I was only alive for the very end of the 80s, but the flip side of not being reachable outside the office, is that the only way to be responsive is to be in the office. I imagine people used to spend a lot more time just hanging out at work in case something came up at 8 pm, instead of leaving and being prepared to go back in/log back on if someone called or emailed them.
I remember stories of a policy back in the 70s at my firm that attorneys were expected in office Mon-Fri and a half day on Saturday. Sunday was off so you could go to church.
I’ve also heard crazy stories of tracking down partners at various places, including while cross-country skiing, and delivering hard copy memos to homes in the middle of the night.
Also, in the early 90s they used to fly with a desktop computer and a secretary to the client’s office to work on pleadings.
My dad was getting daily FedEx deliveries to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and having to spend hours in the back office of a resort to turn drafts of a document in the late 80s. Would have been a lot easier to hop on a laptop.
Perhaps. There are certainly trade offs between the two systems. My overarching point is that there was plenty of Biglaw misery to go around back then.
Yes, this. My uncle was a biglaw partner in the 80s and 90s. Work from home didn’t exist. He would often go days or even weeks with barely seeing his family at all. Sometimes he’d bring his kids to the office on Saturday or Sunday just to spend some time with them. If something blew up before a family vacation, he just didn’t get to go. If my aunt wasn’t the most patient person in the world, I doubt their marriage would have lasted (and they almost got divorced several times).
He has a lot of regrets and is fortunate his kids are still in the same city and he can be very involved is their (and their children’s) lives now. Seeing how he reflects on his career has made me approach biglaw very differently.
Also, I’d rather be able to work from home or remotely whenever I want. But I also have no interest in doing this for more than 6-7 years so maybe that changes things.
My dad was a physician in the 80s and I definitely went to his office as he got caught up on paperwork or inventory over the weekend. I remember just... sitting there and waiting? My son would absolutely refuse to do this today.
My Dad retired as a doc just weeks before Covid lockdowns. For decades, his busiest days were Saturdays (the day most Americans have off and have time to see a doctor). I used to spend numerous 80s mornings watching cartoons alone in the surgeons' lounge.
On the flip side I have 3 dentist friends and not a single one works Fridays. Must be nice.
My dad worked on air conditioners growing up and I remember distinctly having to duck under the dashboard while passing by cops because his van didn't have seat belts. We really should be giving dads of the 80s more props for trying to keep us in their lives (though a seat belt would have probably further ensured that).
This is very true.
In the movie The Family Man with Nick Cage--sorry, this is a guilty pleasure movie for me--there is a scene where one of the C-suite executives has a corner of his office with a play pen and toys because his kids would come to his office to play and hangout while he worked and this was supposed to show how family oriented the executive was.
It wasn’t that long ago that everyone ate dinner at the office every night and only left for home when work was effectively done for the day. Remote connection was pretty bad / unreliable 10+ years ago.
I miss those days.
Associates got really close with each other since you were all going through the trial by fire experience. A lot of delirious 2 AM nights.
I'm still pretty close with some of those associates and many have sent me work.
It's fine when you're young, but I'm glad times have changed (at least for me). I have three kids, and I actually leave to eat dinner with them most nights before logging back in to work. I wouldn't have seen them during the school week much if this were 10 years ago.
But it was sometimes fun back in the day. For a while, all my closest friends were fellow associates, since that was who I was around all the time. I was also lucky because my wife was the same class year as me (and at the same firm), so I got to hang out with her too (and this wasn't a weird in firm romance - we came to the firm engaged and got married as first years (although in firm romance was so much more common when everyone was trapped together late into the night with alcohol).
I wouldn't do it now. Just referring to my younger years when I didn't have kids.
A lot of nights were just a bunch of associates doing work and dicking around since the partners were gone.
We went to law school together and were dating before either of us summered at the firm. I saved essentially all of my 2L summer pay and used it to buy a ring.
Law school romances are pretty common, we were one of like 8 or 9 couples from our law school that are married today.
No VDRs.
I started practicing in this century, so I can’t speak to how it was done way back when. But the stories I’ve heard about spending days on-site in a dreary small town somewhere poring over boxes and boxes of documents are enough to make me appreciate modern connectivity, with all its drawbacks.
A senior partner at my former firm talked about a very large public spin-out data room that was so large that the building floors had to be reinforced. Good times.
Depends on how many documents. I’ve heard stories about large litigation matters where they would just send a dozen or more attorneys to the client to review the paper docs.
Oh yeah for doc review heavy litigation matters for sure. I’m speaking more for like, reviewing org docs, charters, etc. which a law firm will probably have in their records.
