I won't mind long hours! I do 90 hours weeks during finals! Forum

[A. Nony Mouse]

ITT 0Ls who have never worked in biglaw make arguments about why it can't be that bad and biglaw associates are whiners that NO ONE HAS EVER MADE BEFORE.

You just can't stop complaining, can ya?

And I'm not even in biglaw! It must be catching.

[bjsesq]

Re: I won't mind long hours! I do 90 hours weeks during finals!

I would love to watch you bitch about big law in person to people that don't have jobs and see how that goes over.

He did. To me. I worked as a cook at a restaurant for a damn year after law school. I agree with him.

[smaug_]

The people who constantly whine about working long hours in a 6 figure job are the same ones who dedicate 90% of their energy in law school to complaining about how hard and stressful law school is

The two biggest biglaw whiners I know:
1) loved every second of law school, huge law geek
2) never complained about LS at all, instead bragged about not going to class/studying

i'm sure you're not just totally talking out of your ass tho

(I'm not a biglawyer, but) To build on this, my friend who LOVED law school and was always downright chipper during exams has been put through the ringer by biglaw. I finally got to talk to him about a month ago (after rescheduling multiple times) and dude looked like a zombie. He's on track to hit his billables requirement in June.

Shit like this terrifies me.

[MarshallE]

I love the tendency of the 0Ls who push back in these threads to assume that the attorneys on here somehow didn't consider these really basic arguments back when they were thinking about going to law school/aiming for biglaw.

My question was whether in hindsight they believe that they overemphasized the financial benefits of Biglaw while making their career decisions, not whether or not they ever considered it. I trust that the attorneys have the basic sense to have previously considered these issues, but that doesn't mean I've seen it articulated by them previously.

I will just have to keep repeating myself: it's not the hours. It's not the hours. Okay, sometimes it's the hours, but as DF said, there are like 12 things that make biglaw untolerable to some people. The likelihood that one or more of those things will apply to you too is very high.

I shouldn't have used the term "workload" to describe what I was trying to ask. As you and others have said before, there are many other issues with the general work environment of biglaw. I'm not attempting to make the argument that Biglaw is not an extremely difficult work environment, I am more trying to gauge where the tipping point is when people decide that immense financial success is not worth an unfulfilling and strenous job. I suppose that comes down to people's subjective views on the value of money and the opportunities it can provide both outside of work and in one's later life. Which is why I asked how heavily people weighed the financial aspect into considerations prior to Biglaw, if it was previously extremely important to them, and how much that opinion has changed.

[prezidentv8]

They should make law school more like big law, to get people ready. The coursework would just be 21 credits of LRW, with assignments due twice a week. You'd have four different LRW professors, each of which disagreed with the others and with himself/herself from week to week. Your LRW partner would always be the most high-strung, persnickety person on Law Review. Grades would be on a scale of No Credit/Fail.

lolololololol

[sandiego222]

The people who constantly whine about working long hours in a 6 figure job are the same ones who dedicate 90% of their energy in law school to complaining about how hard and stressful law school is

The two biggest biglaw whiners I know:
1) loved every second of law school, huge law geek
2) never complained about LS at all, instead bragged about not going to class/studying

i'm sure you're not just totally talking out of your ass tho

(I'm not a biglawyer, but) To build on this, my friend who LOVED law school and was always downright chipper during exams has been put through the ringer by biglaw. I finally got to talk to him about a month ago (after rescheduling multiple times) and dude looked like a zombie. He's on track to hit his billables requirement in June.

Shit like this terrifies me.

Not sure how the conversation shifted toward people who like/ dislike law school, but let me just clarify what I meant. I meant the people who constantly complain (they are often people who like law school too... these things are not mutually exclusive) being the ones who complain once again in a real-world work setting

The hours in other fields are demanding too. But those fields aren't full of law students

[rayiner]

For all the biglawyers out there, I ask this sincerely: what did you anticipate the workload to be like, given the immense financial opportunities provided by Biglaw?

