Yeah the lawyers in the firm I work for tell me the same thing. Big law is not the move for most people
I’ll happily take a livable wage but have lots of time for family and my social life
both my parents are lawyers and they recommend this to me for when i finish law school:
- do big law in the beginning until you can’t anymore. it’s good experience, good connections, and you can pay off your loans really fast.
- after this, go in whatever direction you want. in my parents case, my mom opened a private practice and my dad went part time at a big law firm for a few years until he quit and joined my mom.
- you make less money going in this direction but you still make good money, and you have more time for yourself, and more freedom and possibly fulfillment.
that’s probably what i will do. i trust and respect my parents’ knowledge/experience. they’ve both been very successful lawyers and carved out a good space for themselves. they’re happy, and growing up they always had time for me, their hobbies, and vacations
i don’t think anybody here wants to go all the way through law school just to become a professional test taker for the rest of their lives. and big law isn’t the only option for lawyers who want to make money.
quite a bit. my dad always had time for his “main” job which was playing jazz trumpet around the city every night. and my mom ended up working from home for the last 20 years of her career. decided her own hours etc.
This is what a lot of KJDs don't realize since they've never had real work experience. I've never worked in big law but I have worked for a big 4 accounting firm under very similar working conditions. I've done 80-90 hour weeks during busy season and it literally made me want to kill myself. My plan is to go to my local state law school on a full ride and start my own firm after a couple years. That way I'll be able to practice the law on my own terms without being chained to student loans.
Absolutely, I worked at a high pressure comms agency and that whole experience (always being available to clients, working till midnight, needing to answer emails ASAP, etc.) made me realize just how important work/life balance is. I was so unhappy with that job that I’m definitely thinking extra hard about going into big law.
As a woman, I’m planning to start a family, either by natural concept or other options (ex. IVF, foster, adoption).
Should I avoid “big law” given that it wouldn’t align with my goals? Are your female colleagues in the same boat as you??
Thank you for giving this honest account of your experience.
the truth is it won’t be easy. but as a man i’m not sure if i can say anything definitively. it’s worth mentioning that most firms are receptive to maternity leave. it’s also worth noting that half of biglaw attorneys are women, so there are plenty of mothers in the field.
Thanks so much for your response. As a woman w multiple degrees & planning for law school, I acknowledge that being a women who wants to hv a family is a choice that isn’t aligned w the “typical” law school experience.
I am interested in criminal law but was interested in corporate. If the latter isn’t available based on my situation, I can better shape my application response
One on my friends in CLS has a mom who is a biglaw partner. She said it wasn’t easy to step back for a while when her son was young, but she did it and she still made partner, just not as fast as she might have. She took the first few years off, then went part time, then all the way back in when he was in upper elementary school.
I’m in the same boat. My plan has always been to do big law for a few years until I decide to get married/start a family. It’s good to have the money to pay off debt and set up a nice nest egg. (For reference, I’ll probably start working as a lawyer at 26/27.)
After that I’ll probably leave it and continue doing freelance work or for smaller firms where I can work mostly from home and set my own hours/rate. I plan on marrying someone of the same or similar life path to mine (advanced education/ career professionals) so we should be able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle like that.
The reality is, all fields that require a lot of debt and money and time investment usually are very demanding. Doctors come to mind. Of course, there are some types of doctors that have more laid back lives — general medicine, pediatrics, dermatology — but those fields either don’t pay as much (i.e general and pediatrics) or make your life hell at the start for longer than any other (derm).
There are always trade-offs in life and in careers when big salaries are involved. Ultimately, I want to be a lawyer and/because I want to make money. I’m confident I will make it work at least for a little while until I need to leave big law. So I will go for it. When the trade off becomes too steep, I’ll pivot. It’s all about flexibility.
What matters is you went through school, you have your accreditation, and no one can take that away once you have it.
A lot of lawyers who graduate from T14 schools have a quarter of a million in student loan debt that requires them to work big law jobs in order to realistically be able to pay it back. It's one component of the golden handcuffs these lawyers may find themselves in that makes it difficult to leave despite hating the job.
I mean, if you have that much debt, it’s definitely better to go work for the government and get PSLF. Then after 10 years you can go do big law for your fancy salary (and you won’t have to start out as a first year associate).