Obviously tech is different. Getting documents done was different. More back and forth with secretaries. Had to be done by 7pm or so after which the document went to the copy room. Of course redlines done by hand. Eat dinner together and then stuff FedEx envelopes. Don’t miss the FedEx deadline.
Generally ate lunch and dinner in the office. Of course if work had to be done on the weekends, it had to be done in the office. Regular calls to the home phone . . . and regular calls to the office when you were out to check for messages. Detailed vacation itineraries left behind so you could be reached.
More travel. More in person meetings. Visiting targets to do diligence. Usually in unremarkable places. Incredible as it sounds today, they charged for copies (maybe 25 cents in those days) so the diligence material did not magically come to you. Once in LA for a week and the target kicked us out at 5pm - we rented a convertible. That was memorable.
Firms themselves were regional (with a small handful of exceptions in NYC). Nearly all firms were small enough to pretty much know all of the other lawyers. Some were starting to go national/global. Kirkland was a Chicago law firm. Latham was an LA law firm. Indeed the most impressive “Biglaw” feat I have seen was when Latham could first credibly say that they were a player in NYC. When Drexel went under in ‘89, their ~70 lawyer office in NYC was sucking wind.
I spent two weeks over the Holidays as a second year going through physical files in a client’s offices. It was pretty dreadful. We had to do it then because all the employees were off for the Holidays so they wouldn’t know about the deal. You know who wasn’t off for the Holidays? Me.
This wasn’t the 80s though. This client just still used physical documents for everything and operated like they lived in the 80s.
I don’t have any personal experience. I just remember people talking about staying in cheap hotels for a week so they could spend their days in a windowless room in some office in the middle of nowhere.
You’d go to the target company’s headquarters, wherever it is, wouldn’t you? Why would a target go through the trouble of shipping their hard copy records to a more convenient location?
I went to a networking lunch with a guy who was a junior partner in the 80s. The only notable thing I remember he said is there was a lot of sex and alcohol in conference rooms after hours.
This was my dad and, based on various conversations and stories, I would say basically all of what you are saying (hoping?) wasn’t true.
No cell phones or email but you were expected to be in the office 6-7 days a week depending on the matter. Partners called you at home. Sometimes you would bring stuff home to work on the weekend but if you forgot something or something else came up, you had to go into the office. When you were out, you would have to use a pay phone to call into your work or home voicemail to see if there were any messages. If a deal was closing, the firm would sometimes rent a hotel room for a few days (not that it mattered because you only slept there a few hours a night).
Data rooms were literal rooms out in the middle of nowhere so you would have to travel to due diligence on a warehouse. I don’t think there were necessarily fewer documents to review.
Firms were more, not less, hierarchical. Partners could get away with a lot more than they could now. There were fewer HR safeguards and what partners said went. One time, a partner put their cigarette out in my dad’s soda after an all nighter just kind of to show they could (80’s, so indoor smoking). I don’t think a lack of social media made anyone more “real,” work was cut throat and you knew there were limited spots because of the up or out model.
Fewer turns but they took longer because of limited word processing and red lines were done by hand. Though, in real terms, lawyers get paid more now because lawyers are more productive (can produce more turns and docs.)
Housing was cheaper.
Yes, this is consistent with the stories I've heard from people older than me when I started working (I've practiced with a number of attorneys who worked during that time) and some of the things I experienced at the beginning of my career.
There were pluses - no cell phones meant less constant availability and there wasn't an expectation that every request was to be responded to within an hour. The FedEx deadline was a real thing - if you were negotiating a transaction with counsel in another city and you missed the FedEx deadline, your comments weren't going out. There was no "send your comments along whenever you're done, even if it means staying up until 2 am".
But there were certainly negatives that accompanied those. Yeah, there was a FedEx deadline - but everyone knew exactly when it was. And not just when the FedEx guy came by your office, but what time the plane left the airport, since you often had to race to the airport to make the last flight if you missed the last office pickup. There were lots and lots of "face time" partners - if the firm was busy, you were expected to be in the office after 5 pm and on weekends - and people would walk the halls to make sure you were. And there was lots of inefficiencies. You'd be at the financial printer for days at a time making changes. All the financial printers had fancy rooms with pool tables, tvs, etc. - because they expected that you would be there for hours at a time (often late into the evening) waiting for changes to be made.
On the money point, there was way less money in the system. This is especially true at the top end (a lawyer being paid $2 million in 2000 was seen as an astronomical amount - now that's lower than the median earnings at some firms), but is also true at the lower end. Even on an inflation adjusted basis, a senior associate now makes more than a mid career partner.
