Culture shock in BigLaw Forum

[Lubberlubber]

Can confirm. Witnessed the attitude of Connecticut hedge fund money kids at Choate Rosemary Hall. None of them gave a shit about the salaries in iB/bl; they do it becasue (a) they can, and (b) it's just something to do/keep oneself occupied instead of blowing coke and hookers.

Who the hell refers to Choate as "Choate Rosemary Hall"?

You only do this job when you don't have options. You might fuck around and get rich (make equity partner). Then you get to watch your kids become the rich kids you went to school with - which is really the only reason I'm still working at this point. It's not about me being set for life anymore - it's about my kids never having to work. And then, it'll be about their kids never having to work and so forth. Every family is one person away from altering the course of their familial history. OP - I wanna be that one person for my family and that's why you should get used to taking what's yours and more.

Unless you make executive committee at one of the 20 or so most profitable firms in the world, you ain't gonna earn generational wealth working in biglaw. You can certainly become very rich and your kids won't have to worry about money, but they'll probably still have to work (though they can be artists/actors or whatever) and your grandkids definitely aren't gonna be living off their trust funds.

Lol in what profession are you guaranteed generational wealth? Tech is pretty much a lottery if you do start-ups, it's just as hard to make MD at IBs, and corporate executives at F-500 companies don't even make what senior associates at V10 make.

Life's hard for everyone I guess. We are doing OK (but should be getting paid more, always).

[feminist.supporter]

Can confirm. Witnessed the attitude of Connecticut hedge fund money kids at Choate Rosemary Hall. None of them gave a shit about the salaries in iB/bl; they do it becasue (a) they can, and (b) it's just something to do/keep oneself occupied instead of blowing coke and hookers.

Who the hell refers to Choate as "Choate Rosemary Hall"?

See post below. My apologies for not laying it out clearly.

[Anonymous User]

I can speak to some of this, as the child of a V20ish equity partner and MD-level finance professional (both long retired at this point). My parents have lived a very comfortable but not lavish lifestyle; they financed my UG/law school, so that I was educated debt-free. But it was always clear to me and my siblings that the money spigot would be shut off once we were established as adults and today, their considerable resources are spent entirely on philanthropy / community stuff.

All that's to say: once you get above a certain threshold of material comfort, the outcomes are largely ideological. I mean, my parents are frugal and hypothetically amassed enough wealth that they could support whatever I wanted to do, but they . . . never would do that. And internally, I was instilled with enough Protestant Work Ethic (although we are not WASPs) that I think, at some level, the grind is good and what gives life meaning. So that's how I ended up as a second generation biglawyer.

[feminist.supporter]

at some level, the grind is good and what gives life meaning.

This. 100%. Thank you. Meaning sets us against the tragedy and malevolence of existence.

[feminist.supporter]

Can confirm. Witnessed the attitude of Connecticut hedge fund money kids at Choate Rosemary Hall. None of them gave a shit about the salaries in iB/bl; they do it becasue (a) they can, and (b) it's just something to do/keep oneself occupied instead of blowing coke and hookers.

Who the hell refers to Choate as "Choate Rosemary Hall"?

You only do this job when you don't have options. You might fuck around and get rich (make equity partner). Then you get to watch your kids become the rich kids you went to school with - which is really the only reason I'm still working at this point. It's not about me being set for life anymore - it's about my kids never having to work. And then, it'll be about their kids never having to work and so forth. Every family is one person away from altering the course of their familial history. OP - I wanna be that one person for my family and that's why you should get used to taking what's yours and more.

Unless you make executive committee at one of the 20 or so most profitable firms in the world, you ain't gonna earn generational wealth working in biglaw. You can certainly become very rich and your kids won't have to worry about money, but they'll probably still have to work (though they can be artists/actors or whatever) and your grandkids definitely aren't gonna be living off their trust funds.

They're talking about the elite boarding school, not the semi-elite Boston firm.

Ya...no one who went to Choate calls it "Choate Rosemary Hall". Did you know people who call it PHILLIPS ACADEMY ANDOVER?

Exactly. Didn't go to Choate.