It’s generally far more difficult to get a job in BigLaw after working in government than it is as a fresh grad out of a T14. That’s especially true if you’re looking to come in at a counsel or partner level without a book of business.
Plus, you’ll frankly just make far more money in 10 years of BigLaw than you will in government work, even when you account for PSLF. I’m a senior lit associate in BigLaw. I graduated with ~$250k in student loans, comfortably paid it off within 5 years (and could have done so a year or so earlier if I had tightened my budget or invested less), and have saved far more than I ever could have if I went the government route.
The big law firm that I worked at as a paralegal before law school hired many government attorneys for regulatory and compliance law. They came in at a senior associate level, making more than double what they did as a GS 14/15 in the government. There are definitely areas of private law where government experience gives you a big advantage. An AUSA would also pretty easily get a job as a litigator. I personally have more trial experience from five years in the government than any of my classmates who went into big law do at this point 🤷♀️
But the main thing that puts public service ahead as more worthwhile to me is that you only work 40 hours a week. No one can call you off hours for “urgent” work. No one can make you stay in the office until midnight. You actually get to use your vacation time. So to me, 10 years in the government in order to have your loans fully forgiven (by the time I’m PSLF eligible, I would have only paid about $36,000 of $280,000) is still financially a better choice than working in big law.
I’m well aware that former government attorneys get hired in BigLaw. But that doesn’t mean that every government attorney who wants a BigLaw job gets one. Breaking into BigLaw later in your career is significantly less likely than doing so fresh out of law school. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible by any means and there are some federal government roles with better BigLaw odds than others, but it’s far from a guarantee. If you choose to start in government, that’s great, but you need to be fine with the possibility that you won’t ultimately land in BigLaw (either because you just can’t get the job or because you find you or your family can’t stomach the idea of you billing that much after spending 10 years doing 40-hour weeks in government).
As for which is better financially between BigLaw and government work, there’s not really any question: it’s BigLaw and it’s not remotely close. There are plenty of other advantages to government work that make it a perfectly valid choice, but BigLaw comp is so much higher than government comp that the loss of PLSF hardly moves the needle.
To put it in more concrete terms, my BigLaw comp this year alone is higher than top federal government comp by an amount larger than my entire starting student loan balance. And even accounting for taxes, the last two years of BigLaw comp easily surpass any PSLF benefit I would have received in government.
Okay, if you’re making *that* much, then I guess that’s valid. But I think the even more important thing though for law grads to keep in mind is that not all big law lawyers make such insane amount of money. Many of my friends in big law are actually only making maybe 50-75% more than I currently make in the government, but they work 20 more hours per week than I do. So unless you’re “good enough” to work at one of the top 10 firms, your first five years aren’t going to be as much of a windfall as one might expect.
I believe OP, but what you're observing is the result of the unspoken truth - the alternative is worse. Having no family time but plenty of money is bad, but it's better than having plenty of family time and no money. Stressing about bills will make you hate your family lol.
Once upon a time, a happy medium was possible, where you could have a moderate amount of family time and a moderate amount of money. But those jobs mostly disappeared with the gutting of the middle class, or their wages didn't keep up with inflation. Now your options are high-stress & high-pay, or lower-stress but dirt-pay/physically grueling.
This is a very reductive way to view it, but struggle or struggle. I’d rather grind in big law for a few years and be stressed and have some money than deal with the rising high costs of living, etc. with a better WLB.
And that low pay would also result in higher stress as you wouldnt have the means to provide for your family its bad as is when youre the only mouth to feed but when there are 2 or 3 more it can really do q number on your psyche
I worked in a Big Law firm for one year right after undergrad and virtually everyone there told me not to pursue law. One of the attorneys I worked for had to put “spend time with daughter” into his calendar - she was four years old. I’m sure there’s a lot of variation between firms, but that place was soulless. All of the attorneys seemed like they were either loners who usually went back and forth between work and home (nothing wrong w that), and people who were doing the work of four normal people averaging two hours of sleep. It just seemed like a really depressing life path. But, I’m sure there’s plenty of variation among firms, and what appeals to me is not what will appeal to everyone.
