Anyone have positive things to say about BigLaw? Forum

[V20Associate]

I am a current big law associate and I like my job. I agree with everyone who has said there is a bit of slant for people who are not happy with their experience posting about it online.

Listen, the hours are long and the demands are high, but I knew that going in. I've learned a ton and I work at a place that is full of smart, ambitious and incredibly professional people. I enjoy going to work.

It sometimes frustrates me to see people dismiss all of large law firm practice as not worth it because of any negatives. If it's not for you, that's fine. It's certainly a lifestyle choice in the same way that being a doctor, investment banker, or any other profession is not for everyone. But if you are a person who is OK with working long hours and sometimes stressful or tedious work, there are pretty significant positives that flow the other way. If you have the right type of personality for the work, it can be a really enjoyable place to work.

In other words, before anyone writes off biglaw or any other area of legal practice, I think some introspective analysis is important. Someone else's experience in biglaw (including mine) is not really determinative of how you will like the job.

[Neal Patrick Harris]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9rWcv_GRPg

[J3987]

So you want to dismiss all the negativity in broad strokes and then only hear comments that fall in line with your worldview. lol fuck off

Of course you tried to hijack the thread before people could say something positive about their job, those comments wouldn't fall in line with your worldview.

I enjoy my job in between the suffering. Seriously though, it's not that bad. It's tough to complain to coworkers without it having some work related effect, so i think some people do use this as a place to vent. A lot of people are just pessimistic by nature, and enjoy the "you don't want my job" mentality. Some things that I think are important, which are probably obvious but I'll put them here anyway:
1) know what you want to do (like, literally the types of things you want to work on - prior work experience really helps with figuring out what these are) 2) shoot for a firm that gives you a chance to do these things (the dumbest thing to me is when people take a job just because of the name or rank of a firm) and 3) live in a city you want to live in

I know that beggars can't be choosers but in my experience people that have the credentials for biglaw will have a few options. Trying to put yourself in a job that you can handle beforehand gives you a better opportunity to be happy

That said, if all else fails, all your really have to do is last long enough to pay off your loans and then you can go work at Walmart or something

Thanks for the constructive response. I have a fairly good idea of what I would like to do and I have relevant WE. I'd definitely want NYC, too. My job now requires long hours, so I know what that is like. Couple of questions, what specifically do you enjoy about the work? How long have you been an associate? And what is the office morale like among associates -- are people upbeat and conent or are a lot of associates looking for work elsewhere? Appreciate it.

I am a current big law associate and I like my job. I agree with everyone who has said there is a bit of slant for people who are not happy with their experience posting about it online.

Listen, the hours are long and the demands are high, but I knew that going in. I've learned a ton and I work at a place that is full of smart, ambitious and incredibly professional people. I enjoy going to work.

It sometimes frustrates me to see people dismiss all of large law firm practice as not worth it because of any negatives. If it's not for you, that's fine. It's certainly a lifestyle choice in the same way that being a doctor, investment banker, or any other profession is not for everyone. But if you are a person who is OK with working long hours and sometimes stressful or tedious work, there are pretty significant positives that flow the other way. If you have the right type of personality for the work, it can be a really enjoyable place to work.

In other words, before anyone writes off biglaw or any other area of legal practice, I think some introspective analysis is important. Someone else's experience in biglaw (including mine) is not really determinative of how you will like the job.

Thanks for the response, yeah this makes a lot of sense to me. Every profession has it's tradeoffs with respect to time/comp/risk, etc. and law is no different. It seems like everyone here only focuses on the negative aspects of that trade-off without considering the alternatives (by saying "I would've been way better off if I...did something else within the realm of possibility").

As I mentioned above, I have some relevant WE and I've had experience with long hours. I think I have an attitude and approach to work that is, given what I know, at least compatible with working in a law firm. What area do you practice in? Would definitely like to hear a bit more about the positive things "that flow your way," such as working on important deals, increasing responsibility, gaining skills, etc.

[J3987]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9rWcv_GRPg

LOL. Touche

[Joan Hollaway]

So you want to dismiss all the negativity in broad strokes and then only hear comments that fall in line with your worldview. lol fuck off

Of course you tried to hijack the thread before people could say something positive about their job, those comments wouldn't fall in line with your worldview.