[thisismytlsuername]

Can confirm. Witnessed the attitude of Connecticut hedge fund money kids at Choate Rosemary Hall. None of them gave a shit about the salaries in iB/bl; they do it becasue (a) they can, and (b) it's just something to do/keep oneself occupied instead of blowing coke and hookers.

Who the hell refers to Choate as "Choate Rosemary Hall"?

You only do this job when you don't have options. You might fuck around and get rich (make equity partner). Then you get to watch your kids become the rich kids you went to school with - which is really the only reason I'm still working at this point. It's not about me being set for life anymore - it's about my kids never having to work. And then, it'll be about their kids never having to work and so forth. Every family is one person away from altering the course of their familial history. OP - I wanna be that one person for my family and that's why you should get used to taking what's yours and more.

Unless you make executive committee at one of the 20 or so most profitable firms in the world, you ain't gonna earn generational wealth working in biglaw. You can certainly become very rich and your kids won't have to worry about money, but they'll probably still have to work (though they can be artists/actors or whatever) and your grandkids definitely aren't gonna be living off their trust funds.

Lol in what profession are you guaranteed generational wealth? Tech is pretty much a lottery if you do start-ups, it's just as hard to make MD at IBs, and corporate executives at F-500 companies don't even make what senior associates at V10 make.

Life's hard for everyone I guess. We are doing OK (but should be getting paid more, always).

Can you please point me to where I said anything about other careers being a guaranteed path to generational wealth? TYIA.

[Anonymous User]

OP: you sound like a pain in the ass and I hope you're not joining my firm. The way you talk about your values is very preachy and condescending. And yes, you're in a very small minority to feel that way, and no we're not wrong to be totally OK with getting a nice meal here and there on the firm's dime.

I would also add that ops background is not special. There’s tons of people in biglaw who had parents (particularly immigrants) who were poor, but the offspring grew up middle class. Particularly Asian or Indian backgrounds. Most people who come from truly wealthy backgrounds don’t even want to work biglaw. You’re nothing special OP.

nah a lot of people like that who need to maximizing money are going straight into tech/banking/consulting after undergrad. law school is not for people who are maximizing money

For people who picked shitty UG majors, yeah it is

[jotarokujo]

OP: you sound like a pain in the ass and I hope you're not joining my firm. The way you talk about your values is very preachy and condescending. And yes, you're in a very small minority to feel that way, and no we're not wrong to be totally OK with getting a nice meal here and there on the firm's dime.

I would also add that ops background is not special. There’s tons of people in biglaw who had parents (particularly immigrants) who were poor, but the offspring grew up middle class. Particularly Asian or Indian backgrounds. Most people who come from truly wealthy backgrounds don’t even want to work biglaw. You’re nothing special OP.

nah a lot of people like that who need to maximizing money are going straight into tech/banking/consulting after undergrad. law school is not for people who are maximizing money

For people who picked shitty UG majors, yeah it is

you can major in anything and do consulting. maybe if you went to a shit undergrad, had shit gpa, AND have a shit major, law looks more lucrative if you had a high LSAT

[Anonymous User]

Sure, I think wealthy kids who can go to school debt free and become a doctor/lawyer will continue to do so in the short-term. However, how long will wealthy kids continue to go into these fields as hours get longer, long term earning potential declines, and they see their friends/counterparts in finance and tech outpace them in lifestyle and money? I think being a doctor/lawyer is becoming increasingly a field for middle/lower-middle class people to climb up and get themselves to upper middle class. People born into upper middle class who become doctors/lawyers are at best stagnating and staying at the same level their parents were. Or, most likely, their quality of their life will be worse than their parents who entered the fields when earning potential was better.

if finance and tech outpaces law in money, then it will draw people who need money more than people who don't need money. the less lucrative but still prestigious law is, the more it will be for those who can afford to do something less lucrative. middle/lower folks will go into finance, tech, quant out of undergrad

You guys are funny... Tech is way worse for money than Biglaw. Tech salaries hit a cap very fast.

