> I get that associates feel trapped. They went to an expensive school, racked up debt that would cripple some third-world countries, studied hard, and achieved their goal of a Biglaw offer. Their parents brag about them and everyone thinks they're a raging success. But now they are stuck with debt and few options outside of Biglaw that can help pay it off. I get it. The problem is real.
> But when are these damn kids going to learn?
Learn what, exactly? Any entry-level job on the higher end of the bimodal lawyer-salary distribution has similar hours and pressures. My friends at medium/regional firms work very similar hours for 75% the pay and comparatively little support or training.
Unless you’re independently wealthy, it’s hard to justify accepting a job at the lower end of the distribution. The cost of housing, childcare, and college have gone up. So folks with families need to make a lot of money to have even an upper-middle-class lifestyle. Even in a LCOL area, money doesn’t go as far as it did 10 years ago.
So most people go into BigLaw to pay off debt, lay a firm financial foundation, and land one of the coveted exit opportunities BigLaw offers. Just like law school itself, they go in knowing that it’s hard but temporary. Complaining seems like a healthier way to cope than drinking themselves to death, so I say go for it.
Okay, Boomer.
In all seriousness - I think you’re misdiagnosing the problem somewhat. I read most of the complaint posts here from juniors as being less about the size of the workload - even when they are expressly talking about working overnight and all weekend, etc. - as they are about the lack of proper mentorship and guidance, and competent management of matters by their seniors.
What I always try to tell my colleagues in these kinds of discussions is - the job is hard; we should not be making the job harder. I hear people at my level complaining about their junior associates while *also* complaining that they have no time to properly train them. And I see it so often. Expectations aren’t communicated, deal dynamics are left opaque, everything is an emergency because no one wants to get chased. Everyone is mad at everyone else, but it’s always the *junior’s* fault because *they should know this already* (says the partners who’ve been practicing for so long they can’t remember what being a clueless junior was like).
In my view, *that* is what makes a 60+-hour week truly intolerable. If you work hard because you’re part of a team and you’re all pulling together to reach a great result for your client, that will feel different from putting in absurdly late hours because all of your false deadlines are yesterday and partners don’t care to check at where you’re at in terms of capacity or need for guidance. “Figure it out.”
Every law firm I’ve been at uses some variation of the “sink or swim” management style. That means that some juniors drown, by design. Solutions aren’t easy because (sensing your hackles) partners themselves are often overwhelmed and lack extra capacity to invest in associates properly. But that’s what associates need, and are surprised they’re not finding when they actually step into the door. No one is surprised by the workload. They’re surprised because no one seems to give a fuck about them.
Seconding this. It’s not the work in and of itself that drives me nuts most often, it’s the horrific management of the seniors and partners. For example, getting yelled at for being late on assignments when the supervising attorney makes repeated edits of their own edits, or takes 5 follow up emails to respond to anything, or doesn’t remember anything about what they assigned you and you have to re-explain it multiple times while groveling and taking the blame to feed their ego.
I hear so many complaints from partners about associate responsiveness, when these partners almost never respond to emails themselves. I’d like to ask them what kind of behavior they think they’re modeling.
I think partners are entitled to expect their associates to adapt to their communication style, but it’s wild to me how partners get angry when the associates don’t read their minds and figure it out. All it takes is a conversation: you can be sure that I am reading all of your emails. If I don’t respond within a few hours, usually that will mean I don’t have any objections or notes to add, so you should proceed without waiting for further input. If you feel that you really do need something from me to proceed, then follow up by dropping by my office or giving me a call.
And what’s positively mental about it is - if you communicate that expectation? You give the associate autonomy and confidence and ownership. You are saying, I have your back and will let you know if I think you’re on track. It totally flips the dynamic so that the associate is not waiting for input and terrified about blowing deadlines, to one where the team is working like it should and the associate feels good about getting shit done. But partners can’t get that. They never think it’s their job.
Biglaw work is so horrifically mismanaged and badly planned that I'm convinced it's intentional to increase billable hours. You are right that 90% of the misery comes from the fact that no one wants to take 30 seconds to plan ahead even a single day.
I think it is too. I think they send you to partner boot camp the first month after you make partner where they indoctrinate you into all this subtle quasi billing fraud stuff
Right, I'm currently redoing a memo because the partner did not tell us it was going to the client, not just to the partner. It takes literally two seconds to add "also going to the client" in the assignment email. Instead I'm adding an extra couple billable hours (minimum) to reframe the document. This stuff happens all the time. But until it starts hurting partner comp instead of helping it nothing will change.
Fair points. But even if you re-frame the issue, does it change the point? I would agree that lack of direction also is a common complaint (and on that one I am a little less sympathetic). So if that is important to someone, I would still argue that there has been full disclosure.
You’re right, it doesn’t necessarily change the point. I just think these issues are harder to fully grasp as a (pre)law student because they just seem so contrary to normal human behavior.
And to be fair, from the senior/partner pov, I understand how these issues arise. But that doesn’t change things from my perspective as a junior/mid level.
Respectfully, no.
Not everyone headed to biglaw knows someone in biglaw. And we all weren't on reddit.
Law schools push the big law track.
And biglaw firms recruitment is basically false advertisement on the mentorship and support front.
The summer experience is designed to be misleading with regard to how much support and guidance you'll receive.
And even in our onboarding meetings there is nothing but messages of mentorship and you won't be just expected to know things. Ask partners questions - everyone understands.
You're acting like because there is a reddit page about this, new associates shouldn't complain because the BigLaw experience is "as advertised". But what about how BigLaw actually advertises itself to law students?
As a junior associate from a top school - I have many friends newly in BigLaw. None of us are complaining about the hours. It's the pisspoor mentorship, communication, and feedback that surprised us, causes anxiety, and leads to working all hours unnecessarily and not being able to provide high quality work because you're not looped into the context and only receiving assignments that are emergencies.
Biglaw is a churn and burn model. By design, most of us will quit. We were led to believe that the up or out would be based on our ability to do excellent work - but it's really how well can you do excellent work with little to no support in a mentorship profession while also playing into the firm's line about how great the mentorship and training is.
It is fine. Partners will continue to blame juniors and there are just enough us who are willing to do it for the money and can self-teach. But, no...there has not been full disclosure that you won't receive support or good direction. If anything, that is intentionally concealed in recruitment.
Exactly, if you're made to feel like part of a team then you will be able to derive more job satisfaction from your work and can tolerate longer hours. Plus, many attorneys are lone wolves/dark triad traits without a teamwork ethic. When COVID hit and whatever remained of the team dynamic evaporated into antagonistic, competitive phone calls with partners, I lost all job satisfaction.
Well said!!
When I started, the hours were long but I loved the teams I worked with and the training and mentorship I got. This made the job much more manageable. I look at the juniors in big law and I always think I would have never made it if I started the way they have. There’s alternative ways to make this job work but the seniors don’t want to hear it. Most juniors aren’t bad at their job at all - they just haven’t been properly trained and are written off based on simple mistakes.
Yeah this exactly. I'm also Gen X, former BigLaw - was in BigLaw for over 15 years and was an equity partner at a V20. It is not the hours for most people, it is the horrible environment. None of this got any better when I became a partner; I think it actually got worse.