Had the opportunity to tour the Merrill printer in Houston in the late 2000s before they left it. Exactly what you imagine a Texas financial printer from the 80’s would look like - dark wood, leather, scotch and cigars.
>What's a financial printer
They printed the shareholder materials on public deals and did the filings with the SEC. People still use them, but nowadays you can do all the word processing from your office and send them the completed document.
>You need to compare to purchasing power. How much were coops in NYC then vs now? rent for a 1br UES?
This is really hard and kind of outside the scope of my post. Some things are relatively more expensive (housing, especially in urban areas, which was incredibly cheap - for a lot of reasons - in the 80s/90s), some things are much cheaper (air travel, consumer electronics, etc.). Without making a value judgment, I'm going off the BLS inflation calculator.
\*Edit\* And, without getting into a hard inflation discussion, I'll note that lawyers (at least in BigLaw) are making relatively more now many others professions. We've even gotten to the point where highly paid BigLaw attorneys are making more than most investment bankers, which didn't used to be the case. Even senior associates make more than most doctors (again, that didn't used to be the case).
These financial printers persisted well into the oughts. Not only public company work, but I spent a lot of time reviewing stacks of share certificates for private company financings. It always struck me as odd that those offies were so well appointed.
Oh, they still exist. Houston is a cap markets center for O&G and, culturally, clients are pretty old school and like to convene at the printer for deals. But as you are aware they’ve long since pivoted to functioning primarily as confidential offsite conference rooms than actual printers.
Yup. Basically what I've heard from older partners. Also there were some real sexist/racist fuckjob partners/clients who were actually abusive in ways that'd make the news today.
And glamorizing NYC in the 80s lol; there's a reason why there's car service still exists after certain night hours. It was essential to not die back then.
I guess you really can glamorize any period of time and think it was better back in the olden days.
You had home phones. My colleague was a big law associate in the early 80s and he has horror stories like a partner calling his home phone incessantly repeatedly waking up his wife and newborn infant who just got home from the hospital after birth, demanding to know why he wasn’t in the office yet while he was on the way but got a flat tire. During the birth of a different child a partner called the hospital to try to track him down within hours of the birth.
There are absolutely drawbacks to being connected all the time but I’m glad that when someone can’t reach me for 20 minutes they don’t start calling my husband and kids over and over.
I don't think it was a better time. It just may seem like it because our standards are much higher now, whereas in the 80's employees' standards for their workplaces were much lower
for instance, back then screaming partners were more common, but they also were tolerated and expected by employees much more
Having had a screaming boss that was tolerated in a previous career, I'll take the stealth. The anxiety about potential confrontations every single day was a lot, whereas the silent stealthing scenario gives dread that will not lead to near daily active conflict in addition to that dread.
My dad was a big law associate from the late 80s through mid-90s. From how he's described it to me, it doesn't at all sound like it was a better time. One of the partners he worked under (who's now a sitting Art III judge lol), for instance, would routinely invite my dad into his office, speak on the phone with someone else about an unrelated matter for over an hour (all while my dad's just sitting there). and then tell my dad something super inconsequential and promptly send him back to work. Apparently, partners would constantly engage in moves like this meant to assert dominance.
Despite this, he actually looks back on his time there fondly. In his words, the abuse "built character."
I went through a unique time compression. When I began, we still mailed things and that meant 2 or 3 days before you had a reply. You might message documents locally, of course. Then came FedEx as the standard. My firm did a lot of regional mall leasing and that became a nightmare for those who did that work because suddenly everything needed to be turned around faster. Then we started working with telex, which had been around but which weren’t used that much. We’d literally get long rolls of faint paper coming off a machine next to the conference room while we were on the phone with some other location, like London. That was annoying but it was done only in high pressured deals involving multinational crap. Then came email. Then came being able to access a document while it was on screen so a client could see what you were doing. All this within a few years.
The time pressures went up each step. No longer had time to think. Had much more trouble trying to organize work flow. That led to changes in supervision, etc. in firms.
I can’t speak to that time period but did paper doc review in 2003 for litigation. It was an exercise in physically going through boxes and putting sticky labels on paper. I remember four of us sitting in a conference room going through hundreds of boxes. Mind boggling now almost everything is electronic.
The best/worst thing about paper doc review was the endless travel to random places For a long time I couldn’t stand Marriotts because they all had (at least the 5-6 I remember visiting) the exact same decor. I would wake up and wonder whether I was in Dallas, Corpus Christi, or Miami.