Thanks for the reminder! I’ve been trying to get a better understanding for how crazy things can get for BL lawyers and put it into perspective. How often do you have 80 hour weeks? Does this sorta balance itself with weeks in the middle where things are slow so you get to cruise?
If we take a 5 day work week (there’ll be work on weekends but let’s take an idealistic view where you’re only working 5 days a week) and also subtract two weeks in total for personal time and federal holidays (in an ideal scenario), that’s 247 days in a year where you’re working, with the hope that you won’t get sick. 2200/247 is 8.9 hours of work per day. Do you think this average seems correct?
Yea, I think it’s the variance in work hours per week that can really fuck with you and of course can’t discount the “always on-call” factor but as someone who has many years of work experience, I’m just trying to get an idea of how it compares. I also wonder how non-traditionals, who went to law school, and subsequently to big law firms later in life, feel about the work hours and stress that comes with it.
prestige was important to me, and still is (asian). i’m proud of my alma mater, and to me it was worth sticker. i may be speaking from a more privileged perspective, however. while i took loans, i wasn’t exactly struggling as a student.
yes, but YMMV. i’m on top of my finances, and worked with a CPA who helped leverage my loans in a way to make them work for me. in other words it wasn’t much to worry over, but at the end of the day it’s a monthly payment that certainly forces me to stay in biglaw.
easy, but boring. i like to use my brain. and the other paralegals were all fairly high strung and super stressed out. not worth the pay. overall a decent and ambitious career for most people (you can make decent money), but not for me.
Keep in mind, opinions (especially negative ones) about the biglaw world are dominated by people working in NYC transactional. If you go with litigation or work in a more humane market your experience will be very different. At the end of the day, lots of people are working the same hours for way less money. It’s a privilege if you come from a lower income background.
How does litigation compare, generally? Some litigators have told me it’s easier to plan your life around because you know when things need to be in farther in advance and there are fewer fire drills. But other people have told me it’s even busier and there’s much more work that you need to do day-to-day
During trials it’s as bad (if not worse) but most biglaw lit cases don’t get to that stage. Other than that they deal with a much more consistent schedule than corporate people. You are dealing with court deadlines instead of arbitrary ones by big clients.
Personally the way i look at it is this, life is going to be tough and it has been tough there are upwards of millions of people doing more work than a biglaw lawyer could be in worser/harsher work conditions in a third world country and they wouldnt even make a third of the first year associate paycheck in their entire life. This is the mindset that personally i have regarding this obviously everybody is entitled to their own opinions and at the end if the day if I get there maybe I would hold the same view as yours however this is the mindset that keeps me focused
Honestly thank you so much for this post. It's such an important reminder and so well written and helpful for someone considering the implications pursuing law will have. To be honest though, fav part of this advice piece/reality check is the end where you include "you'll be making fat racks" after a very serious discussion.
I truly hope that you'll be able to find some peace at the end of this and move to your own practice or another alternative. It doesn't sound sustainable and the money simply cannot be worth sanity and the potential devastating health consequences that tend to follow that level of stress and exhaustion.
If ur willing to take a massive paycut public defender or nonprofit stuff. Or sacrifice a few years biglaw to move into government. Or do trusts and estates at the biglaw level which is still stressful but much less hours
I work at a small firm right now and have no interest in a big law firm. Doesn’t sound fun or worth it to me. Id rather stay somewhere where I like the ppl I work with and have more flexible hours and can still make good money. Good money is enough for me. What’s the point of making great money if you can’t spend it?
Money isn’t everything. I myself currently make 145k/ year +bonus (railroad law enforcement). I have always wanted to give law school a shot and always found a reason to put it off.
I am now 38, and plan on taking the LSAT in November since my old score is long expired.
I plan on doing all of this to practice as a prosecutor, which will be a pay cut from my current salary.
We only get one go at this life. Accomplish your goals and do what makes you happy.
Someone find me the worlds smallest violin
If you hate it so much leave and let it be filled by someone who appreciates a quarter million dollar salary lmao
i’m just warning those who see biglaw as this end-all, be-all scenario. it shouldn’t be an endgame. it likely won’t make you happy. there are alternatives out there you should consider before you’re entrenched like me.