I expected the hours to be long. I worked at a startup before law school, did the 60 hour weeks, did the 90 hour weeks, and figured I could handle it just as easily. What I didn't expect was the difference between a 90 hour week spent getting a product ready for a demo in front of a customer and a 100 hour week spent grinding through doc review to find documents nobody would ever read or care about.

And the truth is that I'm probably on the more "broken" end of the scale, because e.g. I really consider the fact that I doc reviewed while my wife was in labor to be more funny than sad. I'd do it again (and probably will get to).

What I also didn't expect were the people. I think most are actually perfectly normal people, but the debt poisons the air. That mid-level that freaks out at you over a minor issue because he's worried about his upcoming performance review because he's still got $175k to pay off. In banking/engineering/consulting you tend not to have the debt, even if you don't have job security, and in medicine you have debt, but at least you have job security.

There are very few fields that offer the type of starting salary biglaw does, and even fewer that offer the growth potential that comes with advancing through the associate structure into partnership.

I think I overestimated the financial rewards available to the 95% of people who don't make partner at a big NYC firm, especially in litigation. I left engineering because I was concerned about topping out at $120-140k/year as an engineer. As a lawyer, I'm expecting to exit into something more like $100k/year if I don't make partner. Luckily for me, I really like being a lawyer and would be happy to make less money doing it than I would have as an engineer, but I definitely overestimated the financial rewards beyond big law.

Also, I underestimated how much the financial rewards *during* big law would be eaten up by loan payments. Comparisons to the nationwide median income are not helpful, because almost all big law is in expensive large cities. If you pay sticker, your take-home income after loan payments are accounted for is equivalent to that of someone making $70k/year in NYC. If you discount the people in NYC who are on public assistance, that's probably around the median. Your secretary at an NYC big law firm probably takes home about as much as you do, and she leaves at 6:00 sharp.

Are you bad off compared to your average American? Of course not. But your average American lives like a king compared to your average African. By your reasoning, nobody has any right to complain about anything unless they're starving in Somalia. The pool of people considering top law schools are not representative of the average American. The fact that life in big law with that income would be a big step up for someone with no college education isn't determinative for people from good schools with good GPA's considering their graduate school options.

[rpupkin]

They should make law school more like big law, to get people ready. The coursework would just be 21 credits of LRW, with assignments due twice a week. You'd have four different LRW professors, each of which disagreed with the others and with himself/herself from week to week. Your LRW partner would always be the most high-strung, persnickety person on Law Review. Grades would be on a scale of No Credit/Fail.

lolololololol

I like rayiner's analogy as well, but it goes a little easy on big law. If you predictably had two assignments due every week with fixed deadlines, it wouldn't be so bad. One of the biggest stresses is not knowing when/what/how work will get thrown at you.

Law students will understand this: Do you know that great feeling when you've finished your last final for a semester, and you walk out into the sun and head to the nearest bar? Imagine that you have that feeling, and then, while you're on your way to the bar, you get an email telling you that you need to take another final (in a class you've never studied for) tomorrow. Now, you've got to go home and cram for the rest of the day and night, just so you can write a crappy (but hopefully passing) exam. To me, the hardest part about big law is that you can never truly relax because some urgent task might be lurking around the corner.

[smaug_]

Not sure how the conversation shifted toward people who like/ dislike law school, but let me just clarify what I meant. I meant the people who constantly complain (they are often people who like law school too... these things are not mutually exclusive) being the ones who complain once again in a real-world work setting

The hours in other fields are demanding too. But those fields aren't full of law students

And I'm telling you that one of the most chipper and upbeat people I know, someone who would be frolicking throughout the year and finals, was put through the grinder.

This gets to be a "no true scotsman" thing if you're unwilling to accept competing anecdotes. I tell you about someone who has a lovely demeanor and never complained and you say "oh, well, I'm just saying that law students are inherently whiners/that's not a good example."

[rad lulz]

.