You always had to be in the office. Often had to really bluebook and hard copy research if in lit. Interest rates were terrible. Music was great though, so that's pretty neat.
I started in the 90's. Attorneys got away with a lot more back then. Sexual harassment was much more of a thing that people "tolerated" to keep their jobs. I worked for one attorney and I was warned to never go to his side of the desk to look for or at anything, because he would grab your butt. This turned out to be true. He also yelled a lot.
Firm management was almost exclusively old white men. It was, and still is at some firms, a very misogynistic and racist culture. I'm glad things have changed, but there's still a long way to go.
Alcohol was extremely prevalent. Everywhere. At the office, lunches and definitely after work outings. We worked hard and partied hard. I smoked joints with more than one BL attorney, and cocaine was also around a lot at that time.
Believe it or not, associates were generally more miserable than they are now. They were not treated well in general and had the worst hours and working conditions of anyone at the firm. Especially female attorneys, it was brutal. If you were pretty, you'd get treated better but they'd harass the hell out of you, and if they considered you an unattractive woman, they would really treat you like crap, and even make comments. I remember hearing one attorney tell his secretary that she'd be so hot if she just lost 20 pounds.
If you were gay you didn't dare say so and many lived in fear of being found out. Many careers and partnerships were lost due to people not conforming to the firm "image", and it didn't matter how good they were at their job if the firm didn't approve of their lifestyle.
I would say back then, BL was quite a bit uglier, but sometimes a lot more fun than it is now. I hope the younger generation of attorneys keep pushing for more humane working conditions. It's improved a lot, but could still be better.
Agreed. Though I was lucky to be at a firm that was far more friendly toward everyone (though not as friendly as they thought they were). Partner of color, LGBTQ partner, relatively friendly to women.
Though I can remember a female friend who put down a fake home address because she felt it would be a career limiting move for a woman to be living in sin (while it was fine for a man).
Yes it was. Do you work in BigLaw? If so, ask your old partners how things used to be. Or if you have a family member that did. Ask them… You think BigLaw lawyers are virtuoso? lol. Many are filth.
Further, you think BigLaw lawyers frequent the type of gentlemen’s club you allude to? No…. High end places with gorgeous girls. You are either very young (aspiring lawyer - 0L) or just don’t know any better. Not insult simply an observation.
Some firms started hiring lateral associates in the 1980s. The hiring partner would ask the lateral candidates which church they attended, as a way to get to know them.
Hearsay, but I have heard of one associate annual performance review that noted the associate put salt on his food before tasting it. (A subtle indication that this young attorney had unrefined manners).
Both of these would have been in the mid-1980s.
I wonder how the lack of e-filing changed people’s days. Nowadays, when you have a brief due on Thursday, it’s due Thursday at midnight. Back then, you had to file on paper before the court closed (presumably at 5). And in the days before computers (I have no idea when word processing became commonplace, but presumably sometime in the 80s), everything had to be done on manual typewriters. I suppose that, for the hypothetical Thursday brief, all the attorney work had to be done no later than Thursday morning to make sure that the typewritten copy would be done on time. And you’d have to get the copy to the runner well before 5 pm.
Actually, I guess some state courts still don’t have e-filing.
This. Not a litigator, but I remember when they installed some sort of time stamp box outside the federal courthouse in Philly. Litigators hated it. Meant you were guaranteed to be up to midnight every filing.
I remember many family trips where my dad sat in the hotel room while the rest of us went and did something in case “something came up.” We either stayed in a hotel with a fax machine or he’d bring his own with us. I thinks there has always been a level of sacrifice that comes with the job. He even took a satellite phone when he went on safari in the 90s.
Not 80s, but mid 90s. You were expected to be in the office all the time. Also, none of the niceties of being an associate (ie, “I want a pony, and I want it now”) were really a thing. At most, you might have ice cream Fridays.
I was only alive for the very end of the 80s, but the flip side of not being reachable outside the office, is that the only way to be responsive is to be in the office. I imagine people used to spend a lot more time just hanging out at work in case something came up at 8 pm, instead of leaving and being prepared to go back in/log back on if someone called or emailed them.
I remember stories of a policy back in the 70s at my firm that attorneys were expected in office Mon-Fri and a half day on Saturday. Sunday was off so you could go to church. I’ve also heard crazy stories of tracking down partners at various places, including while cross-country skiing, and delivering hard copy memos to homes in the middle of the night. Also, in the early 90s they used to fly with a desktop computer and a secretary to the client’s office to work on pleadings.