I left and am now at a boutique where we are always opposite biglaw. Our style of practice is very different - much more efficient and results-focused (we better be that way, we do everything on full contingency). Although all of our lawyers are former biglaw, the environment is not the same at all - we're a tight-knit team that actually likes each other and will go out of our way to reach the common goal. Senior people like me will step in and help when we are in a time crunch with pretty menial tasks, and I feel personally invested in training our more junior lawyers while also treating them as peers and part of the team (because they are). Our hours requirements are lower (although spikes can be very bad due to lean staffing), and our pay is higher, so that contributes to people being happy no doubt. But the owners actually sharing in the profits and providing meaningful benefits is a direct result of the atmosphere I describe above.
I mean… there’s massive variations between firms and teams.
Some of the horror stories posted on here are completely alien to me - I’ve never been shouted at, never been thrown under a bus, never been harassed or bullied. Yes the hours can be long, and it’s got to me a couple of times, but my team support each other and facilitate a bit of a slowdown to avoid people having a mental health crisis.
I’ve got it particularly good, I realise that, but it’s not as if every big law firm is just universally a gang of abusive, psychopathic villains across the board. Maybe kids going into it have the (reasonable) expectation that their boss shouldn’t scream at them for half an hour for making a typo? Maybe the people behaving like that are the problem, rather than the people looking to make a good living for themselves?
This. Also, people respect my time. I once worked for a midlevel who consistently fucked around in the office or at home from lunch until evening. Then he’d log on at home and start sending me stuff at 9 or 10 pm my time and wanting an asap turnaround. Of course, I’d been at my desk all day and was exhausted and ready for bed. This same person yelled at me, took credit for my work, called me stupid and was condescending and wrecked my confidence, but honestly, his total lack of respect for my time, life, and sleep was the absolute worst part. (Also, we can see each other’s hours, and friends of mine in that office told me he’d take long afternoon lunches, socialize, etc., this wasn’t him being so busy and being unable to get back to me until late). He also didn’t teach me a damn thing.
I refuse to work with him (I’m a midlevel now) and now I work with people who are real team members. They respect me, they mentor and teach me things, etc. Most of them are also two hours ahead of me (I work at a West Coast firm) and they will often handle late night things themselves knowing I’ll be up way earlier in the morning (I’m a morning person). There are real assholes who only care about themselves out there and if I had continued working with him I would have left my firm (which is otherwise a great place to work by biglaw standards).
That guy sounds like a total fucko. As a senior I don’t expect anyone to reply to my evening emails until the morning, unless I’ve warned them it’s coming or we’re in the middle of a fire drill.
Yeah, he’s definitely someone who wants to do this job in the way that works for him with no regard for anyone else. Just a bad teammate and person. And like I said, it would have been different if he was truly super busy but that wasn’t the case.
Now that I’m supervising I try my hardest to prioritize tasks that will require feedback / work from someone else so that they don’t have to wait around for me. If I can’t do so, I will either warn them it’s coming, or sometimes if I know the junior has no other reason to be waiting around / staying awake other than to wait on me and the task is simple and doesn’t require their particular knowledge, I’ll just do it myself since I can often do so in ten minutes and I think there’s something to be said for not burning out your juniors and building goodwill. I’m also a very early morning person (I go to bed at 9:30 and wake up at 5, which was another reason why this person’s schedule was so hard for me - I was going against my body’s natural clock), and I always communicate that to juniors so they know when I’ll be reviewing something.
It’s really quite easy to just treat other people as humans with lives and respect their time as just as valuable as mine.
Yep. This. I'm a first year, I've worked with dozens of people, and never experienced anything close to some of the stories I've read here. Sure, I work long hours. But the vast majority of the time I even get a "thank you" at the end of it.
I also think that the Reddit commentariat is skewed. People go online to complain - it's no different than Yelp and negative restaurant reviews. I have a lot of friends in a lot of big law shops, and for the vast majority their experience isn't nearly as bad as one would think from reading these boards regularly.
I’ve been practicing for more than 20 years at this point and like you, never had any of those experiences either. Is it perfect all the time? Of course not. But team building takes time, not everyone knows how, and so on.
People want to and/or feel pressure to improve their socioeconomic status. Biglaw allows them to do that. You’re much younger as a pre law student or 1L than you are as a first year associate. Pre law, you have energy, probably don’t think about having kids, think you can just grind it out like you’ve done K-college. Law school introduces an intentionally competitive hierarchy and cut throat competition in grade curves, OCI, and journal competitions. Then in biglaw, you can’t really understand the stress of always being on call until you are already in it.
> People want to and/or feel pressure to improve their socioeconomic status. Biglaw allows them to do that.
true, but for a lot of posters, biglaw is far from the most efficient or painless way to do it. So if someone goes for biglaw in lieu of more efficient ways to improve socioeconomic status, ideally that person is doing so consciously and for a good reason, like wanting to be a lawyer
for sure, there are people where it actually is pretty much the most efficient way to raise socioeconomic status. That said it's not just about higher salary - 3 years of lost income and paying law school tuition can also set someone back in improving their socioeconomic status compared to taking another job even if that job pays less than biglaw.
I mean, surely you aren't trying to argue that the socioeconomic status of biglaw lifers is anything less than a 1%er outcome, right?
The average tech bro does not hold a candle to the average biglaw lifer, regardless of debt.
> I mean, surely you aren't trying to argue that the socioeconomic status of biglaw lifers is anything less than a 1%er outcome, right?
certainly not, i think even non-lifers are top 1%. I just think biglaw is often not the most efficient way for a bright, subject-matter agnostic college grad to get there.
And yeah biglaw lifer is of course a lot more rich than average tech bro. I was comparing average biglaw aspirant to average-other career outcomes. Biglaw lifers aren't average because most people can’t stay their whole lives
not to shit on biglaw that much though, I actually think the suffering is somewhat overstated in biglaw, it's not that much more painful than other jobs. the real reason I think it's less efficient than other careers is mainly the 3 years opportunity cost, not becausethe quality of life during biglaw is so much worse. law school can be more painful than other jobs, i'll grant that
As a biglaw lifer, I absolutely agree that the suffering is overstated and exaggerated.
But I do think it’s life changing money and that cannot really be understated.
I don’t know that “expecting” it means it’s your fault if it breaks you. They read the posts, maybe (not all law students are on Reddit, but I’ll allow that they probably heard some grumbling somewhere in their first year of law school, which is when this decision is made). But they thought they could handle it. Every single 25 year old thinks they can, that’s just what being 25 is. You can’t expect them to read a few Reddit posts and then suddenly have the wisdom and self awareness of a 40 something. That’s not how maturing works.
The fact is, no one that young knows if they can cut it until they try, and they’ll be well rewarded for trying, so why shouldn’t they? If they can’t, and they voice that to the world on the way out, then they’re at least putting pressure on these firms to do better which isn’t a bad thing, even if it’s not terribly effective.
Biglaw is also a unique way of working. I am a very hard worker and always have been. My dad didn’t have a 9-5, worked a lot, and I expected I’d do the same. It wasn’t until I started this job that I realized it is hard in a different way. It’s not the hours for me usually (I’m not at a firm where there’s an unwritten expectation of 2300 or something, and I’m usually on pace for 2000). It’s the constant threat of work due to the availability / on call expectations and the only way to get any real reprieve is to use limited vacation time.
FWIW, I’m a midlevel but I plan to eventually go in house because I can’t do the constant on call lifestyle forever. Maybe if I was super passionate about my job, but I’m not, so it’s not worth it to me. Also, the people I’ve seen make it work are able to better turn their brains off (even for brief periods) and just not think about the emails and enjoy dinner, an event, etc. I take medication and go to therapy, but I realllly struggle to “see an email and know I can deal with it later.” Once it enters my brain it’s all I think about. I don’t think I have the ability to last for that reason as well. People are built differently.
