Salary vs Billable Hour make any sense? Forum

[Anonymous User]

A NALP page of a firm I am interested in in a major market (NYC/LA/SF etc) listed 160K + 2000 billable. Is this reasonable? It is a mid tier large firm but not vault ranked. Thanks for any advice.

[2013]

Why wouldn’t that make sense? It’s not a vault firm and it’s paying associates 160k. They’re obviously going to make the associates earn that 160k

[BeeTeeZ]

A NALP page of a firm I am interested in in a major market (NYC/LA/SF etc) listed 160K + 2000 billable. Is this reasonable? It is a mid tier large firm but not vault ranked. Thanks for any advice.

Conventional wisdom suggests that you are a reasonably efficient associate if you can "bill" 70% of your "actual" working time. That means billing 2,000 hours requires a reasonably efficient associate to actually work 2,857 hours. Working 2,857 for a salary of $160,000 breaks down to a pay rate of $56 per hour, before taxes. That is the figure you should be evaluating.

Is it reasonable for you to work for that specific firm, in that specific market, for $56 per hour? Only you can decide that.

[Anonymous User]

I guess it's hard to imagine working that hard for anything less than 180K market salary. I know not everyone can get a biglaw job but that is brutal.

[2013]

Why is that brutal? A lot of the firms without “hours requirements” have associates that bill significantly over 2000 hours. Most firms outside of the v100 don’t pay market. And even in the v100, maybe only half pay actual Cravath scale