Corporate practice: which offices are less of a sweatshop? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm interested in learning which offices of firms are known to have less of a sweatshop reputation. At my current firm, it is well known which offices' associates have it the worst in terms of deal volume through that office and informal expectations for what partners view as someone carrying their weight. There are also offices that we all know take it easy and collectively associates do the bare minimum (despite one of these being a major market office too).

Does anyone have any similar insights on these kinds of office particulars in corporate (M&A EC/VC) at Latham, Goodwin, Gunderson, Cooley, Fenwick?

[Anonymous User]

Let me add WSGR to the list!

[Anonymous User]

This may be office dependent. I frankly wouldn’t mark any of these firms as great life style firms. SF/SV (where most of these are HQ’ed) is a competitive market and a lot of the big firms and companies are extremely demanding. I can point to offices of all these firms that are brutal, particularly in big markets. Offices like Cooley Denver might be cool. But if you want to be in SF, SV, NYC, or Boston for one of these firms, the hours will likely be tough.

That said, these firms tend to have better cultures than a lot of more traditional NYC firms, IMO. I’d rather work 2200 for people that are good people that 1,950 for a bunch of psychopaths. I’d rank Gunderson and Goodwin as two of the better firms on this front, but YMMV

[Anonymous User]

Secondhand knowledge: I have heard WSGR's Palo Alto office works their associates HARD.

[Anonymous User]

San Diego. Smaller legal community where people actually care about their lives outside of work.

[Anonymous User]

Before and after OCI, I had a lot of of candid coffee chats (candid as can be anyway) with associates at SF/SV offices of every one of the firms mentioned so far ITT, think 4-5 per firm. Between all of them, literally every single firm was mentioned as being "intense" or "leanly staffed". And every single firm was mentioned as "my friend there likes it."

[Anonymous User]

Double post

[Sackboy]

Before and after OCI, I had a lot of of candid coffee chats (candid as can be anyway) with associates at SF/SV offices of every one of the firms mentioned so far ITT, think 4-5 per firm. Between all of them, literally every single firm was mentioned as being "intense" or "leanly staffed". And every single firm was mentioned as "my friend there likes it."

Yep. Surprise surprise, firms with nearly identical and quickly growing PPP and RPL all work equally and very hard. These threads are always started looking for some unicorn QoL shop that pays market. Those days are long gone. Pretty much every firm is a sweatshop these days. If you want a good QoL, move to a secondary market where the base pay is 25-30% lower, bonuses are 50%+ lower, and raises are $5k/yr. Also, what are people expecting? That some corporate teams are just chill folks who don't deal with unreasonable deadlines and requests? Like, why would it not be the same everywhere? Corporate is not the career path for high QoL. Obviously, some firms have some straight up psychopaths/screamers that would make the experience materially worse, but generally, psychos/screamers aside, they're all the same.

[Anonymous User]

OP. I shared an example of my current firm where one of our secondary market office’s corporate associates bill 2100+ on average each year, whereas our major market/HQ office corporate associates bill about 1900 each year. We all know that one office’s associates get crushed whether it’s because the workflows there are voluminous and farming out is harder or because their billing rate is lower and they’re the best firm in their market — whatever it is, those associates have it worse. They also have a half the associates of my office so it’s harder to be an 1900 biller in that office, everyone knows you can do more to share the burden.

So I’m wondering if other firms have similar office by office reps. Not looking for some hidden unicorn QoL experience as I’m doubtful that exists, nor will continue to exist given WFH trends that will make work office agnostic.

[Iowahawk]

If you're looking for a high-QOL secondary market firm, you're probably looking for a firm native to the market or region, not a biglaw satellite office. All else being equal biglaw satellites will have worse hours and (especially) worse partnership prospects because they need to maintain biglaw PPP with lower billing rates. There are some firms that mostly avoid that by avoiding mostly sharing profit across offices, like (I think) Dentons, though because of that Dentons is kind of biglaw-in-name-only.

If you want to work less hours for less money, that is something that can generally be found without too much trouble in secondary/tertiary markets, though. How much less of each will depend on the specific firm.