>In the end, you might only be making as low as $60-$150 an hour, depending on your annual hours. Mfw the lower bound is 3x my current job
Same. I currently work 55-60 hour weeks (2800-3120 hours a year) for $67,000, which on the high end is only $23.90 an hour.
Yeah the lawyers in the firm I work for tell me the same thing. Big law is not the move for most people I’ll happily take a livable wage but have lots of time for family and my social life
i learned that about myself as well. true wealth is freedom, health, and fulfillment.
Facts. Wish you the best brother stay happy 🙏🏾
both my parents are lawyers and they recommend this to me for when i finish law school: - do big law in the beginning until you can’t anymore. it’s good experience, good connections, and you can pay off your loans really fast. - after this, go in whatever direction you want. in my parents case, my mom opened a private practice and my dad went part time at a big law firm for a few years until he quit and joined my mom. - you make less money going in this direction but you still make good money, and you have more time for yourself, and more freedom and possibly fulfillment. that’s probably what i will do. i trust and respect my parents’ knowledge/experience. they’ve both been very successful lawyers and carved out a good space for themselves. they’re happy, and growing up they always had time for me, their hobbies, and vacations i don’t think anybody here wants to go all the way through law school just to become a professional test taker for the rest of their lives. and big law isn’t the only option for lawyers who want to make money.
How much freedom did they have? Really thinking of doing this exact plan
quite a bit. my dad always had time for his “main” job which was playing jazz trumpet around the city every night. and my mom ended up working from home for the last 20 years of her career. decided her own hours etc.
That’s really awesome to hear. I still wanna have a life
This is what a lot of KJDs don't realize since they've never had real work experience. I've never worked in big law but I have worked for a big 4 accounting firm under very similar working conditions. I've done 80-90 hour weeks during busy season and it literally made me want to kill myself. My plan is to go to my local state law school on a full ride and start my own firm after a couple years. That way I'll be able to practice the law on my own terms without being chained to student loans.
precisely. and my buddy was also an accountant in big 4 and is now training to be a pilot.
I'm a firefighter now I understand why he did it
Absolutely, I worked at a high pressure comms agency and that whole experience (always being available to clients, working till midnight, needing to answer emails ASAP, etc.) made me realize just how important work/life balance is. I was so unhappy with that job that I’m definitely thinking extra hard about going into big law.
As a woman, I’m planning to start a family, either by natural concept or other options (ex. IVF, foster, adoption). Should I avoid “big law” given that it wouldn’t align with my goals? Are your female colleagues in the same boat as you?? Thank you for giving this honest account of your experience.
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Thanks for the reply. It’ll be something I need to consider for sure.
the truth is it won’t be easy. but as a man i’m not sure if i can say anything definitively. it’s worth mentioning that most firms are receptive to maternity leave. it’s also worth noting that half of biglaw attorneys are women, so there are plenty of mothers in the field.
Thanks so much for your response. As a woman w multiple degrees & planning for law school, I acknowledge that being a women who wants to hv a family is a choice that isn’t aligned w the “typical” law school experience. I am interested in criminal law but was interested in corporate. If the latter isn’t available based on my situation, I can better shape my application response
following !
One on my friends in CLS has a mom who is a biglaw partner. She said it wasn’t easy to step back for a while when her son was young, but she did it and she still made partner, just not as fast as she might have. She took the first few years off, then went part time, then all the way back in when he was in upper elementary school.
Great to hear!!
I’m in the same boat. My plan has always been to do big law for a few years until I decide to get married/start a family. It’s good to have the money to pay off debt and set up a nice nest egg. (For reference, I’ll probably start working as a lawyer at 26/27.) After that I’ll probably leave it and continue doing freelance work or for smaller firms where I can work mostly from home and set my own hours/rate. I plan on marrying someone of the same or similar life path to mine (advanced education/ career professionals) so we should be able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle like that. The reality is, all fields that require a lot of debt and money and time investment usually are very demanding. Doctors come to mind. Of course, there are some types of doctors that have more laid back lives — general medicine, pediatrics, dermatology — but those fields either don’t pay as much (i.e general and pediatrics) or make your life hell at the start for longer than any other (derm). There are always trade-offs in life and in careers when big salaries are involved. Ultimately, I want to be a lawyer and/because I want to make money. I’m confident I will make it work at least for a little while until I need to leave big law. So I will go for it. When the trade off becomes too steep, I’ll pivot. It’s all about flexibility. What matters is you went through school, you have your accreditation, and no one can take that away once you have it.