I enjoy my job in between the suffering. Seriously though, it's not that bad. It's tough to complain to coworkers without it having some work related effect, so i think some people do use this as a place to vent. A lot of people are just pessimistic by nature, and enjoy the "you don't want my job" mentality. Some things that I think are important, which are probably obvious but I'll put them here anyway:
1) know what you want to do (like, literally the types of things you want to work on - prior work experience really helps with figuring out what these are) 2) shoot for a firm that gives you a chance to do these things (the dumbest thing to me is when people take a job just because of the name or rank of a firm) and 3) live in a city you want to live in

I know that beggars can't be choosers but in my experience people that have the credentials for biglaw will have a few options. Trying to put yourself in a job that you can handle beforehand gives you a better opportunity to be happy

That said, if all else fails, all your really have to do is last long enough to pay off your loans and then you can go work at Walmart or something

Thanks for the constructive response. I have a fairly good idea of what I would like to do and I have relevant WE. I'd definitely want NYC, too. My job now requires long hours, so I know what that is like. Couple of questions, what specifically do you enjoy about the work? How long have you been an associate? And what is the office morale like among associates -- are people upbeat and conent or are a lot of associates looking for work elsewhere? Appreciate it.

I am a current big law associate and I like my job. I agree with everyone who has said there is a bit of slant for people who are not happy with their experience posting about it online.

Listen, the hours are long and the demands are high, but I knew that going in. I've learned a ton and I work at a place that is full of smart, ambitious and incredibly professional people. I enjoy going to work.

It sometimes frustrates me to see people dismiss all of large law firm practice as not worth it because of any negatives. If it's not for you, that's fine. It's certainly a lifestyle choice in the same way that being a doctor, investment banker, or any other profession is not for everyone. But if you are a person who is OK with working long hours and sometimes stressful or tedious work, there are pretty significant positives that flow the other way. If you have the right type of personality for the work, it can be a really enjoyable place to work.

In other words, before anyone writes off biglaw or any other area of legal practice, I think some introspective analysis is important. Someone else's experience in biglaw (including mine) is not really determinative of how you will like the job.

Thanks for the response, yeah this makes a lot of sense to me. Every profession has it's tradeoffs with respect to time/comp/risk, etc. and law is no different. It seems like everyone here only focuses on the negative aspects of that trade-off without considering the alternatives (by saying "I would've been way better off if I...did something else within the realm of possibility").

As I mentioned above, I have some relevant WE and I've had experience with long hours. I think I have an attitude and approach to work that is, given what I know, at least compatible with working in a law firm. What area do you practice in? Would definitely like to hear a bit more about the positive things "that flow your way," such as working on important deals, increasing responsibility, gaining skills, etc.

FYI the long hours aren't the worst part. It's the no control over when your work comes that is killer, you are pretty much on call 24/7 and can rarely make plans (in corp anyway). There have been weekends where I only worked like 4 hours but that still managed to ruin whatever I had planned. You can spend all week doing nothing and then get a surprise assignment at 5pm on a Friday, etc. (this post coming from someone who actually doesn't hate biglaw most of the time)

As for one positive, no one in my family ever questions when I miss family events because "I have to work"

[quakeroats]

[84651846190]

It finally made me get serious about treating my blood pressure. I was borderline hypertensive before biglaw, but biglaw pushed me over the ledge. Thanks, biglaw!

[mu13ski]

Models and Bottles?

[Theopliske8711]

Models and Bottles?

This is getting tired.

[NYSprague]

I have positive things that I've listed before that are similar to yours. I just feel 0Ls who constantly post they want big law have no idea what they are talking about. More importantly they have no realistic sense of how much they will actually make versus how much debt they owe.
The reason more big law people don't post is that very few care about 0Ls at all.

[nouseforaname123]

My kids are always super excited when they get to see me because they don't get to see me much.

[IAFG]

My kids are always super excited when they get to see me because they don't get to see me much.

My husband non-ironically said this was his favorite part of parenthood last night.

[Nebby]

Prestige.

[J3987]

Quakeroats -- I glanced at your post last night before I toppled over. Not sure why you took it down, I liked it a lot. To give you a couple of quick answers, yes, I have an account with FT.com, though I rarely use it because I have access to a bloomberg terminal and other subscription based finance news sources.

In terms of the question about PPP, as an Economics major I am familiar with that debate. It is more in the realm of theoretical economics as opposed to finance, but I find it mildy interesting nonetheless. I would not choose to spend an entire day reading about it -- even if I knew nothing about it going in, it wouldn't take nearly that long to get the information I needed to form an opinion. Now, if I was working for someone who wanted me to write a detailed 15 page report on the subject, I would be more than happy to learn more and get paid to do so. After surveying the comments on the FT article, I can tell that the majority of the commenters have no clue what they're talking about, and the reasonable/ill-informed comments are easy to sort.

