failing to understand the hours/workload challenge Forum

[bdiggity18]

Good day to all,

Not sure if this is the best place for this, but I'm interested in hearing from practicing lawyers. As I sit here taking stabs at LR practice on khan and attempting to figure out what to do with my life, I'm wondering what the uniqueness is with the hours and workload of biglaw. I see between 1900-2100 billables on most firms, working at .75 efficiency, that's about 2400-2800 worked hours a year... busy but not exactly IB hours and you get to sleep in your bed every night (unlike most consulting), and seemingly perform a decent chunk of your billables from home. if you work that over 48 weeks (52 - 3 vacation, 1 holiday @ xmas) you're looking at 8-10 hour days x 6 days a week. basically the same hours as i'm working right now.

my dad worked hours similar to this for the last 15 years as an engineer and i'm usually working 6-7 days a week by choice for my sales job in a growing 4 year old startup. the money is alright, i'm in the top 5 for sales and i'm make like 90k this year before taxes. Not particularly intellectually challenging but i get an expense account that i'll ring up like 3k a month and i get left alone since i'm always over quota. meetings consist of reminding me to expand on current sales, and leverage referrals. if i go the online mba route i'll probably end up as a director or vp within a couple years. no real telling on where the salary would shake out.

I've considered going to law school since i was in high school on a nationally ranked We The People program but what's the deal? do lawyers in biglaw spend an exceptional amount of time writing particularly boring shit? clients are demanding but that's life. some of them are too stupid to understand the product, some of them are too breathtakingly demanding, lazy and/or arrogant to learn how to use it, many have to be handheld through the sales process and after-sales support etc. i answered an email this morning at 6am and will regularly respond to emails past midnight until i'm too mentally exhausted to do so. I'm in the process of penning a book on the history of enclosure in england and its relevance to land/eminent domain court cases in the US. my only real hobbies revolve around gardening, travel, and food/cooking. I'm familiar with taking calls, meetings and handling support issues while on vacation for my birthday.

biggest areas of interest in descending order would be supreme court, appellate, government contracts, eminent domain 'takings' under that horrid Kelo decision, land use, energy, trusts/estates/tax/family office/wealth-management. no real preferences for lit vs. transactional, plenty comfortable with speaking. Chances are I'd end up in Texas or DC since one of my dad's college friends is a senior equity partner at one of the biggest firms in Texas.

so if you made your way through this wandering post, i guess it comes down to, how much time do lawyers actually spend writing per day/week? would the time demands of biglaw be that foreign given my experience w/ the demands of startup sales? do you get to work in your preferred practice area? how much time were you stuck doing boring shit until someone put you on something interesting. and if you can, what was that boring shit you were stuck on? If I'm going to make the jump I want to understand if it's as big a pain in the ass as so many make it seem.

[existentialcrisis]

Good day to all,

Not sure if this is the best place for this, but I'm interested in hearing from practicing lawyers. As I sit here taking stabs at LR practice on khan and attempting to figure out what to do with my life, I'm wondering what the uniqueness is with the hours and workload of biglaw. I see between 1900-2100 billables on most firms, working at .75 efficiency, that's about 2400-2800 worked hours a year... busy but not exactly IB hours and you get to sleep in your bed every night (unlike most consulting), and seemingly perform a decent chunk of your billables from home. if you work that over 48 weeks (52 - 3 vacation, 1 holiday @ xmas) you're looking at 8-10 hour days x 6 days a week. basically the same hours as i'm working right now.

my dad worked hours similar to this for the last 15 years as an engineer and i'm usually working 6-7 days a week by choice for my sales job in a growing 4 year old startup. the money is alright, i'm in the top 5 for sales and i'm make like 90k this year before taxes. Not particularly intellectually challenging but i get an expense account that i'll ring up like 3k a month and i get left alone since i'm always over quota. meetings consist of reminding me to expand on current sales, and leverage referrals. if i go the online mba route i'll probably end up as a director or vp within a couple years. no real telling on where the salary would shake out.