[IAFG]

They should make law school more like big law, to get people ready. The coursework would just be 21 credits of LRW, with assignments due twice a week. You'd have four different LRW professors, each of which disagreed with the others and with himself/herself from week to week. Your LRW partner would always be the most high-strung, persnickety person on Law Review. Grades would be on a scale of No Credit/Fail.

lolololololol

I like rayiner's analogy as well, but it goes a little easy on big law. If you predictably had two assignments due every week with fixed deadlines, it wouldn't be so bad. One of the biggest stresses is not knowing when/what/how work will get thrown at you.

Law students will understand this: Do you know that great feeling when you've finished your last final for a semester, and you walk out into the sun and head to the nearest bar? Imagine that you have that feeling, and then, while you're on your way to the bar, you get an email telling you that you need to take another final (in a class you've never studied for) tomorrow. Now, you've got to go home and cram for the rest of the day and night, just so you can write a crappy (but hopefully passing) exam. To me, the hardest part about big law is that you can never truly relax because some urgent task might be lurking around the corner.

I would change rayiner's proposal as follows: at the end of the semester, with maybe a week to go, the professor says "okay, same facts, but now we're going to pursue a completely different theory of liability. Re-do all the work you've done so far this semester under the new theory and have it to me by Friday."

Oh, and then replace the professor with an over-tired toddler during office hours.

[Holly Golightly]

ETA: Personally, I find DF threads amusing, and somebody should right a spell-check app that autocorrects to DF form.

And one that can properly distinguish the use of incorrect homonyms.

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

I love these desert fox threads and I think they're very useful. It is so hard to get people in any job you are considering to be honest, tell you how much their job sucks, take you through the mundane day to day because in real life there are a lot of negative consequences for doing this.

[thesealocust]

My favorite amusing anecdote about associate attrition:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/01/24/sul ... te-morale/

A 74-page PowerPoint presentation entitled “Recruiting, Associate Morale and Retention” showed that associates were leaving the law firm in droves: S&C lost 31% of its associates in 2004; 30% in 2005. (The average associate attrition rate for law firms of 501 or more attorneys from 2002 to 2004 was 19%, according to a NALP study.)

there are like 15 things that are awful about biglaw. Some of them might not bother you, but at least one will.

YUP

Well, if you're bored and taking requests, can we get a list of the 15 awful things about biglaw?

This sounds like fun.

Can we please do this?

[IAFG]

Can we please do this?

Start the thread and we can try to pull together the key ragequit triggers

[t-14orbust]

As an aside: how prestigious are snack/coffee options in biglaw? How prestigious are biglaw gyms? What exactly is seamless, and can I brag about it to my non-biglaw pseudo-friends?

[NYSprague]

For all the biglawyers out there, I ask this sincerely: what did you anticipate the workload to be like, given the immense financial opportunities provided by Biglaw?

I expected the hours to be long. I worked at a startup before law school, did the 60 hour weeks, did the 90 hour weeks, and figured I could handle it just as easily. What I didn't expect was the difference between a 90 hour week spent getting a product ready for a demo in front of a customer and a 100 hour week spent grinding through doc review to find documents nobody would ever read or care about.

And the truth is that I'm probably on the more "broken" end of the scale, because e.g. I really consider the fact that I doc reviewed while my wife was in labor to be more funny than sad. I'd do it again (and probably will get to).

What I also didn't expect were the people. I think most are actually perfectly normal people, but the debt poisons the air. That mid-level that freaks out at you over a minor issue because he's worried about his upcoming performance review because he's still got $175k to pay off. In banking/engineering/consulting you tend not to have the debt, even if you don't have job security, and in medicine you have debt, but at least you have job security.

There are very few fields that offer the type of starting salary biglaw does, and even fewer that offer the growth potential that comes with advancing through the associate structure into partnership.

I think I overestimated the financial rewards available to the 95% of people who don't make partner at a big NYC firm, especially in litigation. I left engineering because I was concerned about topping out at $120-140k/year as an engineer. As a lawyer, I'm expecting to exit into something more like $100k/year if I don't make partner. Luckily for me, I really like being a lawyer and would be happy to make less money doing it than I would have as an engineer, but I definitely overestimated the financial rewards beyond big law.

