big law associate reddit
I'm only a first year with a very modest amount of money saved up (what JL Collins would call F.U. With Corporate, it seems that you're much more likely to have a constant stream of stuff that needs to get done ASAP, which leads to partners expecting constant availability. I've always been a structured person and stick to a tight schedule in school and its brought me much success. Other professions have pretty high burnout too, but law seems to be up there with medicine as far as burning out people. Most often, I just don't manage my time well enough; if I get up ~7am, get cracking ASAP (again, quarantine helps), and stay somewhat productive through the day, I come out fine on sleep. Same here. This is a place for people who are or want to become Financially Independent (FI), which means not having to work for money. There are at least two contradictory stereotypes about associate life in large, national law firms (hereinafter “BigLaw”). It will take us longer to fire this way, but we aren’t miserable while working toward our goal. Fellow midlevel Biglaw associate here, also on the FIRE track. This creates the unpleasant dynamic of the 11 pm email drawing you out of bed to prepare a response. Associates at white shoe law firms are good at a lot of things, but they are especially great at complaining (eloquently and often). We live in a MCOL city in the southeast. First-year Associate getting like no work. Otherwise normal schedules are totally manageable. The result being *everyone* works late to meet the deadlines, partners included (again, in my experience). My wife is, or I guess was, just quite. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, More posts from the financialindependence community, Continue browsing in r/financialindependence. DM me if interested. Or is structure impossible and schedules erratic? For many law students, a job in a large law firm (“BigLaw”) is the holy grail, the dream job, the “how you’ll know you’ve arrived” experience. card classic compact. Let’s break it down. Financial Independence is closely related to the concept of Early Retirement/Retiring Early (RE) - quitting your job/career and pursuing other activities with your time. Just this afternoon a lawyer friend of mine mentioned she spent $1000 on Botox this morning. Is it possible to get 7-8 hours a night of sleep? IAMA BIGLAW first-year associate, AMA. But those circumstances should be both uncommon and temporary. Check out their thoughts below. 3L 8 months ago. One way this manifests is in major lifestyle creep. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. I've also taken the sage advice of building an emergency fund that's housed at Ally. No way to get around that. Leave work at 7pm. The Do's and Dont's of Being a Summer Associate. I know a large number of very high functioning alcoholics. Corporate/transactional people will not sleep when there are last minute deals that need to get done, say, over a holiday weekend. I knew I hated biglaw 3 months in so in retrospect I'm glad I didn't learn about FIRE as a junior associate - I might have quit a lot earlier. And then if you’re billing a lot, you can snag yourself the free dinners too. Of course, there is a cost to the associates. It’s also a time to reflect on our relationship with work. I was only there a few years (VHCOL). I've been very lucky with my FIRE progress so far. First, if you’re not familiar with legal compensation at the nation’s largest law firms (“Biglaw”), it’s amazingly transparent. r/ biglaw. 10. No way around it. My schedule isn't exactly structured, but I've been able to carve out time for working out, food, spending time with friends/family, etc. I think biglaw is great for FIRE as long as you don't have huge loans and the "prestige" doesn't become part of your identity. There will also be times where you work well past midnight every day and sleep deprivation becomes a real issue. Posted by just now. (80/20 equity/bonds?). I had plenty of weekends with nothing that had to be done. They'll phrase it as "oh, everyone had to do it because of COVID." money), but there have been days when I've fantasized about walking out the door and never coming back. I worked a ton of hours but even when I left work, my mind was never completely off of work, even when I was on vacation. It's only in crunch time is that an issue. Litigators will not sleep a lot during trials or if your schedule is jammed with depositions or other time-intensive tasks. People who care about this spend a lot of money on this. More likely to pay for food delivery. Generally yes. How to Talk to a Lawyer on the Phone: Advice for Rising 2Ls Trying to Land a Summer Associate Offer. I get to the office 8:30-9:00 and leave 6:30-7:00...generally make it to the gym 8:30-9:30 and read for an hour before bed. If you have big closings/multiple closings on the horizon you'll have late nights and early mornings. We are not interested. Biglaw has no official definition