I am surprised that no one has mentioned this. I'd be pleased as punch if 1800 were the ceiling, but I've heard about 2400 hours at some places in NY. Full disclosure-- I would never take a job at a 2400 hour place, unless they were paying me with a bag of Krugerrands at the end of each day, and then, only work there for a few months, or until I found the Krugerrand vault.

It's my life's mission to spread this word to anyone considering law as a profession-- Law firms are in the business of making money. That's all. It is strictly a business. Maybe that's obvious, but it needs to be said. To the extent that you are your personal life get in the way of this goal, you will be culled from the herd.

And, the way they make money is billing time. Maybe that will change, but they seem pretty addicted to it. The changes described in this article will make it worse for young lawyers, not better, because they will be implemented in revenue neutral ways. Partners aren't taking pay cuts.

This is not a moral judgment. You might be fine with this fact. I think I suffered from the delusion that law was a fraternity (in the best sense of the word) where the older members helped out the younger ones. Largely, no. Taking time to help someone takes away from time that can be turned into money.

This fact applies to large firms, medium firms and small firms. If you are hired as an associate, it is because the firm thinks you will make them money, preferably a lot of money, right away. Your growth as a professional is not important.

The worse you think it is out there, the better it is for you. Maybe you will be pleasantly surprised.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts.

As a lawyer (and a mother), I agree with your assessment. Not that I was stupid enough to believe that I wouldn't have to work long hours, but there is no "mentoring". It's all about making the money. And that holds true for even small firms and sole practitioners. If you can't give them your ENTIRE life, they don't want you, leaving women with families out in the cold.

I finally just started doing "independent contractor" work for a specific attorney. I get an office, an address, continue my work experience, and I can start using some of my free time to build my own business which I would be able to do at the same time as his business with virtually no overhead in terms of renting space.

I don't see how you stop "billable time". Lawyering is an odd profession - you are basically getting paid to talk, write and argue. How does one quantify that? I don't know. I don't think I would want the government to put caps on hourly rates though.

Although, getting the "free market" to do something about it might just do something good, who knows. I'm not an expert on the subject.

Personally, the only problem I have with billable hours is that they expect people who are lawyers to have no life outside the office, whether the workers are single or have families.

There must be a more efficient way to make sure the work gets done in at least an 8 to 9 hour day, 5 days a week. I just haven't figured out how to get there yet.

was medium sized (about 100 attorneys), 1800 minimum billing, but the mentoring was great. The senior attorneys went out of their way to provide feedback and lessons. I could not have asked for more in that respect. Doors were always open for questions, and after big cases there would be sit downs to explain what happened and why. And we had a great in-house CLE program which had the senior attorneys teach classes (and saving money on CLEs) but well done and directly applicable to our work.

1800 hrs is almost reasonable, if the cases can be fully billed. My heart burn was with all the extra work that could not be billed, making it closer to 2200 hours. Plus the mechanics of billing is such a pain in the ass. I hope to never go back to that.

I've been an attorney for five years. I have yet to receive anything that could rightly be called mentoring, despite explicit assurances that I would be hired as someone to be trained by partner. My first week as a associate, I attended hearings and deposed expert witnesses. I assure you, I only received five minutes of advice before being sent to these proceedings.

It is all about making money. I can only say that I wish I only had to make 1800 billable hours. In my last associate position, I was criticized for not working enough, even though I was making 2100 billable hours a year and there was "no" billable requirement. Now, I have moved to the completely inglorious position of "staff attorney" with a major firm. Yes, I get "flexible" hours but I make less than half of what a first year associate would make according to the articles that my family oh-so-helpfully forwards to me. And I still have a billable requirement - 2000 hours.

If the changes this article proposes go through, it won't be associates who go - it'll be the staff attorneys and the temp attorneys. Law firms will merely shift the burden from these positions, which are much more profitable to them but harder to justify to bottom-line concerned clients, to the associates. Not every temp or staff attorney does document review, I assure you. In fact, some of the tasks that are assigned to such attorneys in this firm include deposition prep (everything including a script!), attending hearings and the drafting of pleadings. Due to the fairly insubstantial renumeration here for such positions for such work, I don't know of more than a few who wouldn't jump at the chance to make $160,000 even if they did have to bill 2400 a year. It would certainly make the sacrifice of everything a little easier to bear. Not to mention the student loans..

