Inspire me with stories about part-time big law work Forum

[nyc2020]

I would really love to hear actual stories of big law partners (equity or not) and counsel who work 50% or 60% time and make $1MM+ (or at least $500k). Seems like a nice thing to aspire to — a balanced life plus an extremely high income (relative to the avg American)

[nixy]

I would really love to hear actual stories of big law partners (equity or not) and counsel who work 50% or 60% time and make $1MM+ (or at least $500k). Seems like a nice thing to aspire to — a balanced life plus an extremely high income (relative to the avg American)

Do you have any evidence these people exist?

[Anonymous User]

If you have been working a while for a team and if you are performing well and the team likes you, then you can request to work at 80% pace as an associate. However, the understanding is that you likely limited your chances at ever making partner. I know of one person who is working at 80%, but he was a summer associate and worked at the firm for five years years and was well liked by all the partners.

I have never heard of a partner working at a limited pace. Their job is to handle a client account and do whatever they say whenever they say, so limited pace is antithetical to the job requirements.

Counsel roles have limited job security to begin with, and I can imagine that working at 80% makes you even more susceptible to getting the axe when the economy goes south. These individuals are people who got passed over for partner and might not ever make partner.

I never heard of anyone working at 50%-60% and quite frankly think no one will give you that opportunity.

[Anonymous User]

My firm will let you work as little as 1,200 hours per year, which I might do in the future. That being said, you're not eligible for equity partner as long as you stay part-time. Even as a senior associate, I'd be making $250k-$280k (I'm also assuming no bonuses for this arrangement). This is probably as good as it gets. Don't think you have any truly amazing arrangements outside of equity partners with massive books who don't do a lot of real work or former equity partners who have sweetheart retirement arrangements. Even if you were to pay a counsel $1M for 2,000 hours, the profit margin at $500k for 1,000 hours is probably considerably lower, so a lot of firms have no interest in that.

[Anonymous User]

Yep, my old firm is similar to the one above (maybe same). People could work as little as 1,200 hours. I don't know of anyone who did that wasn't a recent mom. The only person I know who did it long term was a summer associate, had also been there for 5 years. But she went back to full time when she was up for partner and is now a partner and not part time. I think there were some counsel positions that were on reduced hours, don't think any partners were though.

[existentialcrisis]

Color me extremely suspicious of these arrangements ever offering a good QOL, at least if you're doing deals.