2021 End of Year Bonuses Forum

[objctnyrhnr]

Oh, and to stay on topic, DPW will announce a moderate increase to the scale and special spring bonuses tomorrow afternoon. Enjoy!

I think DPW will come over the top of Cravath EOY numbers to the tune of $10-15k per class year.

I agree they will also announce spring bonuses but that’s trickier. Either they go with their lower April ‘21 payout scale ($4.5k to $24k) or their higher September ‘21 scale ($7.5k to $40k). Hard to say.

My guess (which certainly could get proven wrong today) is that they (milbank/dpw/Wilkie/stb) match cravath and then announce some sort of sweet retention/special/whatever 2022 bonus that the rest of the market will then of course be pressured to match as well. As a midlevel litigator hitting a smooth 2200-2300 each year who does not hate their life, I will not be seeing this as a horrible outcome.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You’re my hero.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You’re my hero.

Sidetrack from the main topic, but is there a thread on people's average hours billed? From this thread, you would think its 2300+, but I suspect many hover between 1900 and 2100.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You’re my hero.

Sidetrack from the main topic, but is there a thread on people's average hours billed? From this thread, you would think its 2300+, but I suspect many hover between 1900 and 2100.

People overinflate their hours billed. Plus the people on this site may not be representative of all associates.

I'm a mid level in tax at a v10, they told us the average is 1900, but is up to about 2000 during this busy stretch. At my old v15 firm, they didn't report exact numbers but they did tell us that about 45% (I think? Not sure I remember) of people get bonus, and the hour requirement for that was 2000. Personally I was exactly at 2000 every year (by design) except when covid hit my hours dropped so I left.

[Anonymous User]

Kirkland tells us average or median associate hours (can't remember which) every year, and they're always low in that they're right around 2,000 give or take a hundred or so. But we are skeptical. I think the count doesn't include pro bono or BD, and the denominator includes attorneys who took leave. Kirkland offers six months of parental leave and more and more people are using all of it (and good for them). So if they bill 1200 in the other six months, 1200 gets worked into the average. Stuff like that.

But yeah, I think one thing that keeps high billers doing what they do is a misunderstanding that more people are doing it. You aren't unique if you bill 2600, but you probably aren't as common as you imagine when you're logging on at another 10:00 PM Saturday to put in a couple of hours.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You would do this as a junior, too? I am guessing the average billables then was meaningfully lower than now.

[TigerIsBack]

If you’re on track for 2000+ hours, you should feel free to turn down additional work. I’m not talking about turning down work on ongoing projects obviously, but new assignments. If some people want to bill 2400 or 3000 per year, good for them, but the basic compromise is 2000 hours for salary and market bonus. Beyond that, firms should either be incentivizing people to choose to be higher billers with extra bonuses (like many do), and/or hire more lawyers so that nobody gets overloaded.

I've thought a lot about this. The big problem I see is that if all firms, or at least the "good" / "worklife balance" firms, decided to staff up sufficiently to avoid crushing anyone (and assuming they were able to do so), those firms would either (a) fall way down in [whatever relevant rankings make a law student want to work there] in a downturn because they'd have so much dead weight and PPP would drop, or (b) fall way down in those same rankings because TLS and ATL exposed their mass layoffs.

I also wonder if a firm like this would have less talented midlevels. Based on the 10,000 hours concept and all else being equal, a midlevel that did 4 years at a 3000 hour pace (12,000 hours) is going to be way better at this job than a midlevel that did their 4 years at a 1900 hour (7,600 hours) pace.

You’re assuming no attrition resulting from the markedly higher hours (or maybe you are just ignoring for sake of the comparison)

Talent/raw number of hours in dealwork doesn’t necessarily translate into more talented seniors if they all start to leave around year 4-5 because billing 3k over and over is unsustainable

On your first point, yes totally agree I ignored it for easy comparison. I just think there'd be more forced attrition (layoffs) in an economic downturn.

On the second point, I also completely agree. That said, my read of the room for the most part is that all of the senior associates Cravath for example were able to survive the burnout and become a 7th year with close to 15,000+ hours under their belt in their career, and anyone who left because of burnout is out of the sample pool because they left. So, there is a certain expectation of the capabilities of a 7th year at Cravath, with the assumption being they've gotten a ton of reps. In a lifestyle firm it just seems like if associates capped at like 2k hours in a year, by 7th year they'll have far fewer reps than the Cravath 7th year so you'd have to adjust the expectations of a 7th year there and not be comparing them to Cravath's 7th years, and maybe that's not an issue because they can still largely run a deal and just don't have quite the same sense of market terms or something, who knows.