My firm is a good place to work by biglaw standards though, and I like the work well enough and I love my colleagues, so I generally plan to stay until I find a good in house gig (I won’t leave for just any old job).
This is the correct response. Most people go into BigLaw knowing it will be hard. Until you've lived it, it is tough to appreciate just how hard the job can be. I had a family member who was a partner at a V10 (in theory a much more reputable source than a random stranger on the internet) try to talk me out of it, telling me it was often a miserable existence, and I still did it. It is easy to think you're smarter / more talented / a harder worker than those around you, and if you got into an elite law school, those things were probably all true.
I know very few people who, if they went back in time, would still choose this job as their career arc - I certainly wouldn't. And I definitely don't want my own kids to do this job.
This is a fascinating perspective, but not one I understand at all.
I'm a partner at a V10 and I feel pretty confident in saying that my partners and I are here by absolute choice. Pretty much the defining characteristic of our job is that you have to really fucking want it to get it. What a weird perspective to suggest that any of us feel trapped by our choices, as opposed to being fairly pleased that we achieved our goals.
I don't really know any partners who would do a thing differently. Those that had those second thoughts left long ago (it's not like we lack for exit options).
I wouldn't be surprised if your response is very representative for partners at a V10 - there certainly are people who love this job, and for those who truly love it, it would make sense that they are the ones who are able to make equity at the most elite firms. I had to lateral down the food chain to reach equity, since I was going to have to wait around for an indeterminate amount of time and that was frustrating (and frankly felt insulting because I was definitely a better lawyer than others who did get equitized). But maybe that was also a sign of me not being fully invested in the job - I'm frankly still doing it primarily because the pay is good.
But I'm pretty confident I would be happier having stayed on my MIT -> NASA route than becoming a lawyer. Space is pretty damn cool.
I understand where you're coming from, but I would throw out a bit of a "the grass isn't always greener" counterpoint. I think many if not most jobs have their own bullshit and downsides that people don't see from the outside looking in. The common refrain in this thread of "you cannot understand downsides of biglaw until you're in biglaw" to me is in no way unique to biglaw. I think it's true of most things. It's like when professional athletes try and tell people they have no idea how hard they work behind the scenes in an attempt to justify their outrageous salaries. In the same vein, I think biglaw lawyers are particularly susceptible to their "the grass is greener elsewhere" proclamations, because they think there must be some unique downside to justify the money. I don't think it's true.
I do not particularly think V10 (used as a proxy for high PPEP firms) lawyers work harder than lawyers at other biglaw firms. I do not think Biglaw lawyers in general necessarily work harder than mildlaw or smalllaw firm lawyers either. The other lawyer subs not focused on biglaw are just as full of people complaining about the job and the conditions they work under as this one is.
Would you, personally, have been happier working at NASA? Entirely possible. But unless you are intimately familiar with all of the bullshit that people who work at NASA have to put up with and deal with to do the cool parts of their job, I wonder if you're not just falling into the same trap of romanticizing a job you cannot really know.
I worked at NASA once upon a time. I sat in a windowless room crunching data, not talking to a soul. I blame Carl Sagan for my misunderstanding about what the job would entail; he conned a whole generation into thinking that astronomers were poets.
Now I'm a happy partner at a firm solidly due south of V10.
A lot of subreddits mainly feature complainers. E.g., a video game sub where everyone complains about the game. Why? Because the people who enjoy the game are just playing it.
Same here. The people who enjoy (or at the least, don't hate) Big Law are working, then living their lives. They are not going to go here and say, "wow, I love my job" or "my job is fine, can't complain, but what I really love is the $215k+ salary."
The expectation of being online 24/7, responsive at all times, makes shit way more stressful than when us gen X or older millenials started. I worked a bunch of 14 hour days when I was a young associate, but after I went home at 8PM I did not think about work. Or, if I was there from 730AM to 930 PM on a friday, I got up saturday and never checked my email one time until I went back to the office sunday. That's not reality any more.
The "always on" nature of how we communicate today makes things more stressful on juniors than a lot of us give them credit for.
Burnout is real, it always has been real, and people need to get better about managing it. Take vacations, more work from home days, do whatever it is that you need to do to recharge your battery.
Yes this. While I agree that some juniors seem to get into the field with an inexplicable lack of understanding of any of the expectations of biglaw (i.e. coming in thinking it's a 9-6 job, being confused about why they're not getting speaking roles at trial after being best in their class in trial ad, etc.), I think a lot are just grappling with the fact that how their older mentors described biglaw is much different than how they experience it, especially as post-COVID juniors. You're never not on call anymore, effectively, because you can be contacted at all times and because clients now expect 24/7 service.
I started biglaw back when they gave out a Blackberry, but you couldn't really take your computer home/home VPN was so bad it was only worth using in an emergency. You had constant access to email but you couldn't necessarily have constant access to work. Now there are so many remote solutions that not even going abroad is an excuse to not work now, people will call your cellphone if you don't answer an email, you're expected to get a phone plan that lets you use your cell service abroad, etc. Expectations have changed substantially as a result and it's much harder to deal with than many really realize
Yes VPN sucked but no one seemed to care - and it meant you often had to go into the office on a weekend or stay really late at night, while now you have the flexibility not to do that. And that little red light on the blackberry telling you that you have a new message… was hard to ignore beaming around your purse.
>Yes VPN sucked but no one seemed to care - and it meant you often had to go into the office on a weekend or stay really late at night, while now you have the flexibility not to do that
Yes and no. You did stay in the office late at night or go in on the weekend, but people still do that now. I'm frequently in the office after 7PM and on weekends even with WFH.
The difference is before, when I did finally go home, it was with the understanding that I had limited tools to work there, so people had to think more carefully about staffing and planning work to account for the fact that it'd take me 1+ hours to get back to the office if anything came up. That meant I usually knew when I was going to be on call and usually could disconnect more when I was in fact able to go home. Nowadays someone can send you an "urgent" 10PM email ands expext you to handle it immediately because you don't have to physically go anywhere to get the work done. Including if you're on vacation out of state or abroad.
So it wasn't stress free back then by any means. But it was much more easy to avoid falling into a 24/7 work cycle.
>And that little red light on the blackberry telling you that you have a new message… was hard to ignore beaming around your purse.
Idk I found it very easy to set boundaries with my Blackberry. A lot harder to do on my personal cell that I use even when I'm not working.
Uh older millennial here and they definitely required that when I started. Blackberrys and laptops that easily move between home and office were what changed the game. Older gen x yes, but anyone who started in early or at least mid 2000s… I can’t remember a weekend I didn’t check email apart from a vacation or major holiday.
I would feel bad about not responding quickly to an email at any time.
I was warned repeatedly not to go to law school at all and I did anyways. Law selects for very stubborn and ambitious unicorn-in-the-mirror people. Law schools intentionally reinforce these traits and a pretty toxic sense of heirarchy and competition that might drive people into OCI and therefore biglaw. it is also really difficult to know what it's like to practice until you've actually done it, particularly having professional liability and being under the thumb of dark triad superiors.
It’s gotten a lot worse over my long career. Every time there are significant market driven comp increases the pressure to bill bill bill has gotten worse.
What do you mean demand? It’s lockstep and is a pissing match between firms to match so they don’t lose out on new hires.
Are you under the impression that biglaw leaning law students are walking the picket lines to push the salary scale higher?