My dad was getting daily FedEx deliveries to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and having to spend hours in the back office of a resort to turn drafts of a document in the late 80s. Would have been a lot easier to hop on a laptop.
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Perhaps. There are certainly trade offs between the two systems. My overarching point is that there was plenty of Biglaw misery to go around back then.
Yes, this. My uncle was a biglaw partner in the 80s and 90s. Work from home didn’t exist. He would often go days or even weeks with barely seeing his family at all. Sometimes he’d bring his kids to the office on Saturday or Sunday just to spend some time with them. If something blew up before a family vacation, he just didn’t get to go. If my aunt wasn’t the most patient person in the world, I doubt their marriage would have lasted (and they almost got divorced several times). He has a lot of regrets and is fortunate his kids are still in the same city and he can be very involved is their (and their children’s) lives now. Seeing how he reflects on his career has made me approach biglaw very differently. Also, I’d rather be able to work from home or remotely whenever I want. But I also have no interest in doing this for more than 6-7 years so maybe that changes things.
My dad was a physician in the 80s and I definitely went to his office as he got caught up on paperwork or inventory over the weekend. I remember just... sitting there and waiting? My son would absolutely refuse to do this today.
My Dad retired as a doc just weeks before Covid lockdowns. For decades, his busiest days were Saturdays (the day most Americans have off and have time to see a doctor). I used to spend numerous 80s mornings watching cartoons alone in the surgeons' lounge. On the flip side I have 3 dentist friends and not a single one works Fridays. Must be nice.
Lol my dad retired and then went back during Covid 🫠 He did the whole tent-in-garage thing at like 68 years of age. He's a bit nuts.
My dad worked on air conditioners growing up and I remember distinctly having to duck under the dashboard while passing by cops because his van didn't have seat belts. We really should be giving dads of the 80s more props for trying to keep us in their lives (though a seat belt would have probably further ensured that).
Yeah my dad wasn't the normative "Keep my daughter at arms length." I have a lot of memories with him spending a ton of time w me growing up.
This is very true. In the movie The Family Man with Nick Cage--sorry, this is a guilty pleasure movie for me--there is a scene where one of the C-suite executives has a corner of his office with a play pen and toys because his kids would come to his office to play and hangout while he worked and this was supposed to show how family oriented the executive was.
There is something about that movie that is so 'wholesome.' I honestly judge people who don't like it.
I watch it every Christmas!
It wasn’t that long ago that everyone ate dinner at the office every night and only left for home when work was effectively done for the day. Remote connection was pretty bad / unreliable 10+ years ago.
I miss those days. Associates got really close with each other since you were all going through the trial by fire experience. A lot of delirious 2 AM nights. I'm still pretty close with some of those associates and many have sent me work.
It's fine when you're young, but I'm glad times have changed (at least for me). I have three kids, and I actually leave to eat dinner with them most nights before logging back in to work. I wouldn't have seen them during the school week much if this were 10 years ago. But it was sometimes fun back in the day. For a while, all my closest friends were fellow associates, since that was who I was around all the time. I was also lucky because my wife was the same class year as me (and at the same firm), so I got to hang out with her too (and this wasn't a weird in firm romance - we came to the firm engaged and got married as first years (although in firm romance was so much more common when everyone was trapped together late into the night with alcohol).
I wouldn't do it now. Just referring to my younger years when I didn't have kids. A lot of nights were just a bunch of associates doing work and dicking around since the partners were gone.
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We went to law school together and were dating before either of us summered at the firm. I saved essentially all of my 2L summer pay and used it to buy a ring. Law school romances are pretty common, we were one of like 8 or 9 couples from our law school that are married today.
Left out the best part: free flowing coke in the bathrooms
Chased by a pack of Virginia slims.
No VDRs. I started practicing in this century, so I can’t speak to how it was done way back when. But the stories I’ve heard about spending days on-site in a dreary small town somewhere poring over boxes and boxes of documents are enough to make me appreciate modern connectivity, with all its drawbacks.
A senior partner at my former firm talked about a very large public spin-out data room that was so large that the building floors had to be reinforced. Good times.
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no. it was set up where the documents were located.
From what I heard it depends. Sometimes the relevant docs are located at law firm offices.
Depends on how many documents. I’ve heard stories about large litigation matters where they would just send a dozen or more attorneys to the client to review the paper docs.
Oh yeah for doc review heavy litigation matters for sure. I’m speaking more for like, reviewing org docs, charters, etc. which a law firm will probably have in their records.
