Best Practice Area (lifestyle-wise)? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Is Employee Benefits the best practice area for a more stable lifestyle? I know people in the area who work close to 9-5 most days and they seem to get to bill at high rates (meaning they’re still extremely profitable for the firm) and have enough hours to get bonus.

Is there some kind of catch other than low partnership chances?

Can a corporate associate move into this area pretty easily?

[oblig.lawl.ref]

Is Employee Benefits the best practice area for a more stable lifestyle? I know people in the area who work close to 9-5 most days and they seem to get to bill at high rates (meaning they’re still extremely profitable for the firm) and have enough hours to get bonus.

Is there some kind of catch other than low partnership chances?

Can a corporate associate move into this area pretty easily?

There is no such thing. Employee benefits, specifically, is among the busiest in my firm. It all depends on the people you work for.

[Anonymous User]

Is Employee Benefits the best practice area for a more stable lifestyle? I know people in the area who work close to 9-5 most days and they seem to get to bill at high rates (meaning they’re still extremely profitable for the firm) and have enough hours to get bonus.

Is there some kind of catch other than low partnership chances?

Can a corporate associate move into this area pretty easily?

There is no such thing. Employee benefits, specifically, is among the busiest in my firm. It all depends on the people you work for.

I’m not talking about executive compensation. Not sure if you are. Our executive compensation team is extremely busy on deals.

[almondjoy]

M&A so you can gain access to exit options ASAP and get an actual life.

[uncle_rico]

I’ve heard Trust and Estates attorneys have a better lifestyle but most firms don’t really do much of that work and your exit options are very limited

[nealric]

M&A so you can gain access to exit options ASAP and get an actual life.

Exit options for M&A are also going to be the worst lifestyle exit ops. For example, the in-house M&A guys at my company often work the worst hours of any of the attorneys at the company. The nature of that work doesn't change.

I vote employee benefits, with tax as a potential second. Either can be busy on deals, but neither are likely to be the ones hashing out document comments at 2AM. Although boring, plan compliance work is quite steady and not prone to firedrills.

I’ve heard Trust and Estates attorneys have a better lifestyle but most firms don’t really do much of that work and your exit options are very limited

Very much depends how drama-prone your clients are. I remember the T&E folks having all sorts of weird fired drills relating to rich people family drama. But there's very few biglaw T&E associates out there.

[almondjoy]

M&A so you can gain access to exit options ASAP and get an actual life.

Exit options for M&A are also going to be the worst lifestyle exit ops. For example, the in-house M&A guys at my company often work the worst hours of any of the attorneys at the company. The nature of that work doesn't change.

I don’t mean exit to some in house M&A role — of course those hours would be bad. I meant that M&A as a big law practice area gives you the best general corporate exit ops.

[Bananapancakes]

Is Employee Benefits the best practice area for a more stable lifestyle? I know people in the area who work close to 9-5 most days and they seem to get to bill at high rates (meaning they’re still extremely profitable for the firm) and have enough hours to get bonus.

Is there some kind of catch other than low partnership chances?

Can a corporate associate move into this area pretty easily?

I've always felt like a niche regulatory area (like FERC, FCC or in Texas, RRC) or tax would have been the best for lifestyle. I've dealt with those niche regulatory lawyers on M&A deals and they don't run at the same pace that the M&A lawyers did. There are so few of them, so they can be more demanding with their time since clients don't have a ton of other options. Tax lawyers at big firms work a ton, but if you're a good tax lawyer at a midsize firm, my anecdotal perception is that your hours are fairly reasonable.

[nealric]

M&A so you can gain access to exit options ASAP and get an actual life.

Exit options for M&A are also going to be the worst lifestyle exit ops. For example, the in-house M&A guys at my company often work the worst hours of any of the attorneys at the company. The nature of that work doesn't change.

I don’t mean exit to some in house M&A role — of course those hours would be bad. I meant that M&A as a big law practice area gives you the best general corporate exit ops.

If you don't want to exit to M&A, why do M&A in the first place? I'm skeptical it will make you any more competitive for non-M&A corporate roles.