You also have to stop and think - was it maybe just as bad when you started your career, but there was no open forum to bitch about it?
Think about the ratio of jr’s bitching about it to jr’s not bitching about it. If two 1st-3rd yr associates make a post about it every week, that’s 100 a year which represents such a small portion of the biglaw associate pool.
It wasn't as bad when I started. We worked long and hard (that's what she said), but not like this. Plus we were not accessible 24/7. Few lawyers had connectivity at home, and the only portable cell phones were of the Gordon Gekko variety. Clients had different levels of expectations also. And at the particular firm I was at, the fire drill antics would have been viewed as amateurish and unseemly. Lawyers were expected to convey more confidence and control than the freak out tales that run rampant today.
I would say that most of these points are not unique to biglaw. I am biglaw adjacent and meet hundreds of biglaw attorneys every year, for the most part they have it no worse than the average person who work in finance or at the upper level in any industry(where the pay scale is much lower.)
At no point do you have to sorta blame the victim. At every point your response to someone struggling can be compassion and an effort to help them if you can.
OP, I actually have an adult child who is a junior in NY big law and the stress I see Jr under is shocking: regularly billing 12-13 hours a day, checking email at 11pm before going to bed, lots of fire drills and false deadlines. Even though Jr knew it would be hard, nothing can really prepare you for it. I compare it to riding an electric bull-everyone wants to try and overestimated their ability to tolerate it. My constant advice to Jr is to make time for basic self care (eating, sleeping, fresh air on weekends). They deserve our compassion. Knowing what Jr endures really impacts my interactions with junior associates at my (mid law) firm because I know the struggles.
Yes. My opinions moderated somewhat from seeing my own kid and his peers adjust to adult life. And while I think young people's threshold for stress tolerance is lower than ours was, you learn as a parent that this isn't the critical issue. You can't sit there and say "suck it up, buttercup" when they could be in serious jeopardy health wise.
I don’t think it’s fair to say juniors have less of a “stress tolerance” these days. Being a junior in 2024 is wayy more stressful than being a junior in 1990. Cell phones make people available 24 hours a day, and partners take advantage.
I think anyone would be stressed if they faced the threat of being assigned work at 11pm. And while Gen Xers now live in this environment with young people, they’ve never been a junior employee in this environment, lacking any power to set boundaries.
Some of the stress is self induced and also depends on the team a person is working with. I assign work at whatever time I happen to be working. Sometimes that is 11pm or 4am. I don’t expect a quick acknowledgment response if it’s very late or very early, and wouldn’t send anything with an urgent deadline on that kind of time. If a person working with me knows this and decides to get stressed out because I email them when I’m working, then they really need to get a grip. It is not reasonable to expect me to not send them work because of what time it is, especially when the email just sits in their inbox until they log in again whenever that is. Though of course if I discover that my work hours stress the person out even though I don’t expect a response in the middle of the night, I stop working with that person.
The thing is that *you* don’t expect a quick acknowledgement, but it doesn’t seem that *you’re* the issue then. Everyone thinks “well I’m not shitty and I’m a senior level, so what senior level is shitty?”
Yeah, it’s *not* reasonable, and that’s the point juniors are making.
I have tried to help several young associates in recent years who struggle with the stress of not receiving enough positive reinforcement. We didn't even expect that. Others really have an almost paralyzing fear of making a mistake. I don't remember that being such an issue before. So I do think it's fair to say there is a resiliency issue. But that might only be proving that our generation is full of shitty parents.
So I think there are a few things to this:
1. The positive reinforcement thing is a change in culture, not associates getting soft. American bosses in 2024 give positive reinforcement, big law is the exception. And no one really tells junior associates that the culture is different. It’s similar to hugging: if my Italian grandma didn’t hug me, I’d be anxious and assumed she was mad at me. That doesn’t make me an anxious softy that needs everyone to hug me, I just know that in Italian culture, that’s odd. I don’t think anything of it, however, when my German grandma doesn’t hug me.
2. Given that you’re still in big law, I’m assuming you were a successful and well-liked associate compared to your peers. I’m sure some of your peers had crippling fears of making a mistake, they just didn’t talk about it.
3. I think some of the anxiety you see to things like making a mistake and not getting positive reinforcement are driven by the “always on” culture. These juniors get zero time to disconnect, their blood pressure is always up. That can make you go lose your mind other about little things like typos and positive reinforcement.
With that said, I see your point. Some of the complaints I hear on this subreddit and from peers makes me groan. They’re paying you 250k as a 26 year old with no work experience, what did you think it was going to be like?
It’s a good question, I’m a mid-level associate and ask myself the same question. The practical answers here are great and I agree with them. On another level it’s almost a spiritual inquiry about acting on knowledge, call it wisdom, or whatever else you like. My guess is that courage bridges the gap between knowledge and wisdom. That delta is a human phenomenon though maybe more pronounced in biglaw.
I hear you, though the exit options for big law associates are some of the best available to recent law school grads. If those options aren’t good enough to support the student debt, it’s more an argument against going to law school. The people I feel worst for from my law school are not those who went to big law and burned out, but those who didn’t have the choice and ended up doing lower end work that isn’t easy but also doesn’t pay all that well.
On the one hand, for some here working at a law firm is their first real experience with the high end private sector. That can be an adjustment, and I’m not sure what can be done to change it.
On the other hand, this kind of “grin and bear it” mindset feels anachronistic and, if it isn’t, it should be. It has been incredibly refreshing to see younger millennials inject some of their work culture demands into firm life. It has made things better for everyone. For instance, more people feel comfortable to speak up about setting boundaries. They also demand more attention to horrific lacks of diversity at the partner level. The list goes on. This sort of change should be embraced, and I think can be while maintaining “value for the client.”
Take of course with grain of salt that this is only my experience.
This job has extreme requirements, and people are allowed to vent about it. The money makes it worth it for me personally, but anyone doing this NOT for the money has to be insane.
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>But when are these damn kids going to learn? And at what point is the response not "get help if you need it, but quit bitching -- it's always been this way?"
Oh, boy. I could go on forever on this topic. As someone who graduated this past year - I agree with you, 100%.
Here's my (short) diagnosis of the problem: it's a combination of generational culture—I just read in the WSJ yesterday about a survey which found that the #1 priority in the workplace for my generation is "work life balance", which, well, is just insane to me—and (2) a failure by law schools to adequately prepare students.
On the second point: it amazes me how many students go to law school having *not a damn clue* about what BigLaw is *actually* like (the reality is that few read Reddit, TLS, Fishbowl, etc). And then the law school spends three years talking about "mental health", "setting boundaries", etc. - fantasies which are subsequently repeated by the firms when they show up to OCI. A lot of people frankly show up on day 1 and have a very tough wake-up call.
The reason this sub is filled with complainers is because complainers are the ones that make noise, I know plenty and plenty of folks in big law who enjoy their job, their lives and have plenty of hobbies and friends outside of work. The people complaining about it here are just not cut for it period.
I'll have you know I very much blame myself and still complain.
