Big City Law Jobs with liveable hours? Forum

[jay115]

we work way to much in the united states.

My wife is from Japan where the work hours are generally higher than the United States. She was surprised when she found that there are so many jobs in the US that pay six figures and only require 65 or so hours a week.

well thats Japan. many places in Europe average better salaries with less hours per week.

And they do so by creating huge ghettos of unemployed people.

Edit: I take that back. No, they don't, and the countries that do have more restrictive labor laws have both lower wages and higher unemployment rates.

hahahhaha

[Anonymous User]

I work at the Department of Homeland Security and there are squillions of lawyers everywhere here, all working 40 hrs a week and not a minute more.

[whuts4lunch]

please elaborate on these 40hr/week positions

1. type of work
2. pay
3. day to day activities
4. anything else of interest

[A'nold]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep. There is not enough time in the day. That would be 14.2 hours a day, seven days a week. If you counted commuting, showering, etc. you would have 0 time for anything else in life, especially for what you called "spending tons of time with everyone."

[los blancos]

I will be thrilled if I manage to land a BigLaw job that ends up being around 60 hours/wk on average. That's at least how much my dad has worked his entire adult life, and I never ever felt that he wasn't around enough for me.

I can definitely handle 8-7 on the weekdays and then 5 hours from home on the weekends, or just 7-7 on the weekdays.

[los blancos]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep.

I've actually heard that i-Bankers can work from like 9am to 1am, go home, get 5-6 hours of sleep, wake up, and shower. rinse and repeat.

no amount of money in the world could persuade me to do that.

[A'nold]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep.

I've actually heard that i-Bankers can work from like 9am to 1am, go home, get 5-6 hours of sleep, wake up, and shower. rinse and repeat.

no amount of money in the world could persuade me to do that.

Exactly. That is the schedule you would have to keep. Dude posted that he also had tons of time to spend with people. Yeah, haha, I would maybe do a few months of that for like a million bucks but.....

I always wonder if some of these hours are "work from home on the weekends" kind of hours, like you put in your example above. That would be far more reasonable.

If biglaw is anything like law school (reading a crap ton, meeting deadlines, researching, talking to clients, etc.) 12 hours working 7 to 7, 5 days a week might be doable, actually. I pretty much work from sun up to sun down and am still doing reading close to 1:00 a.m. right now actually.

[jcl2]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep.

I've actually heard that i-Bankers can work from like 9am to 1am, go home, get 5-6 hours of sleep, wake up, and shower. rinse and repeat.

no amount of money in the world could persuade me to do that.

Exactly. That is the schedule you would have to keep. Dude posted that he also had tons of time to spend with people. Yeah, haha, I would maybe do a few months of that for like a million bucks but.....

I always wonder if some of these hours are "work from home on the weekends" kind of hours, like you put in your example above. That would be far more reasonable.

If biglaw is anything like law school (reading a crap ton, meeting deadlines, researching, talking to clients, etc.) 12 hours working 7 to 7, 5 days a week might be doable, actually. I pretty much work from sun up to sun down and am still doing reading close to 1:00 a.m. right now actually.

I think people who claim they work 80, 90, or 100 hour weeks have, in reality, probably only worked weeks like that once or twice, but like to say they work that much all of the time to impress people. Alternatively, I think there are quite a few people still in college who don't really know what it is like to work 40 hrs per week and certainly don't realize how many hours 80-100 in a week would be, but like to tell other people that you have to work those kind of hours, and if you aren't willing to you should go into another profession.

In biglaw, as with many professional fields, people probably work hours like that on occasion during crunch times, but their hours likely average out to between 50 and 60 hours per week over the course of a year (from what I gather, probably lots of 50 hr weeks and the occasional 70-80 hr week every few months or so); I think I sited a source earlier in this thread that provides some evidence for that assertion. 99.9% of people could not maintain a work schedule of much more than 60 hours per week for more than a few weeks while maintaining productivity or sanity. So it is likely no coincidence that, with a couple notable exceptions, the average hours worked by associates at biglaw firms maxes out around 60 hrs per week.

edit: Here is that source again:
http://www.averyindex.com/longest_hours.php
http://www.averyindex.com/shortest_hour_law_firms.php

These are a little outdated, but I doubt people are working any more hours now than they were in 2005.