but loosely refers to the nation’s largest law firms by headcount, smaller firms that pay at the market rate or medium-sized firms with international reach. Lol yes...Biglaw is not as abusive as most people make it out to be. But I bet I know a lot more than most law students … Press J to jump to the feed. 2 years ago. I have very little to no stress, spend time with my husband and 2 little kids, I go to the gym at lunch, take off for long weekends and vacation several times a year. I think that many would consider even what you are describing abusive. Other big law firms followed suit so that most now meet that pay while the rest follow pretty tightly under that figure. In that regard, some big law leaders will find false comfort in their 2015 Am Law Midlevel Associates Survey ranking. Lose the addiction to comparing yourself to others once you leave law school. There is often very little warning between when your workload changes from somewhat busy to all-consuming. On a normal day I will probably work from 9am - 7pm. 17 ways to stay out of trouble. Lawyers should do that more often. We make very good money for our city. Ask questions, seek advice, post outlines, etc. Your practice group has a big impact on your schedule. My only addition is that the challenge for corporate attorneys is that specialist work is often dependent on corporate templates or precedent or instructions so it feels like there are always gating items that slow down the team if you do not address ASAP. Report Save. In reflecting on my days in BigLaw, I wondered if others felt the same. Now that I think about it, it’s super easy to milk a lot of big law stuff for FREE. Labor Day marks the end of summer. There are exceptions, but if you can overcome your crippling anxiety and actually fall asleep quickly, you will have enough time for a solid 7-8 hours of sleep most nights. I get 4-5 hours on those nights. Doesn't it vary by law firm? I've been very lucky with my FIRE progress so far. A family friend will be graduating from law school this spring and starting his career at a large law firm next fall. There are certainly circumstances where something needs to be done on an unreasonable timetable, so it requires actual all-nighters or the like. I've noticed that, despite our very high income (and high student loans), there are actually very few biglaw associates here. My firm doesn't match any contributions (which I think is standard?) Glad I'm not in capital markets or restructuring because they're getting crushed. I did drive a benz back then but no regrets, and I'm much more practical now (I'm 41 now). Vote. Each fall, Adams and Reese hires a select group of second-year law students to join our Summer Associate Program, giving them challenging work, client interaction and real-world m Close. Unfortunately, the environment in which I was raised did not provide me with a ton of connections. So overall, pretty happy with that! Hot. I'm a mid-level associate working in international arbitration. Join. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. 8. Are the hours worth the money? She's 33 and was making 205k and quit for a 90k state job, with hopes of eventually getting a general counsel position in-house. For me, the vast majority of the time, I could sleep 8 hours if I wanted to. Hi! I was able to land a Big Law job close to my parents so I moved back in with them. Is this structured lifestyle possible to maintain in biglaw? The employee attorneys at Biglaw are largely made up of associates, and these positions are highly coveted by law school students. (I think the corporate side is less predictable in general.). User account menu. Close. Fellow midlevel Big Law associate here as well (long time lurker but created an account to join the community). And that bourbon habit is spendy. I went into a field of law that was a spinoff of my original practice (tax, went into estate planning/tax planning) and it's been great. Candidly, my husband and I outsource a lot, but we do so in a very targeted way. Good thing is we buckled down over the last year and knocked out the student loans. Asked to provide some advice, I started compiling tips and recommendations — things to do and not to do. I very very frequently seeing students/applicants on here conflating firm size with amount of work/stress. Where are you at in your path to FIRE? But is working in BigLaw all it’s cracked up to be? Lawyer, but not biglaw here with a few scattered thoughts. For a non NYC perspective, I worked for 2 V100 firms in different markets before going in-house. The Justice Association of Law, Rightness and Goodness is a pedohunting server where we deal with cases and only 18+ people can join because we need decoys … But yes, she went from about 160k to 205k in the 4th to 6th year, but has been steady since. On paper, it's a good field for fire people, especially if you don't have loans. While many are structured as partnerships, make no mistake, Biglaw is big business. Archived. All equities, above 50% SR. I’ve game-ified the process a bit, and have to remind myself to spend X% of a bonus for fun. Generally, yes. This is complicated by the fact that for most, your time in biglaw has an expiration date. The hours, the lack of communication among "teammates", the poor time management of superiors, the fire drills, the disrespect, the harassment, the opacity of the promotion process. