Do you think a $20k raise is generous? Forum

[Tiago Splitter]

Millennials have the bad habit of always expecting everything to be handed to them.

This is really stupid. When my parents were my age (in the 1970s) getting a job was a joke and keeping one was easier (see below). My parents basically have told me that our generation have it much harder - in terms of education, job prospects and job expectations, COL (buying or renting) than the boomers. That's just a fact. You could literally get a white collar job with a high school diploma or history degree or English degree from random state school.

Something tells me that with double digit inflation and double digit unemployment things were kind of shitty in the late 70's too.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html

It looks like unemployment rates are worse in the 2010s than in the 1970s?

Ok early 80's.

[anyriotgirl]

the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

QOL was so much higher before it. I mean, who really WANTS to live past 35?

Maybe he means the tech boom in the 90s and shit? Because I think QOL has gotten worse due to on-call 24/7 thanks to internet, automation of jobs, etc.

Anyway, there's a good middle ground between living until 35 and living until 85....I think QOL drops drastically at 70+...I don't really want to sit in a diaper all day having my ass being wiped and shitting myself at age 80. I don't see a point to living long if you have no QOL.

we'll check back in on you in 2066 and see how you feel then

[Lincoln]

Really good use of anon in this thread.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Millennials have the bad habit of always expecting everything to be handed to them. This kind of reminds me of the Yale (I think it was Yale, could have been another ivy league school) student protesters who claimed that they shouldn't be required to study or go to class because disturbing news stories about current events made them too stressed out to do well academically. You want to make a million dollars a year? Stick around at a firm, work your butt off, be an exceptional lawyer and make partner in 10 years. But first you have to actually graduate from law school (where you have gained very little practical legal training) and actually learn something about practicing before you get your cut of the share. A lot of the value partners add to a firm is in the contacts they have made through years of practicing- that’s what brings in the business, and without those connections associates wouldn’t even have the opportunity to work on cases (and thus, no 180K a year starting salary). Until you get the experience and clout needed to become a partner, you can cry about your six figure salary all you want.

Why do you think the turnover rate at firms is so high? Some people are of course asked to leave a firm after 8 or so years if it is determined that they won't make partner (to be made partner you must be exceptional) but most people decide to leave themselves much earlier. Many people don’t like working 65 hour weeks, or don’t want to work at a firm long-term and are just looking for an interim job until they have the money to pay off their debts. They aren’t willing or interested in making the sometimes decade-plus long sacrifice it takes, going far above and beyond the billing requirements, etc. And they certainly haven’t made the requisite contacts to bring the firm new business and clients- it takes years to become such a valuable asset. Do you really think potential partners would stick around at a law firm, working years under intense conditions and making many personal sacrifices if the compensation structure was set up in a way that provided diminishing marginal returns to more experiences/valuable lawyers (if young associates got a big enough chunk of the profits, the corollary is that the salary increases that come with being made partner are smaller)?

While others ITT have rightfully laughed at you, I feel compelled by an unidentifiable personality disorder to give you a substantive response.


1. While many people on this planet can be thought to "expect everything to be handed to them," people who get a graduate degree and then sign up to work 65-hour weeks to pay back six figures of debt are not among them.

2. You're speaking about the inherent difficulty of obtaining partnership as an immutable characteristic. It's not. Firms used to promote associates to partner at a much higher rate than they do today, and it used to be done on a shorter timeline (seven or eight back then, whereas many firms today have shifted to timelines of 10-12 years or even longer in some cases). And sure, some associate departures will always be voluntary, among the people who'd rather not be at a firm if they could help it, or from those who want some more time for themselves and their families. But a major contributing factor is that associates (rightfully) feel like they don't really have a legitimate shot at a future there.

3. Billable hour expectations are also at or near an all-time high at the large majority of firms. When a lot of the current partners were associates, it would have been pretty unthinkable to bill 2000 hours in a year, and today many firms average much more than that. They also didn't have to deal in the Internet age--when they went home at night, or on vacation for a week, they didn't have the responsibility to be perpetually responsive to emails 24/7.

4. Your post implies that a partner's value is solely tied to being an exceptional lawyer. Really, it's only tied to how much business they can bring in, and delivering good results is only part of that. There are many exceptional lawyers who are nonetheless shut out of partnership because they simply haven't brought in enough business. The broad shift to LLPs and a more global economy in general meant that business is no longer "institutional" in the way it once was. You developed relationships at a bank because the bank was a client of your firm, and because those relationships would be handed to you, your value really did concentrate on providing good service to the client. But now, business is much more individualized and portable, and it gives the partners who have that access significant leverage in negotiating gaudy salaries.

5. Because the optics of partnership have changed, even lawyers that are great and do actually provide value can be denied partnership. A lawyer can be great and be able to generate, let's say $2.5M in business that generates $1M in profit a year, but nonetheless not be able to get that $1M in value he's responsible for because the firm doesn't want to lower its $2M PPP figure. Protecting that PPP has been a paramount objective of firms, and they've done by firing or de-equitizing "underperforming" partners, hardly making any new ones, and outright inflating the figure.

