Dating in biglaw: share your stories! Forum

[2020throwaway]

How has dating been as a biglaw associate (in nyc/major metro)? Any interesting stories out there re: triumphs, successes, lessons learned, or difficulties? Would be interesting to hear anecdotes and tales, from anyone I guess

(mods please delete other duplicate thread)

[Anonymous User]

I kept running into an attractive girl on my way down from the office (we would leave work around the same time I guess) and kept seeing each other. Eventually I made some joke and we kind of talked and decided to meet up for a coffee during lunch. We chatted back and forth over text and seemed like there may be something. After that I got slammed with M&A deal after M&A deal after M&A deal and had to keep rescheduling and eventually just stopped messaging her and it fizzled out.

[gingerbread]

I felt bad for being a flake, until I accepted my fate and gave up on the standard weekday happy hour first date. It was just too impossible to predict my schedule in advance (even on the same day). Planning a weekend date, even just for coffee, feels like more of an investment, so some guys bailed, but it reduced my stress level and was way more successful. There are very, very few weekends when you can't be off the grid for 1-2 hours.

That said, it is also really hard to progress in relationships when you only have time for a real date once, maybe twice, a week. It sucked, and wanting to find a partner/have a family was one of my primary drivers for leaving biglaw.

[Anonymous User]

I felt bad for being a flake, until I accepted my fate and gave up on the standard weekday happy hour first date. It was just too impossible to predict my schedule in advance (even on the same day). Planning a weekend date, even just for coffee, feels like more of an investment, so some guys bailed, but it reduced my stress level and was way more successful. There are very, very few weekends when you can't be off the grid for 1-2 hours.

That said, it is also really hard to progress in relationships when you only have time for a real date once, maybe twice, a week. It sucked, and wanting to find a partner/have a family was one of my primary drivers for leaving biglaw.

I found things tended to progress when the other person has, or has family that has, a career with equally terrible hours, so they kind of get it. I was on a date with someone and in the course of the conversation it came out their last meaningful SO was an M&A associate, and that it was awful because of the schedule. Then the question was - what kind of law do you do? ... M&A.That didn't go anywhere. I also met a late-working consultant at a networking event, followed up on LinkedIn, and we dated for a few months and mostly met up between 9:00 - 11:00 PM, since we both got the dynamic of the bad availability and weren't too bothered by it. I agree that you can almost always be out of pocked for 1-2 hours on a typical weekend, but if a date goes well it doesn't tend to last 90 minutes, in my experience, and pretty often there are a bunch of drinks involved, so there goes the evening. Anyway, dating in biglaw sucks. It becomes stressful. I flaked a ton, was too tired and distracted to be the best version of myself, and I felt like a much more selfish dater than I was pre-biglaw. The inability to have even a semi-normal dating/friendship lifestyle was also my number one motivation for leaving.

[Anonymous User]

My dating life has been nonexistent. It’s really hard to build a relationship when you might see the person twice a month. People don’t appreciate being cancelled on weekly, especially when they barely know you. I even tried to get back with an ex and was told that it can’t happen because of how unavailable I am. And then you have to consider how you want to spend your precious free time—often, it comes down to seeing family or longtime friends you have barely seen the past 6 months or spending a night with someone who you don’t know. I was told before I started working from a friend in investment banking that you either come into a job like big law with a significant other or stay single throughout your tenure. Based on my personal experience and what I’ve seen at my firm, that is true for most people.

[Anonymous User]

I matched with a girl through a dating app. We texted and eventually I asked her out. I proposed meeting at 7pm on a weeknight, thinking if I played it just right on all my live matters, I'd probably be able to pull off getting out of the office that early at least once that week. She responded by noting that 7pm was super late to meet up. Pretty much could see the writing on the wall at that point...

[Anonymous User]

Ok my experience has been very different. Not sure if everybody posting in this thread is exaggerating way over the top, everyone is some sort of workaholic recluse, or maybe it's working in NYC M&A. I work in litigation (non-NYC major market), and typically I'm out of the office by 7:30 or 8. I rarely have to work more than 4-5 hours over the weekends (easily split between the two days to barely be noticeable). Don't get me wrong, there are times that for several weeks I will be totally slammed (working 12+ hours every day, no weekends off), but those come and go, and are by no means the norm. All this "I can only go off the grid for a couple hours over the weekend" talk is outrageous to me lol, I'm almost always off the grid on the weekend (again, a typical week, not when we are getting close to big filing or trial).

When things with a girl align, I can easily get a late night happy hour in on the weekdays, and Friday and Saturday night I'm always game. Obviously I've been going crazy with COVID and have had no interaction with the opposite gender in months, but in normal circumstances finding the time is usually not a problem, and the dating life has been good to me.

[Anonymous User]

Yeah I have had relatively little problem with dating, though it might be self-selection (why match with a NYC lawyer if you can't deal with the hours?) and being in a practice group other than ... whatever the fuck it is you guys do. It's also something I thought of as a priority pre-COVID; if I didn't actually make an effort to make the time for it I could see myself waking up after ~4 months and realizing I hadn't gone on a date with anyone and not even noticed.

FWIW I will echo the comment that it's much easier to date people who are also in professions with demanding hours. They're far more understanding and frankly even appreciate it. It's also good for its own sake: you should know how it feels to date *you* when it comes to cancelling at the last second, being in a shitty mood because you're slammed, etc.

[Anonymous User]

Incoming, single NYC (non-M&A) biglaw associate here. Currently studying for the bar, plus with COVID, dating is obviously impossible. Haven't gotten a start date from my firm yet so even after the bar I'll be staying with my parents in the middle of nowhere for the foreseeable future (at least until January 2021) since the lease on my law school is up soon. It really seems like it could be a long time until dating and meeting people is actually possible. God this is depressing.

[Sackboy]

Incoming, single NYC (non-M&A) biglaw associate here. Currently studying for the bar, plus with COVID, dating is obviously impossible. Haven't gotten a start date from my firm yet so even after the bar I'll be staying with my parents in the middle of nowhere for the foreseeable future (at least until January 2021) since the lease on my law school is up soon. It really seems like it could be a long time until dating and meeting people is actually possible. God this is depressing.

January is a whole five months away. I feel like you'd need to be a serial monogamist for this to be anywhere near the zone of depressing.