[detljgh]

.

[Series70]

^ I definitely feel that government jobs are worth it despite the lower salary, especially since they seem more interesting to me, but only if the hours are as you described (or maybe a little higher). As I think I mentioned earlier, though, when I was reading John Kroger's Convictions, he talks about working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 6 months straight, and repeatedly mentions doing 100 hour weeks as an AUSA for EDNY. I really want to know if that's true, or if he's stretching things a bit. (He does mention that other attorneys thought he was crazy for working so much, but he still suggests that everyone put in relatively similar hours.)

[A'nold]

A'nold's stance: those who claim to work 100 hours a week on average are overexaggerating. Period. I don't care what kind of "evidence" shows up on here.

[ConsideringLawSchool]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep. There is not enough time in the day. That would be 14.2 hours a day, seven days a week. If you counted commuting, showering, etc. you would have 0 time for anything else in life, especially for what you called "spending tons of time with everyone."

Pretty much what our life was. We showed up at 9:00, worked until 1:00, went out until 4:00, then went home, slept, showered, and came back.

[rptarget3000]

There's always dermatologists, chiropractors, orthodontists, opthamologists, and other medical specialties that enable what you are asking. six figure salaries with 40 (or 50) hours per week. the path to get there is probably what steers people away, but its not too bad!

[Sauer Grapes]

...

[ConsideringLawSchool]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep. There is not enough time in the day. That would be 14.2 hours a day, seven days a week. If you counted commuting, showering, etc. you would have 0 time for anything else in life, especially for what you called "spending tons of time with everyone."

Pretty much what our life was. We showed up at 9:00, worked until 1:00, went out until 4:00, then went home, slept, showered, and came back.

Have you kicked the coke habit yet? Or was it speed that allowed you to do that?

haha, we were crazy, but loved it. I miss those days ;-(

[A'nold]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep. There is not enough time in the day. That would be 14.2 hours a day, seven days a week. If you counted commuting, showering, etc. you would have 0 time for anything else in life, especially for what you called "spending tons of time with everyone."

Pretty much what our life was. We showed up at 9:00, worked until 1:00, went out until 4:00, then went home, slept, showered, and came back.

Sorry dude, but I still don't believe this was what every week was like for the entire span of your job. Also, the "pretty much" leads me to believe that it is an estimation, like where you worked a few 80 hour weeks, rounded to 100, and really averaged b/w 60-75 in the extreme.

[los blancos]

There's always dermatologists, chiropractors, orthodontists, opthamologists, and other medical specialties that enable what you are asking. six figure salaries with 40 (or 50) hours per week. the path to get there is probably what steers people away, but its not too bad!

Those specialties are also dreadfully boring and tedious, and they're usually the toughest ones to get. Maybe I'm in the minority, but one of the reasons that medicine never really appealed to me was because it's such micro-level work. It's great work and people appreciate you, but you're still never going to do M&A work that shows up in the papers the next day or work on a case that is cited as precedent 50 years from now. I know most lawyers don't get to do either of those things, but the opportunity is there.

[jcl2]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Bull crap. I hate when people talk about 100 hour weeks. Yeah, the number sounds all impressive and robot/superhumanish and you are a stud, but you did not leave the house, spend 100 hours a week at the "office" then come home and sleep. There is not enough time in the day. That would be 14.2 hours a day, seven days a week. If you counted commuting, showering, etc. you would have 0 time for anything else in life, especially for what you called "spending tons of time with everyone."

Pretty much what our life was. We showed up at 9:00, worked until 1:00, went out until 4:00, then went home, slept, showered, and came back.

Sorry dude, but I still don't believe this was what every week was like for the entire span of your job. Also, the "pretty much" leads me to believe that it is an estimation, like where you worked a few 80 hour weeks, rounded to 100, and really averaged b/w 60-75 in the extreme.

Yeah, you would literally die after a few months of working hours like that. You need more than three hours of sleep per night.

[Anonymous User]

Boutique law firm.

[ConsideringLawSchool]

My last job was 100 hours a week

Pretty much what our life was. We showed up at 9:00, worked until 1:00, went out until 4:00, then went home, slept, showered, and came back.

