When will the "hot" market trickle down to make associates' lives better? Forum

[istan]

If it's so easy for associates to change firms right know and firms are trying super hard to keep them, at what point will associates be able to ask for things like reasonable working hours/no phone calls on evenings and weekends as firm policy requests? Will this hot market actually change the culture of biglaw?

[Anonymous User]

In big law right now and I'm not seeing the culture change. I think they still focus on "we pay you big bucks so you sell your life to us". Maybe in non-big-law we'll see the culture enhance?

[Anonymous User]

I think you have to draw a distinction between bullshit arising from clients and bullshit arising from people you work with

if a client demands a call at 10pm on a friday night, short of the partner saying no, you don't really have a choice. that will also only get more extreme/worse in a hot market with a ton of work.

on the other hand, if you're dealing with bullshit like psycho midlevels/seniors/partners, you can probably push back a bit more than usual, given how hot the lateral market is and how little desire firms have to lose anyone who can be a body on a deal.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Well, the hot market trickled down to our bank accounts. (Sort of. Depends on your view of bonuses right now.)

By definition, a "hot" market is one where average hours are above the baseline, unless the supply of viable associates increases (and in the short term, that's mostly not possible). So no one in the current Biglaw frenzy is prepared to offer "reasonable working hours" right now (and by definition, firms hire laterals already think they're stretched thin). What they have offered is money, and since associates always vote with their feet, you've seen some acquiescence to it all in exchange for signing bonuses, retention bonuses, and whoever is just fine with staying pat based on what they're getting paid now.

Nothing will actively make the actual working conditions more tolerable unless a sufficient number of associates find it *intolerable*. Anyone who has been around a firm for a while will know that there's much more talk about how mad you are and how you'll do X than there is people *actually* doing X. Plenty of people have noted here how their workload is unsustainable, and I have no reason to doubt them, but people will need to, you know, actually not sustain it. I think there has definitely been an uptick in people leaving Biglaw altogether, but it's way, way short of some kind of mass exodus that would really cause firms to rethink their retention policies.

[Lesion of Doom]

As long as clients are crazy and partners are either crazy or willing to accommodate the craziness, nothing will change. Associates don't get to set market behavior, and unreasonable client demands are market.

There are tons of lawyers at smaller firms who aren't much better off in terms of lifestyle than those of us in BL, and they'd jump at a bump in salary. We are inconvenient and expensive to replace, but not at all irreplaceable.

[nixy]

Nothing will actively make the actual working conditions more tolerable unless a sufficient number of associates find it *intolerable*. Anyone who has been around a firm for a while will know that there's much more talk about how mad you are and how you'll do X than there is people *actually* doing X. Plenty of people have noted here how their workload is unsustainable, and I have no reason to doubt them, but people will need to, you know, actually not sustain it. I think there has definitely been an uptick in people leaving Biglaw altogether, but it's way, way short of some kind of mass exodus that would really cause firms to rethink their retention policies.

Yeah, people changing firms isn't the same as people leaving biglaw. And sure, people are leaving biglaw, but the whole model depends on people leaving biglaw. It's going to take something pretty drastic to change the culture. It also seems that some people are moving firms to get a break and connect lateral bonuses rather than leaving biglaw significantly earlier than they would otherwise have left.

[Anonymous User]

The invention of the internet, email, and Blackberrys + iPhones was a huge mistake. There's probably a sweet spot when digital word processing was widely available but the internet was not yet a big deal — maybe the 1990s?

I wouldn't claim that biglaw pre-2005 was a cakewalk (I can only speculate), but the always-on availability/always-on expectations have made things so, so much worse.

[Anonymous User]

I think you have to draw a distinction between bullshit arising from clients and bullshit arising from people you work with

if a client demands a call at 10pm on a friday night, short of the partner saying no, you don't really have a choice. that will also only get more extreme/worse in a hot market with a ton of work.

on the other hand, if you're dealing with bullshit like psycho midlevels/seniors/partners, you can probably push back a bit more than usual, given how hot the lateral market is and how little desire firms have to lose anyone who can be a body on a deal.

True, I guess what it would take to really change things would be a culture shift in corporate America as a whole so that no one on the client side was expecting work to be done on nights and weekends either. Maybe that’ll happen eventually with the lifestyle changes and labor demands prompted by the pandemic? Probably unlikely since the whole ethos is profit at all costs… unless people are starting to care less

[Anonymous User]

The invention of the internet, email, and Blackberrys + iPhones was a huge mistake. There's probably a sweet spot when digital word processing was widely available but the internet was not yet a big deal — maybe the 1990s?

I wouldn't claim that biglaw pre-2005 was a cakewalk (I can only speculate), but the always-on availability/always-on expectations have made things so, so much worse.

Maybe, but back then everyone was in the office, all the time. People I worked with who were associates at firms like Cravath in the 90s say that they basically wouldn’t leave the office for weeks at a time in preparing for trial or during intense periods of diligence or doc review. As someone with an S/O and now a small child, I much prefer coming home, eating dinner, and signing back online in my pajamas.

[almostperfectt]

The invention of the internet, email, and Blackberrys + iPhones was a huge mistake. There's probably a sweet spot when digital word processing was widely available but the internet was not yet a big deal — maybe the 1990s?

I wouldn't claim that biglaw pre-2005 was a cakewalk (I can only speculate), but the always-on availability/always-on expectations have made things so, so much worse.

Agreed generally that it's worse to always be online, but really just set your own boundaries. If you don't have any, they can't/won't respect any.

[Anonymous User]

No firm is going hire an associate at current rates (especially signing bonuses etc) and allow that associate alone to set their own schedule. Just not going to work. You might be able to get a non partnership track position but for lower pay.