Source: I have multiple t5-10 Tech graduate degrees (the more lucrative ones like EE and CS). I'm also set to outearn all my friends/family at FAANG level Tech companies.

The bright side of Tech is potentially starting with only an undergrad degree but it is pretty oversaturated too and again you hit the cap fast and eventually have to transition to management if possible to make more. Think people see tech billionaires and get the wrong idea but you have to launch a successful startup for real money (whivh is very hard and often more time consuming and risky than Biglaw).

[Anonymous User]

OP: you sound like a pain in the ass and I hope you're not joining my firm. The way you talk about your values is very preachy and condescending. And yes, you're in a very small minority to feel that way, and no we're not wrong to be totally OK with getting a nice meal here and there on the firm's dime.

I would also add that ops background is not special. There’s tons of people in biglaw who had parents (particularly immigrants) who were poor, but the offspring grew up middle class. Particularly Asian or Indian backgrounds. Most people who come from truly wealthy backgrounds don’t even want to work biglaw. You’re nothing special OP.

nah a lot of people like that who need to maximizing money are going straight into tech/banking/consulting after undergrad. law school is not for people who are maximizing money

For people who picked shitty UG majors, yeah it is

Lol... imo law is actually best for people with nonshitty majors like EE or CS.... getting a Biglaw job is a breeze and patent law with those degrees is undersaturated compared to the tech market. You can even take a prestige hit for a full ride to law school at something like Santa Clara. Also again, law has a way higher income cap than tech.

[Anonymous User]

My father made me work at a Chinese restaurant after I graduated from high school and secured a full scholarship+stipdend. He said, in essence, I needed to learn the value of a dollar so I could stop being an ungrateful brat.

Honestly, it worked. It was that experience, and what I encountered during my time as a volunteer tutor for low-income kids, that I truly learned to appreciate how many advantages I had growing up and took completely for granted.

Back to OP:
You earned the treatment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking in what you've earned with your hard work. Just use your position, as a good role model of success if nothing else, to give it forward. Things are different today than even 20 years ago. Golf is no longer mandatory and many firms are actively trying to broaden the types of "social" events to be more inclusive.

[Anonymous User]

My father made me work at a Chinese restaurant after I graduated from high school and secured a full scholarship+stipdend. He said, in essence, I needed to learn the value of a dollar so I could stop being an ungrateful brat.

Honestly, it worked. It was that experience, and what I encountered during my time as a volunteer tutor for low-income kids, that I truly learned to appreciate how many advantages I had growing up and took completely for granted.

Back to OP:
You earned the treatment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking in what you've earned with your hard work. Just use your position, as a good role model of success if nothing else, to give it forward. Things are different today than even 20 years ago. Golf is no longer mandatory and many firms are actively trying to broaden the types of "social" events to be more inclusive.

Idk about that... know quite a few firms that still have mandatory golf social events.

[Anonymous User]

... I stand corrected.

"Some" firms are trying to do better.

[Anonymous User]

My father made me work at a Chinese restaurant after I graduated from high school and secured a full scholarship+stipdend. He said, in essence, I needed to learn the value of a dollar so I could stop being an ungrateful brat.

Honestly, it worked. It was that experience, and what I encountered during my time as a volunteer tutor for low-income kids, that I truly learned to appreciate how many advantages I had growing up and took completely for granted.

Back to OP:
You earned the treatment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking in what you've earned with your hard work. Just use your position, as a good role model of success if nothing else, to give it forward. Things are different today than even 20 years ago. Golf is no longer mandatory and many firms are actively trying to broaden the types of "social" events to be more inclusive.

Idk about that... know quite a few firms that still have mandatory golf social events.

Which ones? Just curious as that is unheard of in my market.

[Anonymous User]

OP: you sound like a pain in the ass and I hope you're not joining my firm. The way you talk about your values is very preachy and condescending. And yes, you're in a very small minority to feel that way, and no we're not wrong to be totally OK with getting a nice meal here and there on the firm's dime.