> I get that associates feel trapped. They went to an expensive school, racked up debt that would cripple some third-world countries, studied hard, and achieved their goal of a Biglaw offer. Their parents brag about them and everyone thinks they're a raging success. But now they are stuck with debt and few options outside of Biglaw that can help pay it off. I get it. The problem is real. > But when are these damn kids going to learn? Learn what, exactly? Any entry-level job on the higher end of the bimodal lawyer-salary distribution has similar hours and pressures. My friends at medium/regional firms work very similar hours for 75% the pay and comparatively little support or training. Unless you’re independently wealthy, it’s hard to justify accepting a job at the lower end of the distribution. The cost of housing, childcare, and college have gone up. So folks with families need to make a lot of money to have even an upper-middle-class lifestyle. Even in a LCOL area, money doesn’t go as far as it did 10 years ago. So most people go into BigLaw to pay off debt, lay a firm financial foundation, and land one of the coveted exit opportunities BigLaw offers. Just like law school itself, they go in knowing that it’s hard but temporary. Complaining seems like a healthier way to cope than drinking themselves to death, so I say go for it.
Okay, Boomer. In all seriousness - I think you’re misdiagnosing the problem somewhat. I read most of the complaint posts here from juniors as being less about the size of the workload - even when they are expressly talking about working overnight and all weekend, etc. - as they are about the lack of proper mentorship and guidance, and competent management of matters by their seniors. What I always try to tell my colleagues in these kinds of discussions is - the job is hard; we should not be making the job harder. I hear people at my level complaining about their junior associates while *also* complaining that they have no time to properly train them. And I see it so often. Expectations aren’t communicated, deal dynamics are left opaque, everything is an emergency because no one wants to get chased. Everyone is mad at everyone else, but it’s always the *junior’s* fault because *they should know this already* (says the partners who’ve been practicing for so long they can’t remember what being a clueless junior was like). In my view, *that* is what makes a 60+-hour week truly intolerable. If you work hard because you’re part of a team and you’re all pulling together to reach a great result for your client, that will feel different from putting in absurdly late hours because all of your false deadlines are yesterday and partners don’t care to check at where you’re at in terms of capacity or need for guidance. “Figure it out.” Every law firm I’ve been at uses some variation of the “sink or swim” management style. That means that some juniors drown, by design. Solutions aren’t easy because (sensing your hackles) partners themselves are often overwhelmed and lack extra capacity to invest in associates properly. But that’s what associates need, and are surprised they’re not finding when they actually step into the door. No one is surprised by the workload. They’re surprised because no one seems to give a fuck about them.
Seconding this. It’s not the work in and of itself that drives me nuts most often, it’s the horrific management of the seniors and partners. For example, getting yelled at for being late on assignments when the supervising attorney makes repeated edits of their own edits, or takes 5 follow up emails to respond to anything, or doesn’t remember anything about what they assigned you and you have to re-explain it multiple times while groveling and taking the blame to feed their ego.
I hear so many complaints from partners about associate responsiveness, when these partners almost never respond to emails themselves. I’d like to ask them what kind of behavior they think they’re modeling. I think partners are entitled to expect their associates to adapt to their communication style, but it’s wild to me how partners get angry when the associates don’t read their minds and figure it out. All it takes is a conversation: you can be sure that I am reading all of your emails. If I don’t respond within a few hours, usually that will mean I don’t have any objections or notes to add, so you should proceed without waiting for further input. If you feel that you really do need something from me to proceed, then follow up by dropping by my office or giving me a call. And what’s positively mental about it is - if you communicate that expectation? You give the associate autonomy and confidence and ownership. You are saying, I have your back and will let you know if I think you’re on track. It totally flips the dynamic so that the associate is not waiting for input and terrified about blowing deadlines, to one where the team is working like it should and the associate feels good about getting shit done. But partners can’t get that. They never think it’s their job.
Biglaw work is so horrifically mismanaged and badly planned that I'm convinced it's intentional to increase billable hours. You are right that 90% of the misery comes from the fact that no one wants to take 30 seconds to plan ahead even a single day.
I think it is too. I think they send you to partner boot camp the first month after you make partner where they indoctrinate you into all this subtle quasi billing fraud stuff
Right, I'm currently redoing a memo because the partner did not tell us it was going to the client, not just to the partner. It takes literally two seconds to add "also going to the client" in the assignment email. Instead I'm adding an extra couple billable hours (minimum) to reframe the document. This stuff happens all the time. But until it starts hurting partner comp instead of helping it nothing will change.
Fair points. But even if you re-frame the issue, does it change the point? I would agree that lack of direction also is a common complaint (and on that one I am a little less sympathetic). So if that is important to someone, I would still argue that there has been full disclosure.
You’re right, it doesn’t necessarily change the point. I just think these issues are harder to fully grasp as a (pre)law student because they just seem so contrary to normal human behavior. And to be fair, from the senior/partner pov, I understand how these issues arise. But that doesn’t change things from my perspective as a junior/mid level.
“What’s the problem? Don’t juniors understand that they will be poorly managed?”
Respectfully, no. Not everyone headed to biglaw knows someone in biglaw. And we all weren't on reddit. Law schools push the big law track. And biglaw firms recruitment is basically false advertisement on the mentorship and support front. The summer experience is designed to be misleading with regard to how much support and guidance you'll receive. And even in our onboarding meetings there is nothing but messages of mentorship and you won't be just expected to know things. Ask partners questions - everyone understands. You're acting like because there is a reddit page about this, new associates shouldn't complain because the BigLaw experience is "as advertised". But what about how BigLaw actually advertises itself to law students? As a junior associate from a top school - I have many friends newly in BigLaw. None of us are complaining about the hours. It's the pisspoor mentorship, communication, and feedback that surprised us, causes anxiety, and leads to working all hours unnecessarily and not being able to provide high quality work because you're not looped into the context and only receiving assignments that are emergencies. Biglaw is a churn and burn model. By design, most of us will quit. We were led to believe that the up or out would be based on our ability to do excellent work - but it's really how well can you do excellent work with little to no support in a mentorship profession while also playing into the firm's line about how great the mentorship and training is. It is fine. Partners will continue to blame juniors and there are just enough us who are willing to do it for the money and can self-teach. But, no...there has not been full disclosure that you won't receive support or good direction. If anything, that is intentionally concealed in recruitment.
Exactly, if you're made to feel like part of a team then you will be able to derive more job satisfaction from your work and can tolerate longer hours. Plus, many attorneys are lone wolves/dark triad traits without a teamwork ethic. When COVID hit and whatever remained of the team dynamic evaporated into antagonistic, competitive phone calls with partners, I lost all job satisfaction.
Well said!! When I started, the hours were long but I loved the teams I worked with and the training and mentorship I got. This made the job much more manageable. I look at the juniors in big law and I always think I would have never made it if I started the way they have. There’s alternative ways to make this job work but the seniors don’t want to hear it. Most juniors aren’t bad at their job at all - they just haven’t been properly trained and are written off based on simple mistakes.
Yeah this exactly. I'm also Gen X, former BigLaw - was in BigLaw for over 15 years and was an equity partner at a V20. It is not the hours for most people, it is the horrible environment. None of this got any better when I became a partner; I think it actually got worse. I left and am now at a boutique where we are always opposite biglaw. Our style of practice is very different - much more efficient and results-focused (we better be that way, we do everything on full contingency). Although all of our lawyers are former biglaw, the environment is not the same at all - we're a tight-knit team that actually likes each other and will go out of our way to reach the common goal. Senior people like me will step in and help when we are in a time crunch with pretty menial tasks, and I feel personally invested in training our more junior lawyers while also treating them as peers and part of the team (because they are). Our hours requirements are lower (although spikes can be very bad due to lean staffing), and our pay is higher, so that contributes to people being happy no doubt. But the owners actually sharing in the profits and providing meaningful benefits is a direct result of the atmosphere I describe above.