Also, I underestimated how much the financial rewards *during* big law would be eaten up by loan payments. Comparisons to the nationwide median income are not helpful, because almost all big law is in expensive large cities. If you pay sticker, your take-home income after loan payments are accounted for is equivalent to that of someone making $70k/year in NYC. If you discount the people in NYC who are on public assistance, that's probably around the median. Your secretary at an NYC big law firm probably takes home about as much as you do, and she leaves at 6:00 sharp.

Are you bad off compared to your average American? Of course not. But your average American lives like a king compared to your average African. By your reasoning, nobody has any right to complain about anything unless they're starving in Somalia. The pool of people considering top law schools are not representative of the average American. The fact that life in big law with that income would be a big step up for someone with no college education isn't determinative for people from good schools with good GPA's considering their graduate school options.

Don't look at the biglaw salary as your "entry level salary." Law is weird in that people make the highest salaries in the first few years of their careers. You can't count on making partner. Too many variables are in play and most of them are out of your control.

And look at the money per hour. If you are taking home $95,000 after taxes and you are working 2500 hours (which may turn out to be a low estimate depending on who you are and where you work) you are making $38 an hour, before you even pay a penny on your loans.

[mirroroferised7]

Can we please do this?

Start the thread and we can try to pull together the key ragequit triggers

Done.

[Cogburn87]

As an aside: how prestigious are snack/coffee options in biglaw? How prestigious are biglaw gyms? What exactly is seamless, and can I brag about it to my non-biglaw pseudo-friends?

Unimaginably prestigious. No better feeling in the world than kicking back in your office on the 31st floor, sippin' on dat K-Cup coffee before ordering fish tacos on seamless like the champ you are.

[Gooner91]

There was a pretty interesting post about biglaw on Ludo Stories today.

[jbagelboy]

lol wait another thread

[Ricky-Bobby]

One thing I don't get

When people say big law people make a ton of $ and have it good and all that despite hrs

What is their explanation for the large amt of voluntary attrition

Seems to me there's 2 possibilities/explanations

1) somehow these bright and hardworking people become lazy and whiny in their mid to late 20s

Or

2) big firms are very unpleasant

Just gut feeling, which seems more likely?

TBF most of the arguments I see aren't that people become lazy, but rather that they were insulated from real work and/or long hours prior to biglaw.

Doesn't make those arguments correct, but I don't think I've seen anyone (outside of trolls) say people hate biglaw because they're lazy.

And one that can properly distinguish the use of incorrect homonyms.

Woosh.

[worldtraveler]

One thing I don't get

When people say big law people make a ton of $ and have it good and all that despite hrs

What is their explanation for the large amt of voluntary attrition

Seems to me there's 2 possibilities/explanations

1) somehow these bright and hardworking people become lazy and whiny in their mid to late 20s

Or

2) big firms are very unpleasant

Just gut feeling, which seems more likely?

TBF most of the arguments I see aren't that people become lazy, but rather that they were insulated from real work and/or long hours prior to biglaw.

Doesn't make those arguments correct, but I don't think I've seen anyone (outside of trolls) say people hate biglaw because they're lazy.

And one that can properly distinguish the use of incorrect homonyms.

Woosh.

woosh

[Ricky-Bobby]

woosh

Awww, shit, did I get wooshed? I got wooshed. Dammit.

[BankruptMe]

As an aside: how prestigious are snack/coffee options in biglaw? How prestigious are biglaw gyms? What exactly is seamless, and can I brag about it to my non-biglaw pseudo-friends?

My boy told me at Skadden they had catered breakfast every morning and lunch also.

Anyway..as a 0L. I do not understand why other 0L's argue against attorneys who are actually in big law or intimately connected to it. They are there, we haven't even cracked open a hornbook yet, but some 0L's are going to refute what people who are already there are saying about it...If everyone is saying (through years of old threads) the same thing, why not just believe it is the way it is. I never hear prospective IBD Analysts say "ugh well Goldman can't be that bad." They pepper their angus and prepare for what's to come. But here on TLS, people actively fight against attorneys saying...ehh it must not be that bad, you just arent working hard enough, etc.