I've considered going to law school since i was in high school on a nationally ranked We The People program but what's the deal? do lawyers in biglaw spend an exceptional amount of time writing particularly boring shit? clients are demanding but that's life. some of them are too stupid to understand the product, some of them are too breathtakingly demanding, lazy and/or arrogant to learn how to use it, many have to be handheld through the sales process and after-sales support etc. i answered an email this morning at 6am and will regularly respond to emails past midnight until i'm too mentally exhausted to do so. I'm in the process of penning a book on the history of enclosure in england and its relevance to land/eminent domain court cases in the US. my only real hobbies revolve around gardening, travel, and food/cooking. I'm familiar with taking calls, meetings and handling support issues while on vacation for my birthday.

biggest areas of interest in descending order would be supreme court, appellate, government contracts, eminent domain 'takings' under that horrid Kelo decision, land use, energy, trusts/estates/tax/family office/wealth-management. no real preferences for lit vs. transactional, plenty comfortable with speaking. Chances are I'd end up in Texas or DC since one of my dad's college friends is a senior equity partner at one of the biggest firms in Texas.

so if you made your way through this wandering post, i guess it comes down to, how much time do lawyers actually spend writing per day/week? would the time demands of biglaw be that foreign given my experience w/ the demands of startup sales? do you get to work in your preferred practice area? how much time were you stuck doing boring shit until someone put you on something interesting. and if you can, what was that boring shit you were stuck on? If I'm going to make the jump I want to understand if it's as big a pain in the ass as so many make it seem.

Honestly you won't listen to this, because 0Ls never do, and TLS is littered with posts like this dating, essentially back to its inception.

I don't do litigation, so I won't speak to the writing question, but I will attempt to give some input on the hours portion of the question, even though I know it's advice I didn't listen to myself.

You are thinking to yourself, "it can't be as difficult as people make it out to be on the internet". Honestly it is worse.

I wouldn't even say I hate my biglaw job, many days I even enjoy it and it can be interesting and exciting, but there is essentially no time when you aren't expected to be available and it is basically impossible to prepare yourself for the effect that will have on you.

One thing that I think if anything, is undersold on TLS, is how much of the suck is actually out of the Firm's control. Sure, there are definitely fake fire drills, etc. but also a lot of the demands genuinely are client driven and often partners' just don't have a lot of ability to push back. Sure they could do a better job of it sometimes and certainly a better job of managing certain processes, but ultimately biglaw firms are essentially in the business of meeting unreasonable client demands/turn arounds.

I have many friends that work/have worked in bulge bracket or elite boutique IBD, and I don't know a single one that works/worked as much as I do, although I will admit several of them don't work meaningfully less.

I went and dug up this post, from many years ago, because I specifically remember reading it myself and thinking how melodramatic it seemed, but now I see how incredibly accurate it is.

I'll leave this here from an older thread I posted in...

I'll go ahead and throw my two cents in, not that it'll do any good... When I was a law student, biglaw horror stories triggered a strong denial reaction. The very thought that the most lucrative outcome of taking on so much debt could be that bad was a little much. Their denial is annoying, but understandable.

Now, on the other side of the fence, I realize that it is, indeed, that bad. Though not for the obvious reasons.

Most people think it's the hours. It's not. Biglaw hours can be bad, but I probably worked more hours on average in some blue collar jobs when I was younger that were far less desirable for a number of reasons.

Others think it's the people. That's not the reason, either. The people can be demeaning and cruel, but I've had meaner and dumber bosses still in the plethora of shit retail jobs I used to have. And none of these had the luxury of a fat paycheck to put up with the abuse.

And yet, despite all of the above and the nice office and paycheck, biglaw is still worse. Why? For the simple fact that, in biglaw, nothing is truly yours. You never have time that's just for you, or just for your family, or just for whatever you want it to be for. In biglaw, this doesn't exist. You are under constant threat of being yanked away from whatever it is you may be doing by a blinking red bulb.

As a result, you slowly see yourself start to cancel plans. A lot. Then you just stop making them. Goddamn, do you loathe that red bulb. After a while, you realize that you don't do much of anything. Ever. You spend a lot of your free time in close proximity to a phone and computer, so you're always available, always able to work. Not because you're so committed, but because you don't want to have to deal with the stress of canceling again. It just becomes easier to be available at all times, so that's what you do. But then biglaw becomes everything, and you certainly aren't happier for it.

What's worse is that this is true at all times - busy or slow. When you're busy, of course you have to be available, because you're busy. When you're slow, you're nervous that you're not making hours, and you have plenty of "bandwidth" to boot, so, guess what? You have to be available. Free time becomes a misnomer.