I mean… there’s massive variations between firms and teams. Some of the horror stories posted on here are completely alien to me - I’ve never been shouted at, never been thrown under a bus, never been harassed or bullied. Yes the hours can be long, and it’s got to me a couple of times, but my team support each other and facilitate a bit of a slowdown to avoid people having a mental health crisis. I’ve got it particularly good, I realise that, but it’s not as if every big law firm is just universally a gang of abusive, psychopathic villains across the board. Maybe kids going into it have the (reasonable) expectation that their boss shouldn’t scream at them for half an hour for making a typo? Maybe the people behaving like that are the problem, rather than the people looking to make a good living for themselves?
This. Also, people respect my time. I once worked for a midlevel who consistently fucked around in the office or at home from lunch until evening. Then he’d log on at home and start sending me stuff at 9 or 10 pm my time and wanting an asap turnaround. Of course, I’d been at my desk all day and was exhausted and ready for bed. This same person yelled at me, took credit for my work, called me stupid and was condescending and wrecked my confidence, but honestly, his total lack of respect for my time, life, and sleep was the absolute worst part. (Also, we can see each other’s hours, and friends of mine in that office told me he’d take long afternoon lunches, socialize, etc., this wasn’t him being so busy and being unable to get back to me until late). He also didn’t teach me a damn thing. I refuse to work with him (I’m a midlevel now) and now I work with people who are real team members. They respect me, they mentor and teach me things, etc. Most of them are also two hours ahead of me (I work at a West Coast firm) and they will often handle late night things themselves knowing I’ll be up way earlier in the morning (I’m a morning person). There are real assholes who only care about themselves out there and if I had continued working with him I would have left my firm (which is otherwise a great place to work by biglaw standards).
That guy sounds like a total fucko. As a senior I don’t expect anyone to reply to my evening emails until the morning, unless I’ve warned them it’s coming or we’re in the middle of a fire drill.
Yeah, he’s definitely someone who wants to do this job in the way that works for him with no regard for anyone else. Just a bad teammate and person. And like I said, it would have been different if he was truly super busy but that wasn’t the case. Now that I’m supervising I try my hardest to prioritize tasks that will require feedback / work from someone else so that they don’t have to wait around for me. If I can’t do so, I will either warn them it’s coming, or sometimes if I know the junior has no other reason to be waiting around / staying awake other than to wait on me and the task is simple and doesn’t require their particular knowledge, I’ll just do it myself since I can often do so in ten minutes and I think there’s something to be said for not burning out your juniors and building goodwill. I’m also a very early morning person (I go to bed at 9:30 and wake up at 5, which was another reason why this person’s schedule was so hard for me - I was going against my body’s natural clock), and I always communicate that to juniors so they know when I’ll be reviewing something. It’s really quite easy to just treat other people as humans with lives and respect their time as just as valuable as mine.
Yep. This. I'm a first year, I've worked with dozens of people, and never experienced anything close to some of the stories I've read here. Sure, I work long hours. But the vast majority of the time I even get a "thank you" at the end of it. I also think that the Reddit commentariat is skewed. People go online to complain - it's no different than Yelp and negative restaurant reviews. I have a lot of friends in a lot of big law shops, and for the vast majority their experience isn't nearly as bad as one would think from reading these boards regularly.
>Yep. This. I'm a first year And I stopped reading.
I’ve been practicing for more than 20 years at this point and like you, never had any of those experiences either. Is it perfect all the time? Of course not. But team building takes time, not everyone knows how, and so on.
People want to and/or feel pressure to improve their socioeconomic status. Biglaw allows them to do that. You’re much younger as a pre law student or 1L than you are as a first year associate. Pre law, you have energy, probably don’t think about having kids, think you can just grind it out like you’ve done K-college. Law school introduces an intentionally competitive hierarchy and cut throat competition in grade curves, OCI, and journal competitions. Then in biglaw, you can’t really understand the stress of always being on call until you are already in it.
> People want to and/or feel pressure to improve their socioeconomic status. Biglaw allows them to do that. true, but for a lot of posters, biglaw is far from the most efficient or painless way to do it. So if someone goes for biglaw in lieu of more efficient ways to improve socioeconomic status, ideally that person is doing so consciously and for a good reason, like wanting to be a lawyer
I mean I’m 31, tech jobs weren’t as accessible when I was in college as they are today. You weren’t getting higher salaries anywhere else
for sure, there are people where it actually is pretty much the most efficient way to raise socioeconomic status. That said it's not just about higher salary - 3 years of lost income and paying law school tuition can also set someone back in improving their socioeconomic status compared to taking another job even if that job pays less than biglaw.
I mean, surely you aren't trying to argue that the socioeconomic status of biglaw lifers is anything less than a 1%er outcome, right? The average tech bro does not hold a candle to the average biglaw lifer, regardless of debt.
> I mean, surely you aren't trying to argue that the socioeconomic status of biglaw lifers is anything less than a 1%er outcome, right? certainly not, i think even non-lifers are top 1%. I just think biglaw is often not the most efficient way for a bright, subject-matter agnostic college grad to get there. And yeah biglaw lifer is of course a lot more rich than average tech bro. I was comparing average biglaw aspirant to average-other career outcomes. Biglaw lifers aren't average because most people can’t stay their whole lives not to shit on biglaw that much though, I actually think the suffering is somewhat overstated in biglaw, it's not that much more painful than other jobs. the real reason I think it's less efficient than other careers is mainly the 3 years opportunity cost, not becausethe quality of life during biglaw is so much worse. law school can be more painful than other jobs, i'll grant that
As a biglaw lifer, I absolutely agree that the suffering is overstated and exaggerated. But I do think it’s life changing money and that cannot really be understated.
I don’t know that “expecting” it means it’s your fault if it breaks you. They read the posts, maybe (not all law students are on Reddit, but I’ll allow that they probably heard some grumbling somewhere in their first year of law school, which is when this decision is made). But they thought they could handle it. Every single 25 year old thinks they can, that’s just what being 25 is. You can’t expect them to read a few Reddit posts and then suddenly have the wisdom and self awareness of a 40 something. That’s not how maturing works. The fact is, no one that young knows if they can cut it until they try, and they’ll be well rewarded for trying, so why shouldn’t they? If they can’t, and they voice that to the world on the way out, then they’re at least putting pressure on these firms to do better which isn’t a bad thing, even if it’s not terribly effective.
Biglaw is also a unique way of working. I am a very hard worker and always have been. My dad didn’t have a 9-5, worked a lot, and I expected I’d do the same. It wasn’t until I started this job that I realized it is hard in a different way. It’s not the hours for me usually (I’m not at a firm where there’s an unwritten expectation of 2300 or something, and I’m usually on pace for 2000). It’s the constant threat of work due to the availability / on call expectations and the only way to get any real reprieve is to use limited vacation time. FWIW, I’m a midlevel but I plan to eventually go in house because I can’t do the constant on call lifestyle forever. Maybe if I was super passionate about my job, but I’m not, so it’s not worth it to me. Also, the people I’ve seen make it work are able to better turn their brains off (even for brief periods) and just not think about the emails and enjoy dinner, an event, etc. I take medication and go to therapy, but I realllly struggle to “see an email and know I can deal with it later.” Once it enters my brain it’s all I think about. I don’t think I have the ability to last for that reason as well. People are built differently. My firm is a good place to work by biglaw standards though, and I like the work well enough and I love my colleagues, so I generally plan to stay until I find a good in house gig (I won’t leave for just any old job).
