reasons. At least two of them actually really loved the work and the atmosphere of the big firm, but when they left for government work, they found the lifestyle SO much more compatible with the way they wanted to raise their kids, they have a hard time imagining going back. Going part time is an option, but I know people who have found that to mean what would be full-time hours in any other job at less pay, and then getting mommy-tracked (in that it's harder to get staffed on desirable work).

This isn't to say that women (or men) can't work in big law and raise kids - and I haven't done either, just read around about it a little. I'm just saying that as I understand it, the nature of the work can make it hard regardless of how understanding a firm is, depending on what you prioritize as a parent.

[ggocat]

I took paternity leave my second month in.

2 weeks paternity leave?

I took 2 weeks because I was worried about taking it so soon. Everyone thought I was an asshole for not taking the full four weeks.

2 weeks seems standard for paternity. I did 2 weeks in government, and then when I got back everyone said "WTF are you doing here?" Took another week.

[rayiner]

How's maternity leave work? With women's groups being so prevalent among many partners you would imagine that many firms have approaches to allow one to both raise a kid and have a successful career.

The thing is that maternity leave isn't really a solution for work-life balance. It's great to have, don't get me wrong, but it's not a long-term solution. It's anecdata, but I know a few women who have worked at big firms and taken generous maternity leave and appreciated it, and still ultimately left their firms for family reasons. At least two of them actually really loved the work and the atmosphere of the big firm, but when they left for government work, they found the lifestyle SO much more compatible with the way they wanted to raise their kids, they have a hard time imagining going back. Going part time is an option, but I know people who have found that to mean what would be full-time hours in any other job at less pay, and then getting mommy-tracked (in that it's harder to get staffed on desirable work).

This isn't to say that women (or men) can't work in big law and raise kids - and I haven't done either, just read around about it a little. I'm just saying that as I understand it, the nature of the work can make it hard regardless of how understanding a firm is, depending on what you prioritize as a parent.

The questions is: do you want to be a mommy, or a daddy? The latter is compatible with big law. The former, a lot less so. Many women in big law still hold on to the traditional gender roles, and as a result exit firm life sooner than men.

FWIW, big law is a lot more family friendly than many professions where you make similar money. The travel involved in consulting is very hard with a family. And Silicon Valley tech companies are very hostile to families, because of the general youth worship in that industry.

[Anonymous User]

Did anyone here actually meet someone new and build a grown-up relationship while working in big law? I didn't even think about how hard that would be...

This is, without question, the bitterest, angriest complaint at my firm.

[El Pollito]

Did anyone here actually meet someone new and build a grown-up relationship while working in big law? I didn't even think about how hard that would be...

This is, without question, the bitterest, angriest complaint at my firm.

The only people in my class who are in relationships were in them before starting work.

[kalvano]

It seems extreme to say no one in biglaw should have kids until they reach partner. Then we'll just have a lot of rich down syndrome babies.

To be clear, I haven't suggested that anybody wait until they make partner to have kids. Biglaw Associate V20 (or whatever his handle is) posted that once you accept you aren't going to make partner your quality of life greatly improves (or something to that effect). I'm saying something similar: once you give up on the Lean-In/Boomer-you-can-have-it-all bullshit, you will be in a better position to understand biglaw.

I'm not bashing rayiner or what he proposed. Only pointing out that there is no "one secret trick" that erases the fact that sacrifices have to be made to work in biglaw. The specifics can be rearranged, but sacrifices still have to be made.

Also, I've never heard of any partner having more time than he/she did as a senior associate, unless you're talking about ones at age 65+. It's not like partnership stops the workhorse. The reward for working hard is more hard work. (Though I'm no biglaw associate; perhaps others who made that life decision can comment.)

It doesn't stop. It gets markedly worse, actually, because you're the person in charge. The type of work changes, though, and you're no longer doing bitch work or having the constant threat of not meeting billables hanging over you.