I don't think I could do 2400 a year even for that salary!

I guess we all have to make choices - I love my family, I love my children (they are both under 6) and cannot picture working those kind of hours and hardly ever seeing them, even if that meant being able to actually pay off my student loans!

If I were young and single, I could probably do it for a few years, buy a nice car, save for a house, pay off loans, etc. But, life did not work out that way for me and we must deal with the cards we are dealt.

Ah well, c'est la vie!

I review documents in DC, and I make about half what the starting associates make. I have NO job related stress. If I don't like the firm, I get a different one. I make less money, but I make enough, and in about half an hour I'm going to leave here and take my son to a cub scout meeting, and no one will mind.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

I see the trend a little differently than you do EastCoastEsq, and let me extend sympathy for your plight. Bastards, all.

I think the rise of the temp and staff attorney is directly do to trying to squeeze more money out of the bottom line.

Some of the people who've been at it longer can attest better than I can, but I think firms invented these positions so they didn't have to treat or pay young lawyers well.

It used to be that young associates did doc review. It's bad work, but you're employed 365 days a year, get health insurance, raises, and, maybe someday, make partner, or at least earn your way to better work.

Now they hire an army of temps, teach them nothing, and dismiss them after they no longer serve any use. I've heard of people getting fired for asking too many questions about how to do the work. No joke.

Also, you can pass that line item directly to the client. The client can't very well argue that you didn't pay the temp agency that money, and it's certainly cheaper than having real associates do it.

I think that lawyering used to be a marquee profession, and it's not any more, but there's a whole generation of people still trying to get into law school.

I think there's no question that the temp and staff attornies function as an easy way of law firms adding to the bill without raising their costs. Not that any of them are treated well. Fired without warning, including one attorney who we discovered was just fired after 3 years here as a contractor, is a common practice. However, what I've seen of first year associates, many of them are not treated much better. While they may not be actively compared to dogs in earshot ("if they don't find a hot document every once in awhile, they'll get bored and stop reviewing carefully. Like drug-sniffing dogs"), they aren't treated all that well. The firm I am at seems to lose most of its incoming associates within a year. They aren't fired; they give notice.

Sad to say too that my billable requirement has been referred to as a "lifestyle" career by most law students of my acquaintance. We're training our armies of young lawyers to expect this as a norm, when it should be the exception. However, as competition grows fiercer, the firms will be able to squeeze more work out of the young and relatively inexperienced, and even the not-so-young and relatively experienced.

Bonedaddy, I'm with you. I work 3 1/2 days a week, make about half what starting associates make, but my life is my own. I do the project as it comes along and those 3 1/2 days can pretty much be any 3 1/2 days, so that when holidays came up (as they just did), I can take off without worry and make up time easily.

My daughter had something at school day before Thanksgiving. No problem.

BoneDaddy:

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

Love the quote!

ladykrystyna:

I don't think I could do 2400 a year even for that salary!

I guess we all have to make choices - I love my family, I love my children (they are both under 6) and cannot picture working those kind of hours and hardly ever seeing them, even if that meant being able to actually pay off my student loans!

This comment caught my eye. I don't want to put words into your mouth, but are you saying that parents billing 2400 hours don't love their families? The issue of work-life balance is a complex one, especially for women in the law. This attitude seems to be a direct roadblock to the advancement of women with families. I'd be interested to hear some opinions on this.

Oh, goodness no, not at all! I was only expressing my feelings for my family. I don't doubt that everybody loves their children, loves their family. Not at all.

I have been a stay at home mom and a working mom - both choices are respected by me, no questions asked and regardless of the reasons for working (financial or just by choice). Everybody is obviously entitled to do as they will in their lives. Whatever works best for them.

I just can't see ME doing it. I like to work, I like having adult conversations during the day [ ;) ], but the thought of "coming in early and staying late" every day of the week, working on weekends, is definitely NOT my thing.

I kept my extracuriccular activities during my lifetime to a minimum (piano and dancing). I hated the thought of running and going and going and going. That's just me.