It's this intangible factor that makes the biglaw cautionary tales real for me, and it's what I would urge 0Ls to consider when they mistakenly believe biglaw is their ticket. It isn't. Because, trust me, even if the above doesn't burn you out in due time, the up-or-out ax eventually comes for all.

[bdiggity18]

i definitely appreciate the thoughtful input. the way i see it is i'm either going to end up going the in-house strategy/PM/BusDev MBA route or to law school. i'm already glued to my computer or wandering around with my phone permanently in hand, it just seems like no matter the option i'd be trading one type of tedium for another type of more intellectual, higher paying tedium. 5 years down the line at my current company there's a chance i'd be making more than a 1st year biglaw associate, but without the 3 years of oppcost and loans and of course there's no guarantee on salary.

[bdiggity18]

could just be the frame I see it from but I feel like a lot of the bitching about hours comes from the fact that most people do the K-JD route with no meaningful full time work experience in between. I'm in my 30's, i've worked in gang member rehabilitation, i've worked in nightlife selling tables for $20k+ where the only money you make is on handshakes and whatever split you have with the club and you're constantly on your feet and in motion networking and finding new business. in the startup scene where i find myself now it's almost 10pm and i find myself taking a break from emailing clients about setting up their software and upselling, to make pasta w/ my girlfriend.

a job's a job. if you enjoy it you can do it whenever. at a certain point i'm looking for better pay and more intellectual stimulation combined with some of that work from home magic.

[cavalier1138]

Honestly you won't listen to this, because 0Ls never do, and TLS is littered with posts like this dating, essentially back to its inception.

could just be the frame I see it from but I feel like a lot of the bitching about hours comes from the fact that most people do the K-JD route with no meaningful full time work experience in between.

Yes, going K-JD certainly has an impact, as does choosing corporate vs. lit (the latter often actually enjoy the practice of law and don't seem to have as many problems with insane late-night demands). But as mentioned above, it's not about the hours.

[objctnyrhnr]

I’m a midlevel associate in market biglaw lit. My take is a bit different. I’m in a crazy grind time right now where, based on circumstances outside my control, I have some major dispositive briefing due on a few cases on virtually the same day in a couple weeks. I wake up crazy early and work until I feel like I’m starting to spin my wheels, with maybe an hour break to spend with my family, hour to run or something. Then the next day it begins again.

But this all being said, I still don’t think biglaw is that bad. At times that I don’t have multiple cases exploding at once as they are now (I.e., usually), I think about how I’d probably still want to do this job for nearly 100k less. Perhaps some of my perspective comes from dealing with dummies in state govt before hand and enjoying the room for creative growth I have here (plus money etc of course)...when you’ve seen the other side, you appreciate what you have more. Perhaps some of it is because I just like lit.

And I mean yeah sometimes you learn you suddenly need to go do a couple of hours of work. But then I think about what they’re paying me and like it’s fine. This would be the perfect job if it were the same thing but just I dunno 75% of it.

On the other hand, OP, what you’re missing isn’t the literal number of hours but it’s the fact that you’re not doing them evenly like you would in a blue collar job or something.

When you’re slow, you’re stressed about your group’s health and/or partners’ perceptions of you and desire to work with you. And when you’re underwater, you’re stressed because you feel like there literally aren’t enough hours to do what’s needed in the way it needs to be done. The other maybe 60% of the time though, it’s fine and you find yourself feeling grateful that you don’t have too much or too little to do.

[nixy]

OP, how much autonomy do you currently have with regard to clients? Like you talk about answering client emails late at night, but do you deal with them directly? And do you decide what you need to do to address their needs, or is there someone above you who handles the client and doles our specific tasks to you based on what they think the client needs? In biglaw, it’s going to be the latter, and that can be extremely difficult to deal with - not the amount of time spent on work, not being at the client’s beck and call, but being at the beck and call of the senior associate who answers to the partner who answers to the client. You’re not determining strategy for a given case, but completing tasks for the people who have determined the strategy. (Obviously this part of things gets better as you get more senior, but it takes a while to get there.)

Also in lit at least yes, you can spend a lot of your time writing, and whether it’s boring shit depends on how senior you are and what kind of case it is and so on. In corporate/M&A you won’t be writing.