[almondjoy]

M&A so you can gain access to exit options ASAP and get an actual life.

Exit options for M&A are also going to be the worst lifestyle exit ops. For example, the in-house M&A guys at my company often work the worst hours of any of the attorneys at the company. The nature of that work doesn't change.

I don’t mean exit to some in house M&A role — of course those hours would be bad. I meant that M&A as a big law practice area gives you the best general corporate exit ops.

If you don't want to exit to M&A, why do M&A in the first place? I'm skeptical it will make you any more competitive for non-M&A corporate roles.

Because M&A is the practice area that’s most applicable to the project management skills needed to be a generalist in house lawyer. There are lots of threads about why M&A gives out the best exit ops.

[nealric]

M&A so you can gain access to exit options ASAP and get an actual life.

Exit options for M&A are also going to be the worst lifestyle exit ops. For example, the in-house M&A guys at my company often work the worst hours of any of the attorneys at the company. The nature of that work doesn't change.

I don’t mean exit to some in house M&A role — of course those hours would be bad. I meant that M&A as a big law practice area gives you the best general corporate exit ops.

If you don't want to exit to M&A, why do M&A in the first place? I'm skeptical it will make you any more competitive for non-M&A corporate roles.

Because M&A is the practice area that’s most applicable to the project management skills needed to be a generalist in house lawyer. There are lots of threads about why M&A gives out the best exit ops.

Perhaps M&A provides great skills, but being in house, the people I see in non-M&A roles usually didn't start in M&A. My point is that if your main concern is quality of life, I don't see going into the absolute worst quality of life specialty as the best way to go about it. For example, tax has great exit options along with good quality of life at the firm level.

[ruski]

anything not deal related. this can be employee benefits, unless your employee benefits group does nothing but service the M&A group (even then, its better than M&A). other employee benefits group have their own work with respect to 401(k) plans/pension plans.

derivatives is also good and it's not really deal driven. anything regulatory as well (most firm have capital markets attorneys to help with SEC compliance, but they don't do any offerings/deals). these type of practices can still be busy because it becomes a volume business, so there is still a lot of work to do, but there are less fire drills and you can generally frontload/backload work to fit your schedule.

you can also join a practice group the firm is not really known for. like the bk group of some random firm not known for bk at all. these practice groups tend to be chill. the problem here is that the groups are tiny so you can have periods of time you are very busy because there aren't enough bodies, or conversely if it's too slow your job is on the line. but for the majority of the year these guys have it made.

[Anonymous User]

Our benefits/exec comp team works longer hours than 9-5, but whether or not you're working until super late or on the weekends is going to largely be a function of your personality/the personality of the people you work for. I've found the benefits lifestyle to be great (compared to other big law practice areas), and would definitely recommend it. Obviously when there are a bunch of transactions going on things can get a little intense, but like someone said, we're not the people turning comments in at 2 AM. I've never billed more than 200 hours a month - it tends to be a pretty steady 160-200 range.

One of the perks of being a benefits attorney is that learning everything in the benefits area is extremely difficult (tons of technical compliance issues), and takes a while to become competent. Pairing that with the fact that firms don't generally have multiple 1st year benefit associates at once (or even hire one a year), there isn't an immediate pipeline to replace you - so you aren't generally going to get pushed out the way you will in other groups. I also think the burn out level is pretty low, and exit options are great.

Not sure about how easy it is to transition from corporate to benefits - I would think it would be difficult, unless you could convince your current firm to do it. When benefits groups hire laterals, they want someone with benefits experience, otherwise they'll just hire a first year.

[glitched]

IP

[Anonymous User]

Tax. Those guys are always the first to the firm happy hours.

[jagpaw]

Any healthcare associates (transactional or regulatory) willing to comment? And are the fire drills re T&E referenced above consistent with others’ in experience?

[JoeySkoko]

IP

definitely not IP litigation, but yes if your'e referring to prosecution

[omar]

It probably depends more on a type of job/people/organization etc. rather than the subject matter itself.