[Anonymous User]

I’m a mid level in corporate and I routinely turn down work if I’m swamped on a bunch of other active deals. I’m already annualizing over 2400 hours, so I see no need to further line the partners’ pockets. If they need more people to do the work, they need to hire more people and pay for them. Most people are not going to make partner, so why kill yourself billing 3,000 hours per year just to please a staffing coordinator or junior partner? I’ve seen a lot of superstar associates burn out after two or three years because they can’t say no. It’s better for both you and the firm to say no if that prolongs your life in BigLaw. There are no medals for crazy hours, and the extra 30-50% of bonus really isn’t worth it (unless you’re already near the cutoffs).

Oh, and to stay on topic, DPW will announce a moderate increase to the scale and special spring bonuses tomorrow afternoon. Enjoy!

You say this with such confidence that I'm fully inclined to believe you. Please don't let me down!

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You’re my hero.

Sidetrack from the main topic, but is there a thread on people's average hours billed? From this thread, you would think its 2300+, but I suspect many hover between 1900 and 2100.

I had a relatively busy year (~2200 billed and another 300+ of creditable pro bono/BD), but thought that everyone else was fairly busy as well. Now I've found out that plenty of people in my group didn't hit 2000, which doesn't bother me with respect to the associates (who I like) but did make me ticked off at the partners for not spreading stuff around more.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You’re my hero.

Sidetrack from the main topic, but is there a thread on people's average hours billed? From this thread, you would think its 2300+, but I suspect many hover between 1900 and 2100.

I had a relatively busy year (~2200 billed and another 300+ of creditable pro bono/BD), but thought that everyone else was fairly busy as well. Now I've found out that plenty of people in my group didn't hit 2000, which doesn't bother me with respect to the associates (who I like) but did make me ticked off at the partners for not spreading stuff around more.

4th year TX office, DPW scale - On track for a little over 2,200 hours with ~90 on various non-billable projects (e.g., leading/attending CLEs, training junior associates, post-closing admin work).

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You’re my hero.

Sidetrack from the main topic, but is there a thread on people's average hours billed? From this thread, you would think its 2300+, but I suspect many hover between 1900 and 2100.

I had a relatively busy year (~2200 billed and another 300+ of creditable pro bono/BD), but thought that everyone else was fairly busy as well. Now I've found out that plenty of people in my group didn't hit 2000, which doesn't bother me with respect to the associates (who I like) but did make me ticked off at the partners for not spreading stuff around more.

Yea, at my V50, we had an end of year town hall (year ends 10/31), and we were told that average billables for FY 2020 were around 1,600 and for 2021 were 1,800. And I thought to myself "wtf is this?". 2020 and 2021 were consecutively the most profitable years (on a profits per equity partner basis) ever. Law firms can be mad profitable without grinding down associates' souls. Its just that partners will try to give more work to someone who is able and willing to take it, and we've all been brainwashed into thinking "oh, its ok to take on more work, I'm not even at 70 hours for the week yet".

[Anonymous User]

If people like working with you, they aren't going to spread it around. They are going to ask you first every time until you say no. "Do you have time?" will give me PTSD until the day I die.

[Anonymous User]

I think the average billable numbers that law firms present are pretty much universally BS and not realistic indicators of what a typical associate is billing. I'd be far more interested in the median number.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

You’re my hero.

Sidetrack from the main topic, but is there a thread on people's average hours billed? From this thread, you would think its 2300+, but I suspect many hover between 1900 and 2100.

I suspect you are correct. I am in that boat and have generally billed 1950 - 2100 each of my 6 years at my V10 (on track for ~2100 again this year depending on how a few deals go). I have either been busy (200+ may - july) or slow (less than 130 in August). Not atypical but would love to have my 4th of July back and put those hours on one of the random tuesdays in August that I only had 4.5 hours.

That said, I know several people who are already at 2400+ for the year in our office, though I suspect that is an outlier in the overall legal market, even in a very busy year like this one.

[thelawyler]

I'm a V10 6th year who has billed between 1800 and 1900 every year. I have received my full bonus and received good reviews every year. Every time I'm on track for more than 150 hours in a month, I turn down new staffing. Sometimes I hit a 170 hour month, but then I purposely just shoot for like 130 the next month (I won't turn down staffing if I'm tracking to 130, but I'll also never seek out more work to get "more" than 130 if I just had a 170 month prior). When I have several 160 or 170 hour months in a row, such that I'm like 40 hours ahead, I take a week vacation to reset.