Sometimes I like just to sit and do NOTHING. Which is what my family and I did over Christmas (4 days off and we did nothing but hang out, eat, watch TV, read, etc.).

Others amaze me at their ability to do that, to juggle it all. I mean, I'm sure it's not easy, but some people are "zoned" for that, you know. They handle stress better, are more easily organized, etc. For me, multitasking just makes my head spin. I like working on only like 2 or 3 things at a time. Which is why I do what I do. I made it work for me.

If someone else wants to do it (and obviously there are people out there like that), kudos to them!

Sorry if it came across that way.

This is why I left private practice. When I started, the hours were long and the work was hard, but there was an air of professionalism and collegiality which, regrettably, is now gone, destroyed by the incredible greed of a relative handful of powerful partners whose annual draws can never be big enough. Just last week it was reported that partners at some of New York City's largest firms were grousing because their annual multimillion dollar draws were being dwarfed by the compensation paid to their CEO and hedge fund manager clients. The solution? Hire more associates and work them to death (the rule of thumb is one-third of each hour billed goes to compensate the associate, one-third to overhead, and one-third to the partners), elevate few if any associates to partnership (or make them "non-equity" partners, i.e, glorified associates), push older (i.e., less bankable) partners out the door through mandatory retirement, absorb established smaller firms and lateral attorneys with a big book of business. It's ruined the profession.

a ponzi scheme that worked great until saturation. With the overloaded market, the top dogs are too expensive, and the bottom dogs will never get their cut.

My take, from the other side (the much maligned, but far less stressful contingency fee world), is that the majority of the 2400 hour drones and worker bees don't have families. The turnover of young, top fifth of their class women in the bigger defense firms is astounding. If they get married, and want a child they drop out, either hanging out their own shingle or joining a small firm (by which I mean less than 10 attorneys) practice, or abandoning the practice of law all together. The few that make partner have to put off having kids until they are pushing the big 4-0.

Males, not quite as burdened by biological clocks, or societally expected child care obligations, are more likely to stick it out, but you should run the divorce and substance abuse numbers compared to other professions...

seed,

Absolutely correct on all points. As a woman, a mother and a lawyer, I can attest to that.

This profession is simply not "zoned" for families. Period.

My love of the law overlooked that point - I knew that I would never want to work for a big law firm as a drone, but even smaller law firms do the same thing. The snobbiness of the profession also didn't help - only the top 10% of the top ten schools get the really "good" jobs it seems, regardless of actual real world skill. I've heard stories about young lawyers from Harvard being more incompetent than lawyers from lower tier schools. I mean, I know the opposite can also be true, which is why school name and rank should not necessarily be deciding factors even for the interview process.

It's a profession! It means you need to practice it in the real world in order to become fully competent at it. Like doctors. In my opinion, your 3rd year of law school should be required hands-on experience and law firms should not be allowed to just pick the top 10 of the top 10. It's a freakin' profession and everybody needs practice. I mean, I know that is more "socialist" than I care to admit, but it just makes no sense. I mean what do doctors do to get experience? Does it make sense to allow a certain percentage of people to get into medical school, but only a smaller percentage than that to get the experience required to be a doctor?

Frankly, it's also just a money machine - I mean what did 4 years of undergrad do for me in law school? Absolutely nothing. In the UK, I would have been a lawyer at 22 instead of 27 or 28. And I would have saved a ton of money doing it. Then you hear that law school doesn't teach you how to pass the Bar. No, I have to pay someone else a few thousand to teach me that!

Uugh, it makes no sense!

Sorry if that sounded angry. These are my biggest pet peeves about this profession and I always wished I could do something to change it. Yeah, right, good luck to me!

I guess the one good thing is that, even for a woman, you can be your own boss, make your own hours, etc. when you are a lawyer. Not that it's not difficult to do so, but at least the option is there. Can't really say that about many other career choices.

That's why I do what I do - independent contractor for one attorney. He's helpful, mentoring, and I have time to figure out how to build my own business without the hassle of lots of overhead since he's paying for my office space. All I'd have to worry about is my own phone line, advertising, and certain other little things. I may not make those big bucks, but I can do what I love without becoming a statistic.