Unhappy Lawyers -- Why are you unhappy? Forum

[nealric]

Keep in mind that comparison is the thief of joy.

$1 million a year is an incredible amount of money by any objective standard. You are well into the top 1% of income earners nationally, and the .1% globally. Whatever unhappiness you experience at that income level is not owing to poverty. However, if you live in NYC, you aren't going to feel like you are anywhere close to the top of the pecking order because you are seeing and comparing yourself to global wealth, not just local wealth. You may feel like you are working extremely hard for what feels like a middling existence. It doesn't help that a $2-3 million apartment (what you could safely afford on such a salary) provides living space and quality more equivalent to a $500k house in most of the rest of the country. But the more senior you get, the more trapped you are, because your practice gets tailored to the matters mostly handled by NYC biglaw, your friend group is localized to NYC, you put down roots- not an easy thing to just take a F500 in-house job in a lower COL area after that.

But let's say you really hit it big in NYC and become a v10 partner making $5-10 million. Now you have enough to play in high society, buy a townhouse in the UES, buy tables at charity balls, have a summer house in the Hamptons. But if you play that game it might actually be worse. Now, you are rubbing elbows with the global elite who work a lot less than you and can easily outbid you on choice apartments, art, etc. They can afford yachts and private jets, while you might take a few Netjets flight and get invited on a friend's yacht on occasion. They get to actually buy the companies you can only advise.

Anyhow, the hedonic treadmill is real, and is made worse by the sheer number of hours you have to work to stay on it when you play that game, and the "golden handcuffs" of not having an easy offramp to a lower stress (and reasonably lower paying) lifestyle. It's a lot easier to get out of the game a bit and ratchet down if you do so as an associate and are willing/able to leave the super high COL areas.

This sort of thing isn't exclusive to law by any means, but I do think law's extreme bi-modal nature (especially when you are a corporate lawyer) makes it much more clear than for other high-earning professions. While a lawyer usually takes a big career/salary hit moving out of a high COL area, a physician might actually INCREASE their income from doing so. But talk to tech guys, physicians, dentists, bankers, and you will find plenty of tales of burnout and woe. When people compare themselves to others, they tend to focus in on only what others have that is better, and don't see the ways others have it worse.

[Joachim2017]

^^ Nice post, well said!

[BigLawPartner]

Have not been following this thread but chiming in anyway because some of the more recent posts are objectively ridiculous. Maybe V10 NYC corporate partners are different, but I don't know a single partner who is doing this for the money, much less FU money. All of them love the work (or love to hate the work), and the money is just a cherry on top. ~$1m will get you a decent condo, private school and an au pair for the kids, savings for retirement, a couple big vacations a year (prolly not a vacation home, though), and an above-entry level BMW/Merc. $1m means you don't have to worry about anything (even if you might want more), which is really all a partner needs in order focus all of their waking hours worrying about the job. That's not to say, as others have pointed out, that FU money isn't nice. It's just not what motivates the partners that I know.

Hence why those of us who hate the job but want the money hate the system even more - we think partnership would make us happy because of the $$$ but in reality, the only way to be happy at a firm long term is to actually like what you do, and have enough money so you can keep doing it without care for your personal life. The $$$ (whether $1m or $4m) makes it easier to get the job done.

One MAJOR caveat is this is about the partners only. Their families may be much happier (and more likely to stick around?) with some extra FU money to sweeten the pot.

I'd say of all the partners I know, it's about split 50-50 as far as who is (overtly at least) doing it for the money versus the love of the work. At a V10 and this includes both corporate and non-corporate partners.