[The Lsat Airbender]

i definitely appreciate the thoughtful input. the way i see it is i'm either going to end up going the in-house strategy/PM/BusDev MBA route or to law school. i'm already glued to my computer or wandering around with my phone permanently in hand, it just seems like no matter the option i'd be trading one type of tedium for another type of more intellectual, higher paying tedium. 5 years down the line at my current company there's a chance i'd be making more than a 1st year biglaw associate, but without the 3 years of oppcost and loans and of course there's no guarantee on salary.

Law school is crazy expensive (to be fair, so are MBAs). If you're not confident you want to be a lawyer (as opposed doubting you'll hate being a lawyer) then it's hard to justify the ROI math of a T14 school. Tuition alone is well above $200k nowadays. Even if you ball out on the LSAT and get cheap/no tuition, 3 years of lost income is a big deal in your 30's.

[bdiggity18]

You’re not determining strategy for a given case, but completing tasks for the people who have determined the strategy. (Obviously this part of things gets better as you get more senior, but it takes a while to get there.)

In management you'd call this task based vs goal based. Given a terrible manager, I understand the disproportionate level stress that can put one under since I had an aggressive taskmaster that I worked under once in debt collection. Some people work better completing someone else's checklist, some people work better having full autonomy to do everything. Without delving too much into it, I work somewhere in the middle.

[bdiggity18]

i definitely appreciate the thoughtful input. the way i see it is i'm either going to end up going the in-house strategy/PM/BusDev MBA route or to law school. i'm already glued to my computer or wandering around with my phone permanently in hand, it just seems like no matter the option i'd be trading one type of tedium for another type of more intellectual, higher paying tedium. 5 years down the line at my current company there's a chance i'd be making more than a 1st year biglaw associate, but without the 3 years of oppcost and loans and of course there's no guarantee on salary.

Law school is crazy expensive (to be fair, so are MBAs). If you're not confident you want to be a lawyer (as opposed doubting you'll hate being a lawyer) then it's hard to justify the ROI math of a T14 school. Tuition alone is well above $200k nowadays. Even if you ball out on the LSAT and get cheap/no tuition, 3 years of lost income is a big deal in your 30's.

Fair point for anyone. I'm not expecting t14 at this moment, unless northwestern would roll the dice on me. I'd target WUSTL, UIUC, ND, (maybe SMU since current texas network) and a few others that offer a ton of cash and place into biglaw, clerkships, and federal agencies at 50/60%+. I love how terrible law students are at math in general, saying one has to be a top 10% student at WUSTL or ND to get a biglaw spot when LST has them both placing around 42% of their class in biglaw. maybe if you're picky about location and practice area. If anything it sounds like ending up in the top half gets you that placement since federal clerkships are significantly more competitive than firms and generally go to the top 10%.

anywhere on the West Coast besides LA would be ideal. DFW/Austin would be alright. Boston, DC, more or less anywhere up and down the mid atlantic, Philly or Jersey would be chill, family there. I've traveled a lot, there's plenty of good food around any major metroplex and after a while the complexity/cost of NY/SF food just gets to be a pain in the ass.

[existentialcrisis]

Honestly you won't listen to this, because 0Ls never do, and TLS is littered with posts like this dating, essentially back to its inception.

could just be the frame I see it from but I feel like a lot of the bitching about hours comes from the fact that most people do the K-JD route with no meaningful full time work experience in between.

Yes, going K-JD certainly has an impact, as does choosing corporate vs. lit (the latter often actually enjoy the practice of law and don't seem to have as many problems with insane late-night demands). But as mentioned above, it's not about the hours.

Look dude, I don't think your view here is all that blameworthy, and at one point I'm sure I had a not dissimilar take myself, but the point of my post was that first, it's not just the volume of hours that suck, which is why I quoted that excellent post from 2014 and second, I have friends who work in very demanding industries who are frequently appalled at what is required of me in terms of time and availability.

That being said, it's pretty frustrating to have that written off as basically naive bitching.

I'll admit that I don't work in litigation and so that experience may be a bit different and transactional practices frequently do have more ups and downs hours wise and often require regularly later nights. On the other hand, maybe contrary to the general TLS wisdom, I actually don't really hate my job in corporate (completely unsustainable though), so it's not as though this is just the rantings for some miserable and bitter transactional lawyer who loathes the entire practice.

Edit: Quoted the wrong post, I was trying to respond to Bdiggity, not really Cavalier. 

