| Topic Name: |
Why so many hours for so little money? |
| Message Name: |
There may be some, but very few working this many hours |
| Date Posted: |
03/21/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
I have no firsthand experience, but my friends from undergrad who went to PWC claim they work 50-60 year round, and 70-80 during busy season. It probably varies based on what office you go to. The problem is that recruiters can be a bit misleading, and you can't really start asking about how many hours they expect of you if you want to get an offer from them. Hopefully you actually KNOW some people at the office you're going to and have an inside scoop on the conditions.
The hours I've been working in biglaw are pretty indicative of the overall load. The amount from WEEK TO WEEK varies a lot, but the work is evenly distributed throughout the year. Some of the surveys you're reading are probably NYC firm dominated, and it's fact that hours in NYC are a lot worse. I looked around a lot and picked my firm/practice area very carefully. Unfortunately, shopping around wasn't much of an option when I was looking at accounting jobs. As a new lawyer, it was nice to have some REAL CHOICES in where I worked. |
| Message: |
On the low end, this works out to over 3,000 hours or 930 hours of over time. My office, staff average is around 250, seniors 350, managers 400 and senior managers 500. As far as not taking vacation. That is uncommon.
You can have huge impact on hours "worked". I have seen many people that during busy season will waste an hour and half on lunch and dinner each and another hour surfing the web. Now to hit the 11 client hours, they have 15 hours in the day. The 55 hour week has now become 75.
Some (less than 20%) have lost vacation hours, typically Managers, who get 22 days vacation, plus the 10 holidays and the firms extra 3 days off at Christmas this year. You lose vacation when you have accrued balance greater than 176 hours. There is a big push to take vacation and the lost vacation report is closely monitored.
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