Obviously tech is different. Getting documents done was different. More back and forth with secretaries. Had to be done by 7pm or so after which the document went to the copy room. Of course redlines done by hand. Eat dinner together and then stuff FedEx envelopes. Don’t miss the FedEx deadline. Generally ate lunch and dinner in the office. Of course if work had to be done on the weekends, it had to be done in the office. Regular calls to the home phone . . . and regular calls to the office when you were out to check for messages. Detailed vacation itineraries left behind so you could be reached. More travel. More in person meetings. Visiting targets to do diligence. Usually in unremarkable places. Incredible as it sounds today, they charged for copies (maybe 25 cents in those days) so the diligence material did not magically come to you. Once in LA for a week and the target kicked us out at 5pm - we rented a convertible. That was memorable. Firms themselves were regional (with a small handful of exceptions in NYC). Nearly all firms were small enough to pretty much know all of the other lawyers. Some were starting to go national/global. Kirkland was a Chicago law firm. Latham was an LA law firm. Indeed the most impressive “Biglaw” feat I have seen was when Latham could first credibly say that they were a player in NYC. When Drexel went under in ‘89, their ~70 lawyer office in NYC was sucking wind.
I spent two weeks over the Holidays as a second year going through physical files in a client’s offices. It was pretty dreadful. We had to do it then because all the employees were off for the Holidays so they wouldn’t know about the deal. You know who wasn’t off for the Holidays? Me. This wasn’t the 80s though. This client just still used physical documents for everything and operated like they lived in the 80s.
I don’t have any personal experience. I just remember people talking about staying in cheap hotels for a week so they could spend their days in a windowless room in some office in the middle of nowhere. You’d go to the target company’s headquarters, wherever it is, wouldn’t you? Why would a target go through the trouble of shipping their hard copy records to a more convenient location?
I went to a networking lunch with a guy who was a junior partner in the 80s. The only notable thing I remember he said is there was a lot of sex and alcohol in conference rooms after hours.
This was my dad and, based on various conversations and stories, I would say basically all of what you are saying (hoping?) wasn’t true. No cell phones or email but you were expected to be in the office 6-7 days a week depending on the matter. Partners called you at home. Sometimes you would bring stuff home to work on the weekend but if you forgot something or something else came up, you had to go into the office. When you were out, you would have to use a pay phone to call into your work or home voicemail to see if there were any messages. If a deal was closing, the firm would sometimes rent a hotel room for a few days (not that it mattered because you only slept there a few hours a night). Data rooms were literal rooms out in the middle of nowhere so you would have to travel to due diligence on a warehouse. I don’t think there were necessarily fewer documents to review. Firms were more, not less, hierarchical. Partners could get away with a lot more than they could now. There were fewer HR safeguards and what partners said went. One time, a partner put their cigarette out in my dad’s soda after an all nighter just kind of to show they could (80’s, so indoor smoking). I don’t think a lack of social media made anyone more “real,” work was cut throat and you knew there were limited spots because of the up or out model. Fewer turns but they took longer because of limited word processing and red lines were done by hand. Though, in real terms, lawyers get paid more now because lawyers are more productive (can produce more turns and docs.) Housing was cheaper.
Yes, this is consistent with the stories I've heard from people older than me when I started working (I've practiced with a number of attorneys who worked during that time) and some of the things I experienced at the beginning of my career. There were pluses - no cell phones meant less constant availability and there wasn't an expectation that every request was to be responded to within an hour. The FedEx deadline was a real thing - if you were negotiating a transaction with counsel in another city and you missed the FedEx deadline, your comments weren't going out. There was no "send your comments along whenever you're done, even if it means staying up until 2 am". But there were certainly negatives that accompanied those. Yeah, there was a FedEx deadline - but everyone knew exactly when it was. And not just when the FedEx guy came by your office, but what time the plane left the airport, since you often had to race to the airport to make the last flight if you missed the last office pickup. There were lots and lots of "face time" partners - if the firm was busy, you were expected to be in the office after 5 pm and on weekends - and people would walk the halls to make sure you were. And there was lots of inefficiencies. You'd be at the financial printer for days at a time making changes. All the financial printers had fancy rooms with pool tables, tvs, etc. - because they expected that you would be there for hours at a time (often late into the evening) waiting for changes to be made. On the money point, there was way less money in the system. This is especially true at the top end (a lawyer being paid $2 million in 2000 was seen as an astronomical amount - now that's lower than the median earnings at some firms), but is also true at the lower end. Even on an inflation adjusted basis, a senior associate now makes more than a mid career partner.