[existentialcrisis]

i definitely appreciate the thoughtful input. the way i see it is i'm either going to end up going the in-house strategy/PM/BusDev MBA route or to law school. i'm already glued to my computer or wandering around with my phone permanently in hand, it just seems like no matter the option i'd be trading one type of tedium for another type of more intellectual, higher paying tedium. 5 years down the line at my current company there's a chance i'd be making more than a 1st year biglaw associate, but without the 3 years of oppcost and loans and of course there's no guarantee on salary.

Law school is crazy expensive (to be fair, so are MBAs). If you're not confident you want to be a lawyer (as opposed doubting you'll hate being a lawyer) then it's hard to justify the ROI math of a T14 school. Tuition alone is well above $200k nowadays. Even if you ball out on the LSAT and get cheap/no tuition, 3 years of lost income is a big deal in your 30's.

Fair point for anyone. I'm not expecting t14 at this moment, unless northwestern would roll the dice on me. I'd target WUSTL, UIUC, ND, (maybe SMU since current texas network) and a few others that offer a ton of cash and place into biglaw, clerkships, and federal agencies at 50/60%+. I love how terrible law students are at math in general, saying one has to be a top 10% student at WUSTL or ND to get a biglaw spot when LST has them both placing around 42% of their class in biglaw. maybe if you're picky about location and practice area. If anything it sounds like ending up in the top half gets you that placement since federal clerkships are significantly more competitive than firms and generally go to the top 10%.

anywhere on the West Coast besides LA would be ideal. DFW/Austin would be alright. Boston, DC, more or less anywhere up and down the mid atlantic, Philly or Jersey would be chill, family there. I've traveled a lot, there's plenty of good food around any major metroplex and after a while the complexity/cost of NY/SF food just gets to be a pain in the ass.

Should have consolidated my posts, but whatever.

This is also just totally wrong. It is definitely true that it's not as linear as lining up percentages with class rank, but you also really need to understand the way that the biglaw hiring model works.

The class of 2019 (the most recent data) did OCI in Summer/Early Fall 2017. Because someone at WUSTL had an OK shot at big firms 2 years ago during a boom economy, does not mean that a median WUSTL student is safe today.

It is true these middle tier of schools did much better during the boom economy, but it is also these schools that traditionally see their placement get absolutely killed when the economy goes south.

There are ABA reports going back to the great recession. I'd suggest you look at them.

[bdiggity18]

Yeah everyone says you have to be there to get it. On Call and never having time to make plans or having to cancel plans. Crunch time a couple times a year where you're constantly dealing with upset customers or stressed out managers. Not ever really having extensive time to yourself to devote to anything major. That's a challenge no matter the job but then you're dealing with the intellectual aspect of the lawyering which can be significant or mindnumbing depending on day and practice area and the added stress of professional/licensing responsibility.

I appreciate where lawyers are coming from the complaints are valid but I feel occasionally lacking perspective. Not just framing it as naive bitching, but I'm not going for stylistic perfection right now.

Interesting point on the economy, but at this rate, applying for fall 2022, I wouldn't graduate until 5 years from now about, plenty of time for recovery. The last slump was like 4-5 years, 2008-2013 about, correct me if I'm wrong. Always more could go wrong though, we still have another 5 months left of this hellish year.

[nixy]

I mean, you probably have a somewhat more comparable job than many people who apply to law school, so maybe you’d be fine, I have no idea. Do people burn out of what you do the way that they frequently burn out of biglaw? Are you the unusual personality who can thrive on this, or is your job just fundamentally different? What is the culture of your job like? Is there a lot of turnover? If other people tend to hate it but it works for you, sure, maybe you’ll be fine in biglaw. If people are generally content in your job that would be a red flag to me that it’s quite different.

(Sales to me also seems much more fast-paced and rewarding of risk taking than law. Keep in mind lawyers are there to figure out the worst case scenario; it creates a different kind of culture than in lots of professions.)

Not sure where you got “crunch time a couple times a year where you’re constantly dealing with upset customers or stressed out managers.” If you meant that about your current job, never mind. If you meant that to describe law, though, that’s not what it’s like. There are a lot more crunch times.

Re: schools and percentages and so on - there are going to be people outside the top (whatever) percent who get biglaw regardless of their rank based on connections (and sometimes URM status). And you can’t guarantee being in the top half because that’s just not how being graded on a curve works. No one’s saying you can’t get biglaw out of WUSTL/ND/SMU etc, it’s just riskier than T14 numbers. (I don’t know why you added federal agencies to the employment numbers, though, that’s not usually used for comparison because there aren’t a lot of entry level federal jobs.)