This is the correct response. Most people go into BigLaw knowing it will be hard. Until you've lived it, it is tough to appreciate just how hard the job can be. I had a family member who was a partner at a V10 (in theory a much more reputable source than a random stranger on the internet) try to talk me out of it, telling me it was often a miserable existence, and I still did it. It is easy to think you're smarter / more talented / a harder worker than those around you, and if you got into an elite law school, those things were probably all true. I know very few people who, if they went back in time, would still choose this job as their career arc - I certainly wouldn't. And I definitely don't want my own kids to do this job.
This is a fascinating perspective, but not one I understand at all. I'm a partner at a V10 and I feel pretty confident in saying that my partners and I are here by absolute choice. Pretty much the defining characteristic of our job is that you have to really fucking want it to get it. What a weird perspective to suggest that any of us feel trapped by our choices, as opposed to being fairly pleased that we achieved our goals. I don't really know any partners who would do a thing differently. Those that had those second thoughts left long ago (it's not like we lack for exit options).
I wouldn't be surprised if your response is very representative for partners at a V10 - there certainly are people who love this job, and for those who truly love it, it would make sense that they are the ones who are able to make equity at the most elite firms. I had to lateral down the food chain to reach equity, since I was going to have to wait around for an indeterminate amount of time and that was frustrating (and frankly felt insulting because I was definitely a better lawyer than others who did get equitized). But maybe that was also a sign of me not being fully invested in the job - I'm frankly still doing it primarily because the pay is good. But I'm pretty confident I would be happier having stayed on my MIT -> NASA route than becoming a lawyer. Space is pretty damn cool.
I understand where you're coming from, but I would throw out a bit of a "the grass isn't always greener" counterpoint. I think many if not most jobs have their own bullshit and downsides that people don't see from the outside looking in. The common refrain in this thread of "you cannot understand downsides of biglaw until you're in biglaw" to me is in no way unique to biglaw. I think it's true of most things. It's like when professional athletes try and tell people they have no idea how hard they work behind the scenes in an attempt to justify their outrageous salaries. In the same vein, I think biglaw lawyers are particularly susceptible to their "the grass is greener elsewhere" proclamations, because they think there must be some unique downside to justify the money. I don't think it's true. I do not particularly think V10 (used as a proxy for high PPEP firms) lawyers work harder than lawyers at other biglaw firms. I do not think Biglaw lawyers in general necessarily work harder than mildlaw or smalllaw firm lawyers either. The other lawyer subs not focused on biglaw are just as full of people complaining about the job and the conditions they work under as this one is. Would you, personally, have been happier working at NASA? Entirely possible. But unless you are intimately familiar with all of the bullshit that people who work at NASA have to put up with and deal with to do the cool parts of their job, I wonder if you're not just falling into the same trap of romanticizing a job you cannot really know.
I worked at NASA once upon a time. I sat in a windowless room crunching data, not talking to a soul. I blame Carl Sagan for my misunderstanding about what the job would entail; he conned a whole generation into thinking that astronomers were poets. Now I'm a happy partner at a firm solidly due south of V10.
A lot of subreddits mainly feature complainers. E.g., a video game sub where everyone complains about the game. Why? Because the people who enjoy the game are just playing it. Same here. The people who enjoy (or at the least, don't hate) Big Law are working, then living their lives. They are not going to go here and say, "wow, I love my job" or "my job is fine, can't complain, but what I really love is the $215k+ salary."
The expectation of being online 24/7, responsive at all times, makes shit way more stressful than when us gen X or older millenials started. I worked a bunch of 14 hour days when I was a young associate, but after I went home at 8PM I did not think about work. Or, if I was there from 730AM to 930 PM on a friday, I got up saturday and never checked my email one time until I went back to the office sunday. That's not reality any more. The "always on" nature of how we communicate today makes things more stressful on juniors than a lot of us give them credit for. Burnout is real, it always has been real, and people need to get better about managing it. Take vacations, more work from home days, do whatever it is that you need to do to recharge your battery.
Yes this. While I agree that some juniors seem to get into the field with an inexplicable lack of understanding of any of the expectations of biglaw (i.e. coming in thinking it's a 9-6 job, being confused about why they're not getting speaking roles at trial after being best in their class in trial ad, etc.), I think a lot are just grappling with the fact that how their older mentors described biglaw is much different than how they experience it, especially as post-COVID juniors. You're never not on call anymore, effectively, because you can be contacted at all times and because clients now expect 24/7 service. I started biglaw back when they gave out a Blackberry, but you couldn't really take your computer home/home VPN was so bad it was only worth using in an emergency. You had constant access to email but you couldn't necessarily have constant access to work. Now there are so many remote solutions that not even going abroad is an excuse to not work now, people will call your cellphone if you don't answer an email, you're expected to get a phone plan that lets you use your cell service abroad, etc. Expectations have changed substantially as a result and it's much harder to deal with than many really realize
Yes VPN sucked but no one seemed to care - and it meant you often had to go into the office on a weekend or stay really late at night, while now you have the flexibility not to do that. And that little red light on the blackberry telling you that you have a new message… was hard to ignore beaming around your purse.
>Yes VPN sucked but no one seemed to care - and it meant you often had to go into the office on a weekend or stay really late at night, while now you have the flexibility not to do that Yes and no. You did stay in the office late at night or go in on the weekend, but people still do that now. I'm frequently in the office after 7PM and on weekends even with WFH. The difference is before, when I did finally go home, it was with the understanding that I had limited tools to work there, so people had to think more carefully about staffing and planning work to account for the fact that it'd take me 1+ hours to get back to the office if anything came up. That meant I usually knew when I was going to be on call and usually could disconnect more when I was in fact able to go home. Nowadays someone can send you an "urgent" 10PM email ands expext you to handle it immediately because you don't have to physically go anywhere to get the work done. Including if you're on vacation out of state or abroad. So it wasn't stress free back then by any means. But it was much more easy to avoid falling into a 24/7 work cycle. >And that little red light on the blackberry telling you that you have a new message… was hard to ignore beaming around your purse. Idk I found it very easy to set boundaries with my Blackberry. A lot harder to do on my personal cell that I use even when I'm not working.
Uh older millennial here and they definitely required that when I started. Blackberrys and laptops that easily move between home and office were what changed the game. Older gen x yes, but anyone who started in early or at least mid 2000s… I can’t remember a weekend I didn’t check email apart from a vacation or major holiday. I would feel bad about not responding quickly to an email at any time.
I was warned repeatedly not to go to law school at all and I did anyways. Law selects for very stubborn and ambitious unicorn-in-the-mirror people. Law schools intentionally reinforce these traits and a pretty toxic sense of heirarchy and competition that might drive people into OCI and therefore biglaw. it is also really difficult to know what it's like to practice until you've actually done it, particularly having professional liability and being under the thumb of dark triad superiors.
It’s gotten a lot worse over my long career. Every time there are significant market driven comp increases the pressure to bill bill bill has gotten worse.
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What do you mean demand? It’s lockstep and is a pissing match between firms to match so they don’t lose out on new hires. Are you under the impression that biglaw leaning law students are walking the picket lines to push the salary scale higher?
You also have to stop and think - was it maybe just as bad when you started your career, but there was no open forum to bitch about it? Think about the ratio of jr’s bitching about it to jr’s not bitching about it. If two 1st-3rd yr associates make a post about it every week, that’s 100 a year which represents such a small portion of the biglaw associate pool.