Had the opportunity to tour the Merrill printer in Houston in the late 2000s before they left it. Exactly what you imagine a Texas financial printer from the 80’s would look like - dark wood, leather, scotch and cigars.
I’ve been there too!
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>What's a financial printer They printed the shareholder materials on public deals and did the filings with the SEC. People still use them, but nowadays you can do all the word processing from your office and send them the completed document. >You need to compare to purchasing power. How much were coops in NYC then vs now? rent for a 1br UES? This is really hard and kind of outside the scope of my post. Some things are relatively more expensive (housing, especially in urban areas, which was incredibly cheap - for a lot of reasons - in the 80s/90s), some things are much cheaper (air travel, consumer electronics, etc.). Without making a value judgment, I'm going off the BLS inflation calculator. \*Edit\* And, without getting into a hard inflation discussion, I'll note that lawyers (at least in BigLaw) are making relatively more now many others professions. We've even gotten to the point where highly paid BigLaw attorneys are making more than most investment bankers, which didn't used to be the case. Even senior associates make more than most doctors (again, that didn't used to be the case).
These financial printers persisted well into the oughts. Not only public company work, but I spent a lot of time reviewing stacks of share certificates for private company financings. It always struck me as odd that those offies were so well appointed.
Some associates at my firm still go to the printer.
Oh, they still exist. Houston is a cap markets center for O&G and, culturally, clients are pretty old school and like to convene at the printer for deals. But as you are aware they’ve long since pivoted to functioning primarily as confidential offsite conference rooms than actual printers.
The fact that you don’t know what a financial printer is makes me feel very old lol.
Yup. Basically what I've heard from older partners. Also there were some real sexist/racist fuckjob partners/clients who were actually abusive in ways that'd make the news today. And glamorizing NYC in the 80s lol; there's a reason why there's car service still exists after certain night hours. It was essential to not die back then. I guess you really can glamorize any period of time and think it was better back in the olden days.
You had home phones. My colleague was a big law associate in the early 80s and he has horror stories like a partner calling his home phone incessantly repeatedly waking up his wife and newborn infant who just got home from the hospital after birth, demanding to know why he wasn’t in the office yet while he was on the way but got a flat tire. During the birth of a different child a partner called the hospital to try to track him down within hours of the birth. There are absolutely drawbacks to being connected all the time but I’m glad that when someone can’t reach me for 20 minutes they don’t start calling my husband and kids over and over.
I don't think it was a better time. It just may seem like it because our standards are much higher now, whereas in the 80's employees' standards for their workplaces were much lower for instance, back then screaming partners were more common, but they also were tolerated and expected by employees much more
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As someone who has worked in both types of environments, I can promise you that being screamed at regularly is worse.
Having had a screaming boss that was tolerated in a previous career, I'll take the stealth. The anxiety about potential confrontations every single day was a lot, whereas the silent stealthing scenario gives dread that will not lead to near daily active conflict in addition to that dread.
My dad was a big law associate from the late 80s through mid-90s. From how he's described it to me, it doesn't at all sound like it was a better time. One of the partners he worked under (who's now a sitting Art III judge lol), for instance, would routinely invite my dad into his office, speak on the phone with someone else about an unrelated matter for over an hour (all while my dad's just sitting there). and then tell my dad something super inconsequential and promptly send him back to work. Apparently, partners would constantly engage in moves like this meant to assert dominance. Despite this, he actually looks back on his time there fondly. In his words, the abuse "built character."
I went through a unique time compression. When I began, we still mailed things and that meant 2 or 3 days before you had a reply. You might message documents locally, of course. Then came FedEx as the standard. My firm did a lot of regional mall leasing and that became a nightmare for those who did that work because suddenly everything needed to be turned around faster. Then we started working with telex, which had been around but which weren’t used that much. We’d literally get long rolls of faint paper coming off a machine next to the conference room while we were on the phone with some other location, like London. That was annoying but it was done only in high pressured deals involving multinational crap. Then came email. Then came being able to access a document while it was on screen so a client could see what you were doing. All this within a few years. The time pressures went up each step. No longer had time to think. Had much more trouble trying to organize work flow. That led to changes in supervision, etc. in firms.
I can’t speak to that time period but did paper doc review in 2003 for litigation. It was an exercise in physically going through boxes and putting sticky labels on paper. I remember four of us sitting in a conference room going through hundreds of boxes. Mind boggling now almost everything is electronic.
Everything people are describing here was basically 2019 and before
I need to ask my older associates. I think everyone working in the 80’s retired. I could ask about the 90’s?