[existentialcrisis]

Yeah everyone says you have to be there to get it. On Call and never having time to make plans or having to cancel plans. Crunch time a couple times a year where you're constantly dealing with upset customers or stressed out managers. Not ever really having extensive time to yourself to devote to anything major. That's a challenge no matter the job but then you're dealing with the intellectual aspect of the lawyering which can be significant or mindnumbing depending on day and practice area and the added stress of professional/licensing responsibility.

I appreciate where lawyers are coming from the complaints are valid but I feel occasionally lacking perspective. Not just framing it as naive bitching, but I'm not going for stylistic perfection right now.

Interesting point on the economy, but at this rate, applying for 2021, I wouldn't graduate until 5 years from now about, plenty of time for recovery. The last slump was like 4-5 years, 2008-2013 about, correct me if I'm wrong. Always more could go wrong though, we still have another 5 months left of this hellish year.

Look I think I've made my point on the on-call thing, so it's the last I'll say of it, but I just think even compared to other demanding white collar professions, the being on call aspect is at its worst in biglaw.

In terms of the economy. I guess you aren't wrong but what you need to understand about biglaw hiring is that it happens almost exclusively through OCI. You essentially get one bite at the apple, in the fall after your first year of school and if you don't land it there, it's an extremely uphill climb. If you enroll in 2021, you'd better hope the economy is in a good place in August 2022.

There are schools that, even during the worst depths of the recession, gave median students a good chance at landing big firms. The schools you mentioned are not among them and have traditionally had much worse placement than you're thinking about. Like those schools have probably NEVER in their history placed as well as they did for their 2018 and 2019 classes, other than maybe in 2007ish. Those most recent employment stats are just not a good way to look at or think about their overall placement.

[bdiggity18]

from what i've seen fed agencies don't generally take crappy students. lumping together biglaw, clerkships and agencies is a decent way to look at how a school does on hiring because the qualification level is relatively similar even if the personality types that seek those different positions are vastly different.

my sales cycle is super long. 6 months to a year before I see any revenue. Turned over like 40% of the team since I started. Maybe biglaw is a fit, maybe not. I could just be one of those people that enjoys the job. There's always other options, I'm not trying to wear the golden handcuffs.

[bdiggity18]

Yeah everyone says you have to be there to get it. On Call and never having time to make plans or having to cancel plans. Crunch time a couple times a year where you're constantly dealing with upset customers or stressed out managers. Not ever really having extensive time to yourself to devote to anything major. That's a challenge no matter the job but then you're dealing with the intellectual aspect of the lawyering which can be significant or mindnumbing depending on day and practice area and the added stress of professional/licensing responsibility.

I appreciate where lawyers are coming from the complaints are valid but I feel occasionally lacking perspective. Not just framing it as naive bitching, but I'm not going for stylistic perfection right now.

Interesting point on the economy, but at this rate, applying for 2021, I wouldn't graduate until 5 years from now about, plenty of time for recovery. The last slump was like 4-5 years, 2008-2013 about, correct me if I'm wrong. Always more could go wrong though, we still have another 5 months left of this hellish year.

Look I think I've made my point on the on-call thing, so it's the last I'll say of it, but I just think even compared to other demanding white collar professions, the being on call aspect is at its worst in biglaw.

In terms of the economy. I guess you aren't wrong but what you need to understand about biglaw hiring is that it happens almost exclusively through OCI. You essentially get one bite at the apple, in the fall after your first year of school and if you don't land it there, it's an extremely uphill climb. If you enroll in 2021, you'd better hope the economy is in a good place in August 2022.

There are schools that, even during the worst depths of the recession, gave median students a good chance at landing big firms. The schools you mentioned are not among them and have traditionally had much worse placement than you're thinking about. Like those schools have probably NEVER in their history placed as well as they did for their 2018 and 2019 classes, other than maybe in 2007ish. Those most recent employment stats are just not a good way to look at or think about their overall placement.

strong points about looking at the historical trend against the current snapshot. will ponder life further.

[decimalsanddollars]

from what i've seen fed agencies don't generally take crappy students. lumping together biglaw, clerkships and agencies is a decent way to look at how a school does on hiring because the qualification level is relatively similar even if the personality types that seek those different positions are vastly different.