I did this by just developing really good relationships with like 2 or 3 partners (just enough that I can claim to each that I'm busy with the other without entirely lying, but not so many that I have too many mouths to feed and not so few that I can't say "oh i'm too busy" just for them to call me on not being overly busy).

I've received phone calls about my hours like, what? Once every 8-9 months? ("Hey, your hours are technically fine but you're tracking low..Just make sure you get your hours in").

WIll I ever make partner? No. Nor would I want to. Have I functionally turned this into a job where I've made over a million dollars in income over my late 20s without losing sleep or becoming jaded and cynical? Yes. Will I ride this out until they literally ask me to leave? Absolutely.

Will I still be annoyed if they don't double the scale? Yes, yes I will.

Do my colleagues hate me while they drown? I mean probably a little, but whatever, I still pitch in and help them whenever they ask (which I incidentally am able to do with some frequency because my plate is never really overflowing, so if anything I think most of them probably have somewhat neutral-to-positive views of me)

This is amazing and congrats. I tried to do this as well and succeeded some months, but I was in M&A and if one deal got crazy and another came back from the dead for a few hours here and there for a couple weeks, it'd be a 250-350 hour month sometimes which killed it for me. Granted, I didn't have the balls to say no the new work for a month after those brutal months... especially as some of those crazy months would stretch out for several months in this crazy new market. So I left.

[almostperfectt]

If people like working with you, they aren't going to spread it around. They are going to ask you first every time until you say no. "Do you have time?" will give me PTSD until the day I die.

I truly have no idea why people don't just say no. I get that there's a perfectionism and anxiety aspect to it, but if you're comfortably hitting your hours what is the pressure? Especially if you know other associates have less on their plates

[Anonymous User]

Kirkland tells us average or median associate hours (can't remember which) every year, and they're always low in that they're right around 2,000 give or take a hundred or so. But we are skeptical. I think the count doesn't include pro bono or BD, and the denominator includes attorneys who took leave. Kirkland offers six months of parental leave and more and more people are using all of it (and good for them). So if they bill 1200 in the other six months, 1200 gets worked into the average. Stuff like that.

But yeah, I think one thing that keeps high billers doing what they do is a misunderstanding that more people are doing it. You aren't unique if you bill 2600, but you probably aren't as common as you imagine when you're logging on at another 10:00 PM Saturday to put in a couple of hours.

Or we are meek doormats as the lawyer with the Patrick Bateman image called us. No, those who bill high understand that no one else is online at 10 am or 10 pm on a Saturday. It’s pretty evident pretty quickly. It’s self selection.

[Anonymous User]

I mean how much longer can this possibly take.

DPW can afford a couple of days of lack of associate productivity because their PPP is so high, but the firms on the margins that will match whatever the scale ends up being despite having PPP under $1.5m need their associates back to work.

So to you, unnamed ~v50 firm, it's in your best interest to just announce a higher scale and settle this thing and get yourself some much needed positive PR so your associates can get back to billing instead of following this thread.

[Anonymous User]

If people like working with you, they aren't going to spread it around. They are going to ask you first every time until you say no. "Do you have time?" will give me PTSD until the day I die.

I truly have no idea why people don't just say no. I get that there's a perfectionism and anxiety aspect to it, but if you're comfortably hitting your hours what is the pressure? Especially if you know other associates have less on their plates

It's easy to say no when you have work which will require billing a 225-300 hour month. It's much tougher to say no to "Do you have time?" a week after that 300 hour month where you are on pace for 80 hours for the month but you absolutely do not want to work after last month.

The only way I survive this job is by taking 5 weeks of vacation every year. Every year I am on pace for 2500+ after 6 months, then I take 5 weeks of vacation, and end around 2150-2350.

[Anonymous User]

Anyone else have trouble saying no out of deal FOMO? This is my issue (interest in being staffed on new complex matters to gain experience/exposure), but not sure how common it is and may depend on practice area and the nature of the work.

I’ll bill 2800 this year and billed high hours (2300-2400) in 2020, but I expect to make partner in next year’s class which was also a factor. I’ll more or less know around the same time this bonus is finally announced so my firm could be met with an unhappy associate if I’m told to wait another year and we aren’t paid considerably more than this initial scale.

[Anonymous User]

Anyone else have trouble saying no out of deal FOMO? This is my issue (interest in being staffed on new complex matters to gain experience/exposure), but not sure how common it is and may depend on practice area and the nature of the work.

