that feeling when your bonus hits Forum

[oblig.lawl.ref]

It could well be tougher for K-JDs with no pre-law job experience who come in through OCI, or it could be easier because they don't have anything to compare it to.

Again, when this has come up on this board before (and it has many times), plenty of people with prelaw experience in all kinds of fields have had problems with it. I can totally see that people who've had/come from money would find it tougher than people who never had money, who may value the money more and find the tradeoff worth it. But it's also possible that people coming from money feel less stressed because they feel like they can walk away, while someone without that kind of background may feel trapped by the money (especially if they have law school debt, which lots of people do). I also think if you really really value control over your schedule (which lots of people do), biglaw won't be a good fit, regardless of previous experience. Or you simply don't like the work very much - that's fine for 9-5, much tougher for pulling all nighters and blowing weekend plans.

A lot of it also seems to more on the culture/expectations of a given biglaw job. You could be at a firm where 90% of people are happy but if you're stuck working for the one asshole partner your life is miserable regardless of how anyone else feels. Or you make a mistake early on with the wrong person and get frozen out of good experience/advancing. Stuff like that.

(Which isn't to say people can't enjoy it or never have good experiences; obviously that's not true. For a lot of people it's a great job.)

Agree with this 100%. I don't like biglaw but I can get why some people are fine with it. I don't get why it's so hard for some who like it to understand why some don't like it. It's honestly about how you value time versus money at its core. It's not that complicated, I don't think.

And I don't think it has to do with what you did before or your upbringing. People that stick it out in my firm come from very diverse backgrounds. I was broke before law school, went to a bad undergrad, had no career prospects before biglaw and struggled financially. Still biglaw is not worth it to me.

[objctnyrhnr]

See I think this whole thing comes down to expectations, doesn’t it? What did you expect biglaw to be like relative to what you’re experiencing? If anybody expected a 9-6, they were obviously delusional and didn’t do their research. That people had accurate expectations and went into it anyway and complain about it is a situation I just don’t quite understand. That’s where I came up with the K-JD idea. Maybe those people just don’t know how much of a punch in the face an actual full-time job is, so it’s no wonder that they won’t like a job that’s supercharged and all-encompassing.

[dabigchina]

See I think this whole thing comes down to expectations, doesn’t it? What did you expect biglaw to be like relative to what you’re experiencing? If anybody expected a 9-6, they were obviously delusional and didn’t do their research. That people had accurate expectations and went into it anyway and complain about it is a situation I just don’t quite understand. That’s where I came up with the K-JD idea. Maybe those people just don’t know how much of a punch in the face an actual full-time job is, so it’s no wonder that they won’t like a job that’s supercharged and all-encompassing.

OK, but how much biglaw sucks can depend heavily on who you are stuck working for and what you have to work on. You might enjoy yourself as a litigator billing 2100 a year on the westcoast. That doesn't mean someone getting absolutely destroyed billing 2500 in NYC doing M&A, or someone stuck in a small, toxic group is somehow naive, stupid, or delusional because they hate their jobs and don't think it's worth it.

You got lucky. That's great. There's no reason to talk down to people who did not get lucky.

[nixy]

See I think this whole thing comes down to expectations, doesn’t it? What did you expect biglaw to be like relative to what you’re experiencing? If anybody expected a 9-6, they were obviously delusional and didn’t do their research. That people had accurate expectations and went into it anyway and complain about it is a situation I just don’t quite understand. That’s where I came up with the K-JD idea. Maybe those people just don’t know how much of a punch in the face an actual full-time job is, so it’s no wonder that they won’t like a job that’s supercharged and all-encompassing.

OK, but how much biglaw sucks can depend heavily on who you are stuck working for and what you have to work on. You might enjoy yourself as a litigator billing 2100 a year on the westcoast. That doesn't mean someone getting absolutely destroyed billing 2500 in NYC doing M&A, or someone stuck in a small, toxic group is somehow naive, stupid, or delusional because they hate their jobs and don't think it's worth it.

You got lucky. That's great. There's no reason to talk down to people who did not get lucky.

Agreed.

Also, it's one thing to know that a job is going to require you to work long unpredictable hours and to be on call all the time, and it's another to know how you're going to react when you actually do it for longer than a few months at a time. I don't think anyone expects 9-6, but people don't know how they'll function pulling all-nighters regularly or dealing with the 2500 year until they actually do it. Or maybe your family situation changes and you get married, or have kids, and you realize the lifestyle you thought would be fine actually isn't. Even for people who had jobs and worked long hours before law school, I also don't think biglaw is really comparable to other jobs (maybe some of the high-pressure finance or consulting stuff, I don't know).

[JohnnieSockran]

Can’t imagine what the senior associates feel like getting a $100,000 lump sum deposit.

The funny thing is that it's often less of a big deal for them. Hedonic adaptation is real.

That's terrifying. I can't imagine feeling trapped in biglaw because you can't stand making less than 300k+. Then again, I don't think I like money that much.

There's also this crazy group of people that both (a) like money (and are used to making a lot of it in biglaw), and (b) actually don't completely hate biglaw (Gasp). I don't hate this job, and especially not for the amount of money it pays. It certainly sucks at times, but all jobs suck to some extent.

There's no need to feel personally attacked. I for one don't think billing 200 hrs every single month is worth any amount of money in the world.

It's not about feeling "attacked" as you say, I'm more making the point that you assumed everyone is as miserable about billing 200 hours as you are. Some people like the job, so not all 200 hours are a grind (certainly a good chunk always will be). And no one said the person you quoted felt trapped, just that when you have $1 million in the bank, a bonus of $100k is not quite as exciting as it would be for someone who has no savings an $50k in debt.

[objctnyrhnr]

See I think this whole thing comes down to expectations, doesn’t it? What did you expect biglaw to be like relative to what you’re experiencing? If anybody expected a 9-6, they were obviously delusional and didn’t do their research. That people had accurate expectations and went into it anyway and complain about it is a situation I just don’t quite understand. That’s where I came up with the K-JD idea. Maybe those people just don’t know how much of a punch in the face an actual full-time job is, so it’s no wonder that they won’t like a job that’s supercharged and all-encompassing.

OK, but how much biglaw sucks can depend heavily on who you are stuck working for and what you have to work on. You might enjoy yourself as a litigator billing 2100 a year on the westcoast. That doesn't mean someone getting absolutely destroyed billing 2500 in NYC doing M&A, or someone stuck in a small, toxic group is somehow naive, stupid, or delusional because they hate their jobs and don't think it's worth it.

You got lucky. That's great. There's no reason to talk down to people who did not get lucky.

You make it sound like ending up doing something you like with people who you like doing it with is a matter of some sort of cosmic random chance. It’s not a matter of getting “lucky.” It’s a matter of finding one’s passion (or at least something one enjoys), making doing it a goal, and doing thorough research about the best place to actualize that goal. I wholeheartedly disagree with your premise. People who find themselves in nyc doing 2,500 hours in m and a 1) chose m and a, 2) chose biglaw, 3) chose that firm over the alternatives, 4) chose nyc. Calling it all luck is ridiculous.

And to the extent that their group found them, from a position of possessing the baseline credentials necessary to land something like what you’re describing, it would be far from impossible to lateral elsewhere.

[Sprinkler]

Oddly enough my firm does not payout bonuses until March. Upside, no immediate tax burden.