I'm not in biglaw, but I wanted to jump in to address this. Landing a federal agency right out of law school is really difficult and usually requires doing an honors program, and honors program spots typically go to people who clerk first. I think it's kind of a weird variable to add when looking at non-T14 schools because students from those schools rarely get honors program jobs without doing a clerkship first or, in rare cases, demonstrating a lot of interest in that agency's work (usually by interning at the agency itself). If you are considering law school because you want to do fedgov, the questions you're asking about biglaw aren't going to help much in making that decision.

[bdiggity18]

from what i've seen fed agencies don't generally take crappy students. lumping together biglaw, clerkships and agencies is a decent way to look at how a school does on hiring because the qualification level is relatively similar even if the personality types that seek those different positions are vastly different.

I'm not in biglaw, but I wanted to jump in to address this. Landing a federal agency right out of law school is really difficult and usually requires doing an honors program, and honors program spots typically go to people who clerk first. I think it's kind of a weird variable to add when looking at non-T14 schools because students from those schools rarely get honors program jobs without doing a clerkship first or, in rare cases, demonstrating a lot of interest in that agency's work (usually by interning at the agency itself). If you are considering law school because you want to do fedgov, the questions you're asking about biglaw aren't going to help much in making that decision.

fair enough, maybe not a useful variable. point still stands about fed clerkships.

[cavalier1138]

I really don't know what you're going for here.

Look, I'm in the rare minority on this forum in that I'm a junior associate who enjoys my work. I also never touch corporate work, which likely contributes to my satisfaction. Yes, I worked for several years prior to starting law school. And after all that, I still appreciate that this job is uniquely grueling, and I cannot imagine how much I would despise it if I had gone to a firm that forced me into a group like M&A just to have a warm body in the room. It's not about the hours.

You're literally reading posts from actual attorneys that say 0Ls tend to ignore these warnings because they feel like they're going to be different, and then you're going on to ignore those posts and explain why you're going to be different. And you don't seem to have noticed the irony yet.

But now you've branched out and are starting to make claims about how easy it's going to be to land biglaw from schools like Notre Dame. And you're getting into a whole new set of arguments that have been beaten to death on this site. The short version is that no one says that you have a 10% chance of biglaw from WashU, and no, you can't guarantee biglaw from WashU if you perform at median.

[beepboopbeep]

I'm surprised no one has called flame yet. "I, a 0L, know the struggles of biglaw better than biglawyers" and "it is possible to get biglaw from lower ranked schools, and therefore a good idea to attend them" are like the greatest hits of TLS 0L stupidity from time immemorial. Less common that a 0L's initial post has weird rambling about Kelo v. City of New London.

[nixy]

Weirdly, the Kelo bit read to me as the kind of thing someone who didn’t know the law but had encountered one specific thing in a related job and had no broader context would actually say. (Neither endorsing nor criticizing Kelo.)

[beepboopbeep]

Actually, fair point

[nixy]

I think it’s that thing of whether something is just trading on cliches or whether it sounds cliched bc it’s true.

[bdiggity18]

I'm surprised no one has called flame yet. "I, a 0L, know the struggles of biglaw better than biglawyers" and "it is possible to get biglaw from lower ranked schools, and therefore a good idea to attend them" are like the greatest hits of TLS 0L stupidity from time immemorial. Less common that a 0L's initial post has weird rambling about Kelo v. City of New London.

really making leaps there. appreciating what i've been told but not seeing the significance of the difference, and "knowing the struggles better" are pretty different. I studied political science with a focus on American Jurisprudence at a T20 school (hence my specific interest in SCOTUS/appellate) and i have family friends that are ranchers that have been negatively affected by Kelo to the point of having to reorganize a multistate operation reaching into 8 figures. Everyone's interested in something. What I was interested in led me to appreciate things like Scalia's thoughtfully constructed but personally biased opinion regarding the common usage of 'keep and bear' on DC v Heller, or stuff like the history of property right/land use and social control.

everyone's got a problem that needs solving. Maybe biglaw isn't the answer. Chill out.

and not to sound like a dick, but my network is good enough I could go to mitchell-hamline and get a job in texas biglaw if i want to go that career route. getting the job isn't the concern. i'm more concerned about if it's a job i want to do.