Sorry dude, but I still don't believe this was what every week was like for the entire span of your job. Also, the "pretty much" leads me to believe that it is an estimation, like where you worked a few 80 hour weeks, rounded to 100, and really averaged b/w 60-75 in the extreme.

Yeah, you would literally die after a few months of working hours like that. You need more than three hours of sleep per night.

We were crazy, but it honestly wasn't as bad as you would think. Describes my undergrad years as well--sleep always finished well behind work, extracurriculars, school, friends, and family in my list of priorities. Of course, there were nights when I'd sleep 10 hours in UG, but 2-4 hrs of sleep was much more common.

[Renzo]

We were crazy, but it honestly wasn't as bad as you would think. Describes my undergrad years as well--sleep always finished well behind work, extracurriculars, school, friends, and family in my list of priorities. Of course, there were nights when I'd sleep 10 hours in UG, but 2-4 hrs of sleep was much more common.

I'm with A'nold here. Anyone who claims to have consistently worked 100 hrs a week has probably never actually worked in a real job. It's not physically possible. Even potential Navy SEALs don't work that hard all the way through BUDS. I'm not saying that some jobs don't require spurts of 16-18 hour days, and those spurts might even go on for a few weeks, but you could never "average" that much work. You would literally, actually, physically die.

[A'nold]

We were crazy, but it honestly wasn't as bad as you would think. Describes my undergrad years as well--sleep always finished well behind work, extracurriculars, school, friends, and family in my list of priorities. Of course, there were nights when I'd sleep 10 hours in UG, but 2-4 hrs of sleep was much more common.

I'm with A'nold here. Anyone who claims to have consistently worked 100 hrs a week has probably never actually worked in a real job. It's not physically possible. Even potential Navy SEALs don't work that hard all the way through BUDS. I'm not saying that some jobs don't require spurts of 16-18 hour days, and those spurts might even go on for a few weeks, but you could never "average" that much work. You would literally, actually, physically die.

+1.

[Anonymous User]

We were crazy, but it honestly wasn't as bad as you would think. Describes my undergrad years as well--sleep always finished well behind work, extracurriculars, school, friends, and family in my list of priorities. Of course, there were nights when I'd sleep 10 hours in UG, but 2-4 hrs of sleep was much more common.

I'm with A'nold here. Anyone who claims to have consistently worked 100 hrs a week has probably never actually worked in a real job. It's not physically possible. Even potential Navy SEALs don't work that hard all the way through BUDS. I'm not saying that some jobs don't require spurts of 16-18 hour days, and those spurts might even go on for a few weeks, but you could never "average" that much work. You would literally, actually, physically die.

+1

When I worked 100 hour weeks, I actually did die. Thankfully, I was resuscitated by the doctor they keep on call in case someone dies before an important deadline.

[jcl2]

We were crazy, but it honestly wasn't as bad as you would think. Describes my undergrad years as well--sleep always finished well behind work, extracurriculars, school, friends, and family in my list of priorities. Of course, there were nights when I'd sleep 10 hours in UG, but 2-4 hrs of sleep was much more common.

I'm with A'nold here. Anyone who claims to have consistently worked 100 hrs a week has probably never actually worked in a real job. It's not physically possible. Even potential Navy SEALs don't work that hard all the way through BUDS. I'm not saying that some jobs don't require spurts of 16-18 hour days, and those spurts might even go on for a few weeks, but you could never "average" that much work. You would literally, actually, physically die.

+1.

I think you just seconded someone seconding your opinion. Not that I disagree.

[jcl2]

We were crazy, but it honestly wasn't as bad as you would think. Describes my undergrad years as well--sleep always finished well behind work, extracurriculars, school, friends, and family in my list of priorities. Of course, there were nights when I'd sleep 10 hours in UG, but 2-4 hrs of sleep was much more common.

I'm with A'nold here. Anyone who claims to have consistently worked 100 hrs a week has probably never actually worked in a real job. It's not physically possible. Even potential Navy SEALs don't work that hard all the way through BUDS. I'm not saying that some jobs don't require spurts of 16-18 hour days, and those spurts might even go on for a few weeks, but you could never "average" that much work. You would literally, actually, physically die.

+1

When I worked 100 hour weeks, I actually did die. Thankfully, I was resuscitated by the doctor they keep on call in case someone dies before an important deadline.

But did that need to be anonymous? Give yourself some credit.