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Not only do we work with students nationwide, we also partner with firms, including Am Law firms, and law schools, including top 10 law schools, to provide premier bar exam prepar 2019 was a good year to graduate from a top school if you aspired to work in Big Law. There's a lot of negativity surrounding the practice of law but I also know countless people that truly enjoy it. etc. Because law firms know that law students can't afford to care. The list goes on. I came from a midsize boutique firm (still major corporate clients, same billables) that fulfilled every negative biglaw stereotype and more, and I can confidently say this is NOT that. Log In Sign Up. I chose a lower ranked school for the scholarship instead of a higher ranked school and graduated with no debt. My best advice is to not just go to law school to make money, do it if you truly want to be an attorney. Most weekends I probably billed 3-4 hours a day (meaning I worked 4-5 hours). Was it a very deliberate transition for her, or did she basically have a bad day and then say "screw it"? Consider the outcomes of associates who joined 156 major law firms since 2010:* 44% left their firms before their 3rd year mark; 67% left their firms before their 5th year mark; 78% left their firms before their 7th year mark % of associates since 2010 who left their firms before their 3rd, 5th and 7th year anniversaries. And of course, if a case comes up or something urgent happens, you will have to prioritize those and they might eat into your sleeping hours. Above The Law In your inbox. level 2. I tend to want to do some things other than work, so that doesn't usually work out for me if I work late, but even then, I sleep a reasonable amount. This is a reasonable response. Glad to hear she's made it out. Happy to share prior experience, too. Close. Keep in mind my goal was just to meet the billable requirement. Corporate lawyers will definitely have a tougher time. I don't mind being in a VHCOL area (San Francisco) since I'd choose to live here anyway. You can spend those with people, recreating, or sleeping. The biggest gripe I hear relates to the billable requirements. The u/SortedControversy community on Reddit. card. like? Do you keep an emergency fund in cash, or is it all in the VTSAX? The hours vary depending on the number of cases and new cases that we get. Would you agree that going to a smaller firm doesn't necessarily mean less work than BigLaw (generally speaking)? A lot of the suck from Biglaw is that you will work until 11:30 p.m. on those days, take an Uber home and go straight to bed, and then after a week of that, you work all weekend too. Of course, there are fire drills and 10:30 pm emails that cannot wait until tomorrow morning but that is not an everyday thing. The Biglaw salary scale moves around from time-to-time. Hi guys, I'm a first-year associate in biglaw in a mid-sized city in biz lit. But I managed to make roughly $200-300k annually and pay off student loans, cars, save for down payment, pay for a wedding, stuff 401ks and put some other money aside. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. The money is great, the work is interesting, and exit opportunities are good. This is a reasonable response. I agree with everything you said. At its core, FI/RE is about maximizing your savings rate (through less spending and/or higher income) to achieve FI and have the freedom to RE as fast as possible. If there is an upcoming deadline and the project management is poor, we may have to stay late until past midnight or even as late as 4am on a few occasions before. Commentary 'Big Law Killed My Husband': An Open Letter From a Sidley Partner's Widow The wife of Sidley Austin partner Gabe MacConaill shares her story. If you want to sleep from midnight to 7, you will be able to do that most days. Esq. Weekends were variable. Most Biglaw firms are located in the major U.S. cities. Firms have tried to coax me and my husband to move back to Atlanta and take $100k raises each, multiple times. Not a big law associate, but the answers are probably going to be that you make time for what’s important to you—whether than be family, fun, or sleep. If they're not, I'd probably start looking elsewhere sooner rather than later. Some people drink expensive liquor (substance abuse is big in law), some people eat out at expensive restaurants, some people buy clothes/cars/toys. Your question depends heavily on the practice, on the matter, and the supervisor. I actually became much more frugal