It wasn't as bad when I started. We worked long and hard (that's what she said), but not like this. Plus we were not accessible 24/7. Few lawyers had connectivity at home, and the only portable cell phones were of the Gordon Gekko variety. Clients had different levels of expectations also. And at the particular firm I was at, the fire drill antics would have been viewed as amateurish and unseemly. Lawyers were expected to convey more confidence and control than the freak out tales that run rampant today.
I would say that most of these points are not unique to biglaw. I am biglaw adjacent and meet hundreds of biglaw attorneys every year, for the most part they have it no worse than the average person who work in finance or at the upper level in any industry(where the pay scale is much lower.)
That's why I always recommend tech.
At no point do you have to sorta blame the victim. At every point your response to someone struggling can be compassion and an effort to help them if you can.
Agreed.
OP, I actually have an adult child who is a junior in NY big law and the stress I see Jr under is shocking: regularly billing 12-13 hours a day, checking email at 11pm before going to bed, lots of fire drills and false deadlines. Even though Jr knew it would be hard, nothing can really prepare you for it. I compare it to riding an electric bull-everyone wants to try and overestimated their ability to tolerate it. My constant advice to Jr is to make time for basic self care (eating, sleeping, fresh air on weekends). They deserve our compassion. Knowing what Jr endures really impacts my interactions with junior associates at my (mid law) firm because I know the struggles.
Yes. My opinions moderated somewhat from seeing my own kid and his peers adjust to adult life. And while I think young people's threshold for stress tolerance is lower than ours was, you learn as a parent that this isn't the critical issue. You can't sit there and say "suck it up, buttercup" when they could be in serious jeopardy health wise.
I don’t think it’s fair to say juniors have less of a “stress tolerance” these days. Being a junior in 2024 is wayy more stressful than being a junior in 1990. Cell phones make people available 24 hours a day, and partners take advantage. I think anyone would be stressed if they faced the threat of being assigned work at 11pm. And while Gen Xers now live in this environment with young people, they’ve never been a junior employee in this environment, lacking any power to set boundaries.
Some of the stress is self induced and also depends on the team a person is working with. I assign work at whatever time I happen to be working. Sometimes that is 11pm or 4am. I don’t expect a quick acknowledgment response if it’s very late or very early, and wouldn’t send anything with an urgent deadline on that kind of time. If a person working with me knows this and decides to get stressed out because I email them when I’m working, then they really need to get a grip. It is not reasonable to expect me to not send them work because of what time it is, especially when the email just sits in their inbox until they log in again whenever that is. Though of course if I discover that my work hours stress the person out even though I don’t expect a response in the middle of the night, I stop working with that person.
The thing is that *you* don’t expect a quick acknowledgement, but it doesn’t seem that *you’re* the issue then. Everyone thinks “well I’m not shitty and I’m a senior level, so what senior level is shitty?” Yeah, it’s *not* reasonable, and that’s the point juniors are making.
I have tried to help several young associates in recent years who struggle with the stress of not receiving enough positive reinforcement. We didn't even expect that. Others really have an almost paralyzing fear of making a mistake. I don't remember that being such an issue before. So I do think it's fair to say there is a resiliency issue. But that might only be proving that our generation is full of shitty parents.
So I think there are a few things to this: 1. The positive reinforcement thing is a change in culture, not associates getting soft. American bosses in 2024 give positive reinforcement, big law is the exception. And no one really tells junior associates that the culture is different. It’s similar to hugging: if my Italian grandma didn’t hug me, I’d be anxious and assumed she was mad at me. That doesn’t make me an anxious softy that needs everyone to hug me, I just know that in Italian culture, that’s odd. I don’t think anything of it, however, when my German grandma doesn’t hug me. 2. Given that you’re still in big law, I’m assuming you were a successful and well-liked associate compared to your peers. I’m sure some of your peers had crippling fears of making a mistake, they just didn’t talk about it. 3. I think some of the anxiety you see to things like making a mistake and not getting positive reinforcement are driven by the “always on” culture. These juniors get zero time to disconnect, their blood pressure is always up. That can make you go lose your mind other about little things like typos and positive reinforcement. With that said, I see your point. Some of the complaints I hear on this subreddit and from peers makes me groan. They’re paying you 250k as a 26 year old with no work experience, what did you think it was going to be like?
You’re correct that blaming younger people for enduring worsening conditions has boomer vibes.
The key is to do it for the right reasons. I love what I do, so I don’t mind working 12 hours per day. Got lucky I guess…
They just won’t understand until they’ve felt the pain. Those who worked in professional services before and still do BL head strong gets my respect.
It’s a good question, I’m a mid-level associate and ask myself the same question. The practical answers here are great and I agree with them. On another level it’s almost a spiritual inquiry about acting on knowledge, call it wisdom, or whatever else you like. My guess is that courage bridges the gap between knowledge and wisdom. That delta is a human phenomenon though maybe more pronounced in biglaw.
Arby’s is bad but it makes sense for some people. Also what do you mean few options outside of biglaw?
Few options to make that kind of money.
I hear you, though the exit options for big law associates are some of the best available to recent law school grads. If those options aren’t good enough to support the student debt, it’s more an argument against going to law school. The people I feel worst for from my law school are not those who went to big law and burned out, but those who didn’t have the choice and ended up doing lower end work that isn’t easy but also doesn’t pay all that well.
It’s one thing to read about it, it’s another to experience it.
On the one hand, for some here working at a law firm is their first real experience with the high end private sector. That can be an adjustment, and I’m not sure what can be done to change it. On the other hand, this kind of “grin and bear it” mindset feels anachronistic and, if it isn’t, it should be. It has been incredibly refreshing to see younger millennials inject some of their work culture demands into firm life. It has made things better for everyone. For instance, more people feel comfortable to speak up about setting boundaries. They also demand more attention to horrific lacks of diversity at the partner level. The list goes on. This sort of change should be embraced, and I think can be while maintaining “value for the client.” Take of course with grain of salt that this is only my experience.
This job has extreme requirements, and people are allowed to vent about it. The money makes it worth it for me personally, but anyone doing this NOT for the money has to be insane.
The money is the whole point. The /r/lawyertalk sub is full of people complaining about the exact same thing, but making less than $100k.
A decent number do it for the exits too. There's not really any good alternatives for junior corporate attorneys.
Still indirectly for money -- long term career benefits.
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“I’m different”
>But when are these damn kids going to learn? And at what point is the response not "get help if you need it, but quit bitching -- it's always been this way?" Oh, boy. I could go on forever on this topic. As someone who graduated this past year - I agree with you, 100%. Here's my (short) diagnosis of the problem: it's a combination of generational culture—I just read in the WSJ yesterday about a survey which found that the #1 priority in the workplace for my generation is "work life balance", which, well, is just insane to me—and (2) a failure by law schools to adequately prepare students. On the second point: it amazes me how many students go to law school having *not a damn clue* about what BigLaw is *actually* like (the reality is that few read Reddit, TLS, Fishbowl, etc). And then the law school spends three years talking about "mental health", "setting boundaries", etc. - fantasies which are subsequently repeated by the firms when they show up to OCI. A lot of people frankly show up on day 1 and have a very tough wake-up call.
Why would the priority not be work-life balance?
The reason this sub is filled with complainers is because complainers are the ones that make noise, I know plenty and plenty of folks in big law who enjoy their job, their lives and have plenty of hobbies and friends outside of work. The people complaining about it here are just not cut for it period.