In general, I think we're on the same page. I work in finance and I am personally fascinated by the subject (and I do spend some time going over my tax return as well )... As a corp. lawyer, do you spend a lot of time grappling with abstract questions like the validity of PPP? Can you give me an example of a question you might spend an entire day (or multiple days/weeks) reading up on for work?

[D-hops]

As a corp. lawyer, do you spend a lot of time grappling with abstract questions like the validity of PPP? Can you give me an example of a question you might spend an entire day (or multiple days/weeks) reading up on for work?

Unless "PPP" is some abbreviation for whether or not your signature pages match the other party's signature pages, the answer is no.

[IAFG]

Quakeroats -- I glanced at your post last night before I toppled over. Not sure why you took it down, I liked it a lot. To give you a couple of quick answers, yes, I have an account with FT.com, though I rarely use it because I have access to a bloomberg terminal and other subscription based finance news sources.

In terms of the question about PPP, as an Economics major I am familiar with that debate. It is more in the realm of theoretical economics as opposed to finance, but I find it mildy interesting nonetheless. I would not choose to spend an entire day reading about it -- even if I knew nothing about it going in, it wouldn't take nearly that long to get the information I needed to form an opinion. Now, if I was working for someone who wanted me to write a detailed 15 page report on the subject, I would be more than happy to learn more and get paid to do so. After surveying the comments on the FT article, I can tell that the majority of the commenters have no clue what they're talking about, and the reasonable/ill-informed comments are easy to sort.

In general, I think we're on the same page. I work in finance and I am personally fascinated by the subject (and I do spend some time going over my tax return as well )... As a corp. lawyer, do you spend a lot of time grappling with abstract questions like the validity of PPP? Can you give me an example of a question you might spend an entire day (or multiple days/weeks) reading up on for work?

This is such a beautiful, beautiful post. When you find the academic think tank/corp practice hybrid you're looking for, you will come back and tell us, won't you?

[t-14orbust]

Is the 'revolving door' between biggov and biglaw real? If so how does it work? Thanks

[rayiner]

I am unsure if this overwhelming negativity is due to a selection bias (the minority of lawyers who hate their jobs are more likely to post on TLS and vent), or if such a large percentage of BigLaw lawyers really had no idea what they were getting into when they went to law school.

I'm not in everyones' heads, but I don't know a single person who has said big law was better than they thought it would be. I think even the bankers and consultants i knew were probably a bit optimistic. That tells you something about overall distribution of expectations. If expectations were realistic overall, you'd expect half of people to be pleasantly surprised. The fact that they aren't suggests perceptions skew dramatically optimistic. Now, people are taking on $300k of debt based on these mistaken perceptions. That's a huge problem.

[Kafkaesquire]

I am unsure if this overwhelming negativity is due to a selection bias (the minority of lawyers who hate their jobs are more likely to post on TLS and vent), or if such a large percentage of BigLaw lawyers really had no idea what they were getting into when they went to law school.

I'm not in everyones' heads, but I don't know a single person who has said big law was better than they thought it would be. That tells you something about overall skew of expectations. If expectations were realistic overall, you'd expect there to be a bunch (well, half) of pleasantly surprised people.

In my case, I had done the hours before and figured I could handle it. What I wasn't prepared for was the make-work, the stressed as fuck midlevels and seniors, the bankers who act like you're in their way (you are), etc. I wasn't prepared to work in an environment where everyone knew they'd be gone in a couple of years and had crushing debt.

And frankly I didn't mind to job so much. But I'm also one of the least interesting people I know. I'm quite content with just working, sleeping, and seeing my family every now and then when I'm not doing one of those. I don't have hobbies, besides megaposting which is easy to do during downtime, I'm not big on planning vacations or planning outings in general. I did used to enjoy throwing dinner parties, but that doesn't work because when your friends are big lawyers getting everyone together at the same time is a feat. Oh, I'm married and so the inability to keep dates doesn't make me depressed.

Yeah, outside the hours, that all sounds fucked up.

[BaiAilian2013]

I am in biglaw and I love my job because I love the substance of what I do (niche practice) and it's reliably 55-60 hours a week (combination of practice area and market). People doing an in-depth comparison of the hours to i-banking, consulting, etc. are using the wrong metric IMO. But these posts saying "I worked a 40-hour week and I'd never work 60 hours" puzzle me a little too. What do you do, go home and crochet a sweater or something? I still need to work on like, fitting in my workout more reliably instead of all willy-nilly and only half the time, and getting all chores done on the weekend, but I don't need to go home at 5, for God's sake.