I would also add that ops background is not special. There’s tons of people in biglaw who had parents (particularly immigrants) who were poor, but the offspring grew up middle class. Particularly Asian or Indian backgrounds. Most people who come from truly wealthy backgrounds don’t even want to work biglaw. You’re nothing special OP.

nah a lot of people like that who need to maximizing money are going straight into tech/banking/consulting after undergrad. law school is not for people who are maximizing money

For people who picked shitty UG majors, yeah it is

Lol... imo law is actually best for people with nonshitty majors like EE or CS.... getting a Biglaw job is a breeze and patent law with those degrees is undersaturated compared to the tech market. You can even take a prestige hit for a full ride to law school at something like Santa Clara. Also again, law has a way higher income cap than tech.

[Anonymous User]

OP: you sound like a pain in the ass and I hope you're not joining my firm. The way you talk about your values is very preachy and condescending. And yes, you're in a very small minority to feel that way, and no we're not wrong to be totally OK with getting a nice meal here and there on the firm's dime.

I would also add that ops background is not special. There’s tons of people in biglaw who had parents (particularly immigrants) who were poor, but the offspring grew up middle class. Particularly Asian or Indian backgrounds. Most people who come from truly wealthy backgrounds don’t even want to work biglaw. You’re nothing special OP.

nah a lot of people like that who need to maximizing money are going straight into tech/banking/consulting after undergrad. law school is not for people who are maximizing money

For people who picked shitty UG majors, yeah it is

Lol... imo law is actually best for people with nonshitty majors like EE or CS.... getting a Biglaw job is a breeze and patent law with those degrees is undersaturated compared to the tech market. You can even take a prestige hit for a full ride to law school at something like Santa Clara. Also again, law has a way higher income cap than tech.

I don’t disagree, but for those of us without tech backgrounds, law is a good way to make money if you can study and grind. We can’t go back in time and just do tech bro

[Anonymous User]

I can speak to some of this, as the child of a V20ish equity partner and MD-level finance professional (both long retired at this point). My parents have lived a very comfortable but not lavish lifestyle; they financed my UG/law school, so that I was educated debt-free. But it was always clear to me and my siblings that the money spigot would be shut off once we were established as adults and today, their considerable resources are spent entirely on philanthropy / community stuff.

All that's to say: once you get above a certain threshold of material comfort, the outcomes are largely ideological. I mean, my parents are frugal and hypothetically amassed enough wealth that they could support whatever I wanted to do, but they . . . never would do that. And internally, I was instilled with enough Protestant Work Ethic (although we are not WASPs) that I think, at some level, the grind is good and what gives life meaning. So that's how I ended up as a second generation biglawyer.

Similar story on my end… my parents are former biglaw and now both GCs and I grew up in a tony New York suburb. I could certainly afford to never work (or work some low-paying job) given my family’s wealth but that was never ever an option that I seriously considered.

I think the culture point is right; the kids of your partners are being instilled with the same perfectionist/overachiever attitudes that land people in big law in the first place. I can certainly attest that basically everyone I went to high school with is either a corporate executive, running a startup/ in tech, a lawyer, in finance or a consultant (including the children of literal billionaires).

[Anonymous User]

I grew up in working class and feel similar OP. I'm not so much uncomfortable about "not deserving" the gifts/dinner but dislike the conversations that happen during/around firm life.

I never went on vacation, ever, as a kid so it's jarring to be forced into a 30+ minute conversation on the extravagant locations attorneys went. I pretend to be interested of course but it is taxing.

Similarly I just don't value the things they do. Conversations and judgments on clothing brands etc., sending kids to unbelievably expensive and elitist private schools. A lot of these people or their kids were the same preppies I had to fight to even sit at the table.

It's a mix of feeling out of place and resentment. It's partly on me and partly on the people who feel it's appropriate to spend half an hour chatting my ear off about how nice their car is.

[thisismytlsuername]

You should all go work at non-profit/gov't jobs so you no longer have to deal with the mental stress of getting free meals/perks and listening to rich people talk about what they do with their money. Problem solved!