6. If "experience" were the sole determining factor of a lawyer's value, you wouldn't see such vast disparities in compensation. Most people would probably think compensation were fair firm-wide if it were more proportional to the amount of revenue generated by lawyers, or even if it were more proportional to seniority. But right now someone who's been at Cravath for seven years is like to make close to 400k or so while someone who has been there for 17 is gonna come close to $4M. That difference is far removed from a scale based on actual skill as a lawyer. Sure, the partner is probably more capable, but not ten times more capable than the senior associate. And that's really, at the core, what makes a lot of associates so mad and disgusted with this profession: the two-faced nature of partners to act as though you're "part of the firm" when in reality everything, including your salary, is at the absolute minimum it has to be in order to keep the workflow humming in order to maximize profits for themselves. The majority of them have been making seven figures for decades and could have long ago retired to Maui (and made room for new partners at the firm, like partners used to), but instead they squeeze every penny to satiate a greed so incorrigible it would make any man of honor and modesty take 50 Midol and drive off a bridge.

[Anonymous User]

the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

QOL was so much higher before it. I mean, who really WANTS to live past 35?

Maybe he means the tech boom in the 90s and shit? Because I think QOL has gotten worse due to on-call 24/7 thanks to internet, automation of jobs, etc.

Anyway, there's a good middle ground between living until 35 and living until 85....I think QOL drops drastically at 70+...I don't really want to sit in a diaper all day having my ass being wiped and shitting myself at age 80. I don't see a point to living long if you have no QOL.

we'll check back in on you in 2066 and see how you feel then

If I'm even cognizant then. That's another thing, I don't want to "live" with dementia (seeing what my grandmother is going through, half the time you don't even know what's going on and say/do weird shit, like taking all of your prescription pills at once...), so I'll just move to Oregon if there are any signs...

Anyway, Monochromatic's post is spot on.

[Serett]

This topic got good.

[abitaman6363]

Monochromatic Oeuvre

Too long to quote--but yes to everything this person said.

[Sprout]

I apologize in advance but what is a non-white non-URM? What am I missing?

Also

Really good use of anon in this thread.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

I apologize in advance but what is a non-white non-URM? What am I missing?

I made an Irish joke earlier but now that I think about it...has to be Jewish. Some Jews don't consider themselves white. And Jews certainly are not URMs.

[Sprout]

I apologize in advance but what is a non-white non-URM? What am I missing?

I made an Irish joke earlier but now that I think about it...has to be Jewish. Some Jews don't consider themselves white. And Jews certainly are not URMs.

I lol'd at your Irish joke. (That's what I was thinking initially, too.)

Very curious about this Jews-as-URMs thing, though.

[bk1]

Asian would be a non-white, non-URM using the law school admissions definition of such.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

Asian would be a non-white, non-URM using the law school admissions definition of such.

Good point. The history of discrimination made me think Jew, but it's also applicable to many Asian groups.

[trebekismyhero]

Asian would be a non-white, non-URM using the law school admissions definition of such.

Good point. The history of discrimination made me think Jew, but it's also applicable to many Asian groups.

And I do know asians that have gone to diversity fairs so that would be less weird. If the person is Jewish that would definitely be weird to go to a diversity fair. Either way, the person is out of touch with the legal industry and how law firms operate.

[bern victim]

not surprising that a bunch of shitlibs ignoring the white genocide taking place right now in america think that jews haven't been sufficiently persecuted to enjoy favorable status in hiring

[WinSome]

not surprising that a bunch of shitlibs ignoring the white genocide taking place right now in america think that jews haven't been sufficiently persecuted to enjoy favorable status in hiring

The reason law firms like diversity hires isn't because they feel bad about what happened to your ancestors. It's because those minorities are UNDER REPRESENTED in the profession, which shows some sort of institutional bias that the firms are trying to remedy. This bias usually has something to do with what happened in the past, but it isn't solely because past persecution. If you think Jewish people are under represented in the legal field, you're insane.

[bern victim]

not surprising that a bunch of shitlibs ignoring the white genocide taking place right now in america think that jews haven't been sufficiently persecuted to enjoy favorable status in hiring

The reason law firms like diversity hires isn't because they feel bad about what happened to your ancestors. It's because those minorities are UNDER REPRESENTED in the profession, which shows some sort of institutional bias that the firms are trying to remedy. This bias usually has something to do with what happened in the past, but it isn't solely because past persecution. If you think Jewish people are under represented in the legal field, you're insane.

you don't think there would be a lot more jewish lawyers if it weren't for THE HOLOCAUST which killed TWO THIRDS OF THE WORLD'S JEWISH POPULATION

[sublime]

I assumed Japanese/ Asian but really don't care. Dude is an asshole.

[kryptix]

I assumed Japanese/ Asian but really don't care. Dude is an asshole.

Compared to Jews I'd have to say Asians are a URM at firms?

[sublime]

I assumed Japanese/ Asian but really don't care. Dude is an asshole.

Compared to Jews I'd have to say Asians are a URM at firms?

Idk. Not at schools I don't think but it is def arguable.