There are good jobs, and middle grounds, but they're not the jobs you tumble into when you get good grades at a T-14 and follow the herd at OCI. I think herd-following is a problem with law students.

[splat232]

.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I am in biglaw and I love my job because I love the substance of what I do (niche practice) and it's reliably 55-60 hours a week (combination of practice area and market). People doing an in-depth comparison of the hours to i-banking, consulting, etc. are using the wrong metric IMO. But these posts saying "I worked a 40-hour week and I'd never work 60 hours" puzzle me a little too. What do you do, go home and crochet a sweater or something? I still need to work on like, fitting in my workout more reliably instead of all willy-nilly and only half the time, and getting all chores done on the weekend, but I don't need to go home at 5, for God's sake.

There are good jobs, and middle grounds, but they're not the jobs you tumble into when you get good grades at a T-14 and follow the herd at OCI. I think herd-following is a problem with law students.

But going home at 5 is awesome.

(Please note I don't work somewhere they let you come in at 9:30-10 am.)

[Emma.]

So you want to dismiss all the negativity in broad strokes and then only hear comments that fall in line with your worldview. lol fuck off

Of course you tried to hijack the thread before people could say something positive about their job, those comments wouldn't fall in line with your worldview.

I enjoy my job in between the suffering. Seriously though, it's not that bad. It's tough to complain to coworkers without it having some work related effect, so i think some people do use this as a place to vent. A lot of people are just pessimistic by nature, and enjoy the "you don't want my job" mentality. Some things that I think are important, which are probably obvious but I'll put them here anyway:
1) know what you want to do (like, literally the types of things you want to work on - prior work experience really helps with figuring out what these are) 2) shoot for a firm that gives you a chance to do these things (the dumbest thing to me is when people take a job just because of the name or rank of a firm) and 3) live in a city you want to live in

I know that beggars can't be choosers but in my experience people that have the credentials for biglaw will have a few options. Trying to put yourself in a job that you can handle beforehand gives you a better opportunity to be happy

That said, if all else fails, all your really have to do is last long enough to pay off your loans and then you can go work at Walmart or something

Thanks for the constructive response. I have a fairly good idea of what I would like to do and I have relevant WE. I'd definitely want NYC, too. My job now requires long hours, so I know what that is like. Couple of questions, what specifically do you enjoy about the work? How long have you been an associate? And what is the office morale like among associates -- are people upbeat and conent or are a lot of associates looking for work elsewhere? Appreciate it.

I am a current big law associate and I like my job. I agree with everyone who has said there is a bit of slant for people who are not happy with their experience posting about it online.

Listen, the hours are long and the demands are high, but I knew that going in. I've learned a ton and I work at a place that is full of smart, ambitious and incredibly professional people. I enjoy going to work.

It sometimes frustrates me to see people dismiss all of large law firm practice as not worth it because of any negatives. If it's not for you, that's fine. It's certainly a lifestyle choice in the same way that being a doctor, investment banker, or any other profession is not for everyone. But if you are a person who is OK with working long hours and sometimes stressful or tedious work, there are pretty significant positives that flow the other way. If you have the right type of personality for the work, it can be a really enjoyable place to work.

In other words, before anyone writes off biglaw or any other area of legal practice, I think some introspective analysis is important. Someone else's experience in biglaw (including mine) is not really determinative of how you will like the job.

Thanks for the response, yeah this makes a lot of sense to me. Every profession has it's tradeoffs with respect to time/comp/risk, etc. and law is no different. It seems like everyone here only focuses on the negative aspects of that trade-off without considering the alternatives (by saying "I would've been way better off if I...did something else within the realm of possibility").

As I mentioned above, I have some relevant WE and I've had experience with long hours. I think I have an attitude and approach to work that is, given what I know, at least compatible with working in a law firm. What area do you practice in? Would definitely like to hear a bit more about the positive things "that flow your way," such as working on important deals, increasing responsibility, gaining skills, etc.

Holy confirmation bias.

[jarofsoup]

Big law provides you with training, money and prestige. In turn you work an absurd amount of hours, have to deal with difficult personalities, lack job security, and risk the prospect of being fired in 6-13 years depending on the firms partner track.

I really cannot see much real benefits besides the prestige. If you can get an entry level gov position you'll learn far more than you would learn in a big firm.

[84651846190]

I've learned a ton and I work at a place that is full of smart, ambitious and incredibly professional people.

Are there firms where people aren't professional? That doesn't seem like a remarkable trait to me. Professionalism is such a bare minimum requirement to work in any white collar job that I hardly even notice it.