[Anonymous User]

Some of this you’ll get used to (using your secretary if you’re able to will probably get easier because you’ll use her for valid work related things). Some of it might not get any less weird and uncomfortable. I grew up poor and the BL culture of both spending crazy money and then showing it off to your peers was not something I could get on board with. I always felt like they were judging me for not having an expensive watch or bag, and some of that may have been in my head. But at my firm it really was part of the culture to discuss the expensive things you bought, expensive places you traveled, etc. in a way that never felt right to me.

But I also felt a bit of that in law school. If you grow up poor, it can be hard to feel like you fit in in that world. I left BL pretty quickly for many reasons but the overall culture being gross was part of it.

Why is it assumed the secretary is a woman? OP said "them"

[Anonymous User]

You should all go work at non-profit/gov't jobs so you no longer have to deal with the mental stress of getting free meals/perks and listening to rich people talk about what they do with their money. Problem solved!

Nobody cares about the "stress" of listening to rich people. They care about being judged for not having the same opportunities in life so they can relate.

If you're in big law starting out you're not gonna have much time to travel. So most of this travel talk is either from partners, or people who grew up rich.

[thisismytlsuername]

You should all go work at non-profit/gov't jobs so you no longer have to deal with the mental stress of getting free meals/perks and listening to rich people talk about what they do with their money. Problem solved!

Nobody cares about the "stress" of listening to rich people. They care about being judged for not having the same opportunities in life so they can relate.

If you're in big law starting out you're not gonna have much time to travel. So most of this travel talk is either from partners, or people who grew up rich.

lol ok buddy. Signed, a biglawyer who went to Africa, Europe, and South America in the first few years of work.

Not that you need those experiences to say "Wow, that sounds awesome. I should add that to my list of places I want to go." I swear to god, 90% of the people on this forum have never spoken to another human being.

[Anonymous User]

You should all go work at non-profit/gov't jobs so you no longer have to deal with the mental stress of getting free meals/perks and listening to rich people talk about what they do with their money. Problem solved!

Nobody cares about the "stress" of listening to rich people. They care about being judged for not having the same opportunities in life so they can relate.

If you're in big law starting out you're not gonna have much time to travel. So most of this travel talk is either from partners, or people who grew up rich.

My family had very little money, but still traveled sometimes (including internationally). If you're diligent with finding deals, using frequent flier miles, and so on it's not necessarily too expensive. Our only TV was a boxy outdated CRT with bunny ears, no cellphone until end of high school and it was a shitty flip phone, clothes were bought cheap and replaced only when damaged. The only computer was my dad's work laptop. I went to public school my whole life and didn't have a car until college. All the cars in my family were bought used, 10+ years old. You get the idea.

Yet we would occasionally splurge on a vacation somewhere. Not an extravagant one, but we'd get on the plane and go. Tried to pinch pennies at the destination and take in free/cheap sights. Some people just prioritize that over material comforts back home.

Also, people who worked between college and law school are much more likely to have traveled, regardless of their family's wealth. The vast majority of my travel happened while I was working, on my own dime.

[Anonymous User]

Not that you need those experiences to say "Wow, that sounds awesome. I should add that to my list of places I want to go." I swear to god, 90% of the people on this forum have never spoken to another human being.

The fact that no one was talking about how to respond to such stories does suggest that you have, in fact, never talked to another human being. If you had, you would have been able to discern what was actually being discussed.

[LittleRedCorvette]

Some of this you’ll get used to (using your secretary if you’re able to will probably get easier because you’ll use her for valid work related things). Some of it might not get any less weird and uncomfortable. I grew up poor and the BL culture of both spending crazy money and then showing it off to your peers was not something I could get on board with. I always felt like they were judging me for not having an expensive watch or bag, and some of that may have been in my head. But at my firm it really was part of the culture to discuss the expensive things you bought, expensive places you traveled, etc. in a way that never felt right to me.

But I also felt a bit of that in law school. If you grow up poor, it can be hard to feel like you fit in in that world. I left BL pretty quickly for many reasons but the overall culture being gross was part of it.

Why is it assumed the secretary is a woman? OP said "them"

Well, anonymous, perhaps because most secretaries are women? I'm surprised you wouldn't want your username associated with such a woke cri de couer.