when i started because I realized how painful /uncertain it was to earn each dollar in this profession. Our firm gives unlimited billable credit for pro bono work, so I have had some great opportunities outside of my commercial practice. I kept a later schedule because I am not a morning person, and the later schedule made me more productive. Thanks! It definitely gets (a little bit) easier as you become more senior, though. Are there any other biglaw associates here? Posted by 1 day ago. You are broker than broke when you start, so just keep your head down and focus on the goal. It's actually kind of frustrating. So, on average, that's billing five 9 hour days and a few hours on the weekend. Comparing your description of ~2400 hour billing expectations (which seems pretty common for NYC) against those lower figures quantifies the NYC vs. non-NYC workload that everyone always refers to. Lunch can basically be free all summer while summer associates are in town (I know I . My typical day: Get to the office by 9:30-10:00am, work with a 15-30 minute break to grab something to bring back to the desk for lunch. Work until 10-11pm. Edit: another thing I can think of: a lot of biglaw associates seem to "self medicate" with expensive stuff because of their stress. Those who just finished their SA positions are more or less forced to stick with them because of how slow 3L OCI has been (and will likely continue to be). I think it's helpful to think about the math. IMO, law tends to value and attract people who care about status. but they allow for mega backdoor Roth and provide both HSA and limited FSA, as well as some other incidental benefits like fitness reimbursement and pre-tax commuter spending. I'm a litigator in NYC. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Press J to jump to the feed. I had colleagues that were the opposite, and their schedule was essentially the same as mine, except shifted up by 3 hours (yes, that meant leaving the office at 4, and logging back on around 6, usually to pick up kids from daycare). I took a roughly 50% paycut when I left to a small firm but I didn't have billable hours anymore and I worked from 9-4, and never took work home. I'm first year corporate at a v10 in NYC. So it's interesting to see you comparing your BigLaw experience favorably against a midsize boutique. But for me, this was actually a huge driver behind my FI goal. We had our start date pushed back to January of this year, and there … Press J to jump to the feed. Can you talk a little bit about how you chose trusts/estates? Sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't. Knowing that I would have a nest egg if things turned upside down makes the job much less stressful, and I actually think I am a better lawyer as a result. Law Schools. I was hoping we could share experiences and commiserate. I've talked to other juniors and they seem to be too lazy/strangely resistant to saving money. Log In Sign Up. Thanks for the insight! Mid-level corporate associate here and this is spot on. The first is that BigLaw associates work in a high-stakes, exciting world where their decisions have multimillion-dollar consequences for their corporate clients. Our billable requirements are manageable and we enjoy our work. For current and former Law School Redditors. Report Save. I am an incoming first-year associate in a big market. Many top law school graduates refuse to recognize that their credentials do not automatically equate to financial success, and start living like they are partners from Day 1. First up is Cooley, which according to sources recently decided to cut its 10-week summer associate program back by four weeks. It all starts with making the call. I know BigLaw works you hard. Find communities you're interested in, and become part of an online community! I'll stay for at least a few more years until I burnout myself or get fired. Yesterday she was stressing about an $8000 tax bill she and her husband (also a lawyer) owe. I'm curious about other firm's financial benefits - what are ya'll 401k, insurance, etc. Do you spend a lot of time abroad on cases? I'm making more money now than a partner at that old firm, if my sources are correct, and I work roughly 9/930 to 330/4pm. Some Texas firms have minimums as low as 1800 for Cravath bonuses. I personally think that a more conservative asset allocation is required for us in the accumulation phase. The main issue is always having to be responsive and ready to put whatever you're doing down for work. DISCUSSION. Hot New Top. I'm former biglaw, now FI. If you do have loans I strongly urge you to refinance and keep the big expenses (rent and transportation) as low as possible. I have a small yet successful network in my country of origin, but as a first-generation student that went to a mediocre college, my network within the United States is not as noteworthy, Hence, I come to you, Reddit. Biglaw lawyers on
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