I’ll bill 2800 this year and billed high hours (2300-2400) in 2020, but I expect to make partner in next year’s class which was also a factor. I’ll more or less know around the same time this bonus is finally announced so my firm could be met with an unhappy associate if I’m told to wait another year and we aren’t paid considerably more than this initial scale.

I could never relate to bolded point #1, but I guess that explains why I will never be given the opportunity to relate to bolded point #2. Rooting for you though -- good luck!

[Anonymous User]

Anyone else have trouble saying no out of deal FOMO? This is my issue (interest in being staffed on new complex matters to gain experience/exposure), but not sure how common it is and may depend on practice area and the nature of the work.

I’ll bill 2800 this year and billed high hours (2300-2400) in 2020, but I expect to make partner in next year’s class which was also a factor. I’ll more or less know around the same time this bonus is finally announced so my firm could be met with an unhappy associate if I’m told to wait another year and we aren’t paid considerably more than this initial scale.

Maybe when I was a first or second year, but certainly not now as a jaded, burned-out sixth year.

[Anonymous User]

If people like working with you, they aren't going to spread it around. They are going to ask you first every time until you say no. "Do you have time?" will give me PTSD until the day I die.

I truly have no idea why people don't just say no. I get that there's a perfectionism and anxiety aspect to it, but if you're comfortably hitting your hours what is the pressure? Especially if you know other associates have less on their plates

It's easy to say no when you have work which will require billing a 225-300 hour month. It's much tougher to say no to "Do you have time?" a week after that 300 hour month where you are on pace for 80 hours for the month but you absolutely do not want to work after last month.

The only way I survive this job is by taking 5 weeks of vacation every year. Every year I am on pace for 2500+ after 6 months, then I take 5 weeks of vacation, and end around 2150-2350.

I relate to this so much. I'm pretty good at saying no to work when I am sufficiently busy, but in a situation like this I don't know if there is a way to say no without blatantly lying. Then I end up getting crushed down the line when one of my old deals rises from the dead, or gets very busy unexpectedly. If anyone has tips I'm all ears.

[VentureMBA]

If people like working with you, they aren't going to spread it around. They are going to ask you first every time until you say no. "Do you have time?" will give me PTSD until the day I die.

I truly have no idea why people don't just say no. I get that there's a perfectionism and anxiety aspect to it, but if you're comfortably hitting your hours what is the pressure? Especially if you know other associates have less on their plates

It's easy to say no when you have work which will require billing a 225-300 hour month. It's much tougher to say no to "Do you have time?" a week after that 300 hour month where you are on pace for 80 hours for the month but you absolutely do not want to work after last month.

The only way I survive this job is by taking 5 weeks of vacation every year. Every year I am on pace for 2500+ after 6 months, then I take 5 weeks of vacation, and end around 2150-2350.

I relate to this so much. I'm pretty good at saying no to work when I am sufficiently busy, but in a situation like this I don't know if there is a way to say no without blatantly lying. Then I end up getting crushed down the line when one of my old deals rises from the dead, or gets very busy unexpectedly. If anyone has tips I'm all ears.

Say you have a lot of pending deals in the pipeline. That's basically a universal truth in this job and no one ever knows when any particular deal will ramp up or die.

[Anonymous User]

If people like working with you, they aren't going to spread it around. They are going to ask you first every time until you say no. "Do you have time?" will give me PTSD until the day I die.

I truly have no idea why people don't just say no. I get that there's a perfectionism and anxiety aspect to it, but if you're comfortably hitting your hours what is the pressure? Especially if you know other associates have less on their plates

It's easy to say no when you have work which will require billing a 225-300 hour month. It's much tougher to say no to "Do you have time?" a week after that 300 hour month where you are on pace for 80 hours for the month but you absolutely do not want to work after last month.

The only way I survive this job is by taking 5 weeks of vacation every year. Every year I am on pace for 2500+ after 6 months, then I take 5 weeks of vacation, and end around 2150-2350.

I relate to this so much. I'm pretty good at saying no to work when I am sufficiently busy, but in a situation like this I don't know if there is a way to say no without blatantly lying. Then I end up getting crushed down the line when one of my old deals rises from the dead, or gets very busy unexpectedly. If anyone has tips I'm all ears.

The secret is to always have a pipeline of matters that you can bill some time to so you’re never facing 20 hour weeks.

It gets easier as you get more senior and if you’re in a less deal-centric practice