| Topic Name: |
The truth about hours |
| Message Name: |
hours for corporate lawyers at big firms |
| Date Posted: |
06/25/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
During the early 90's, when fresh out of the Navy, I worked for a Gas Turbine service company... Stewart & Stevenson Services. For the first 1.5 years I averaged 66 hours a week. During on really busy time , two of us worked between 80 to 90 hours a week for 4 weeks in a row. We would sleep in our truck. ( After falling a sleep driving ) A customer put the brakes on our managers to get us a break. |
| Message: |
I must preface this reply with the fact that I am a former 4th year associate at a top 25 international law firm, and I worked out of their Washington DC office. Hours can be brutal, but of course they vary from office to office, depending on what city you are in and what clients you are servicing. It also is very dependent on what practice group you are in, whether litigation or transactional, and if your partners (bosses) are dicks or cool.
As a lawyer you must account for every 10 or 15 minute increment of your time, so if you do any "shamming" (presuming that you properly account for such time--i.e. don't fraudulently bill any of your clients for that time that you weren't really working on their matters) then you really are only screwing yourself if you surf the web for hours or sleep in the bathroom, b/c when you return to your desk the work is still there. Assignments are deadline-driven, so they need to get done by a certain date/time and wasting time really doesn't help you.
I typically worked 9AM-9PM Mon-Fri and about 4-8 hours total on the weekend, so typically anywhere from 60-70 hours/week. However there were expended periods of time (up to a year) that I worked 70+ hours/week.
The part I really couldn't start was the requirement to bill every second of your day, which cuts back on your ability to get to know your colleagues and have any sort of half-way decent experience at work, and since the work/life balance was out of whack in favor of work I really didn't have much of a life at or outside of work. Definitely NOT how I want to spend the rest of my life.
However the pay is great. I left making just about $200k/year, without bonus.
I am going back to school to get my MBA and try a different career.
I hope this helped.
|
|