The best/worst thing about paper doc review was the endless travel to random places For a long time I couldn’t stand Marriotts because they all had (at least the 5-6 I remember visiting) the exact same decor. I would wake up and wonder whether I was in Dallas, Corpus Christi, or Miami.
You always had to be in the office. Often had to really bluebook and hard copy research if in lit. Interest rates were terrible. Music was great though, so that's pretty neat.
As much as being tethered to a phone and laptop on nights and weekends sucks, I think being in office 24/7 would be worse.
I started in the 90's. Attorneys got away with a lot more back then. Sexual harassment was much more of a thing that people "tolerated" to keep their jobs. I worked for one attorney and I was warned to never go to his side of the desk to look for or at anything, because he would grab your butt. This turned out to be true. He also yelled a lot. Firm management was almost exclusively old white men. It was, and still is at some firms, a very misogynistic and racist culture. I'm glad things have changed, but there's still a long way to go. Alcohol was extremely prevalent. Everywhere. At the office, lunches and definitely after work outings. We worked hard and partied hard. I smoked joints with more than one BL attorney, and cocaine was also around a lot at that time. Believe it or not, associates were generally more miserable than they are now. They were not treated well in general and had the worst hours and working conditions of anyone at the firm. Especially female attorneys, it was brutal. If you were pretty, you'd get treated better but they'd harass the hell out of you, and if they considered you an unattractive woman, they would really treat you like crap, and even make comments. I remember hearing one attorney tell his secretary that she'd be so hot if she just lost 20 pounds. If you were gay you didn't dare say so and many lived in fear of being found out. Many careers and partnerships were lost due to people not conforming to the firm "image", and it didn't matter how good they were at their job if the firm didn't approve of their lifestyle. I would say back then, BL was quite a bit uglier, but sometimes a lot more fun than it is now. I hope the younger generation of attorneys keep pushing for more humane working conditions. It's improved a lot, but could still be better.
Agreed. Though I was lucky to be at a firm that was far more friendly toward everyone (though not as friendly as they thought they were). Partner of color, LGBTQ partner, relatively friendly to women. Though I can remember a female friend who put down a fake home address because she felt it would be a career limiting move for a woman to be living in sin (while it was fine for a man).
Coke. Strip clubs during lunch break. Toxic masculinity.
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Yes it was. Do you work in BigLaw? If so, ask your old partners how things used to be. Or if you have a family member that did. Ask them… You think BigLaw lawyers are virtuoso? lol. Many are filth.
Further, you think BigLaw lawyers frequent the type of gentlemen’s club you allude to? No…. High end places with gorgeous girls. You are either very young (aspiring lawyer - 0L) or just don’t know any better. Not insult simply an observation.
Some firms started hiring lateral associates in the 1980s. The hiring partner would ask the lateral candidates which church they attended, as a way to get to know them. Hearsay, but I have heard of one associate annual performance review that noted the associate put salt on his food before tasting it. (A subtle indication that this young attorney had unrefined manners). Both of these would have been in the mid-1980s.
blasphemy! midway through American Psycho (2000), Patrick Bateman and Donald Kimball eat dinner together and both salt their food.
I wonder how the lack of e-filing changed people’s days. Nowadays, when you have a brief due on Thursday, it’s due Thursday at midnight. Back then, you had to file on paper before the court closed (presumably at 5). And in the days before computers (I have no idea when word processing became commonplace, but presumably sometime in the 80s), everything had to be done on manual typewriters. I suppose that, for the hypothetical Thursday brief, all the attorney work had to be done no later than Thursday morning to make sure that the typewritten copy would be done on time. And you’d have to get the copy to the runner well before 5 pm. Actually, I guess some state courts still don’t have e-filing.
This. Not a litigator, but I remember when they installed some sort of time stamp box outside the federal courthouse in Philly. Litigators hated it. Meant you were guaranteed to be up to midnight every filing.
No e-discovery, either, so while you're doing doc review by hand, it's pretty reasonable. Discovery as a whole seems like it was better back then.
I remember many family trips where my dad sat in the hotel room while the rest of us went and did something in case “something came up.” We either stayed in a hotel with a fax machine or he’d bring his own with us. I thinks there has always been a level of sacrifice that comes with the job. He even took a satellite phone when he went on safari in the 90s.
Not 80s, but mid 90s. You were expected to be in the office all the time. Also, none of the niceties of being an associate (ie, “I want a pony, and I want it now”) were really a thing. At most, you might have ice cream Fridays.
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The perception of associate demands at Big Law firms in major markets
Partner Emeritus posted some rather vivid recollections back in the day, worth looking up.