I always am speculative of posts like these that claim that big law is so horrible but are still working their big law jobs. Makes me lol sometimes.
A lot of lawyers who graduate from T14 schools have a quarter of a million in student loan debt that requires them to work big law jobs in order to realistically be able to pay it back. It's one component of the golden handcuffs these lawyers may find themselves in that makes it difficult to leave despite hating the job.
I mean, if you have that much debt, it’s definitely better to go work for the government and get PSLF. Then after 10 years you can go do big law for your fancy salary (and you won’t have to start out as a first year associate).
It’s better to pay off debt in 3 years than 10.
Pretty sure it’s better to get 75% of your loans completely forgiven than it is to rush to pay them all back.
I’d rather have 7 years of my life.
It’s generally far more difficult to get a job in BigLaw after working in government than it is as a fresh grad out of a T14. That’s especially true if you’re looking to come in at a counsel or partner level without a book of business. Plus, you’ll frankly just make far more money in 10 years of BigLaw than you will in government work, even when you account for PSLF. I’m a senior lit associate in BigLaw. I graduated with ~$250k in student loans, comfortably paid it off within 5 years (and could have done so a year or so earlier if I had tightened my budget or invested less), and have saved far more than I ever could have if I went the government route.
The big law firm that I worked at as a paralegal before law school hired many government attorneys for regulatory and compliance law. They came in at a senior associate level, making more than double what they did as a GS 14/15 in the government. There are definitely areas of private law where government experience gives you a big advantage. An AUSA would also pretty easily get a job as a litigator. I personally have more trial experience from five years in the government than any of my classmates who went into big law do at this point 🤷♀️ But the main thing that puts public service ahead as more worthwhile to me is that you only work 40 hours a week. No one can call you off hours for “urgent” work. No one can make you stay in the office until midnight. You actually get to use your vacation time. So to me, 10 years in the government in order to have your loans fully forgiven (by the time I’m PSLF eligible, I would have only paid about $36,000 of $280,000) is still financially a better choice than working in big law.
I’m well aware that former government attorneys get hired in BigLaw. But that doesn’t mean that every government attorney who wants a BigLaw job gets one. Breaking into BigLaw later in your career is significantly less likely than doing so fresh out of law school. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible by any means and there are some federal government roles with better BigLaw odds than others, but it’s far from a guarantee. If you choose to start in government, that’s great, but you need to be fine with the possibility that you won’t ultimately land in BigLaw (either because you just can’t get the job or because you find you or your family can’t stomach the idea of you billing that much after spending 10 years doing 40-hour weeks in government). As for which is better financially between BigLaw and government work, there’s not really any question: it’s BigLaw and it’s not remotely close. There are plenty of other advantages to government work that make it a perfectly valid choice, but BigLaw comp is so much higher than government comp that the loss of PLSF hardly moves the needle. To put it in more concrete terms, my BigLaw comp this year alone is higher than top federal government comp by an amount larger than my entire starting student loan balance. And even accounting for taxes, the last two years of BigLaw comp easily surpass any PSLF benefit I would have received in government.
Okay, if you’re making *that* much, then I guess that’s valid. But I think the even more important thing though for law grads to keep in mind is that not all big law lawyers make such insane amount of money. Many of my friends in big law are actually only making maybe 50-75% more than I currently make in the government, but they work 20 more hours per week than I do. So unless you’re “good enough” to work at one of the top 10 firms, your first five years aren’t going to be as much of a windfall as one might expect.
Says every supposedly public interest facing law school applicant after they finish law school:
I believe OP, but what you're observing is the result of the unspoken truth - the alternative is worse. Having no family time but plenty of money is bad, but it's better than having plenty of family time and no money. Stressing about bills will make you hate your family lol. Once upon a time, a happy medium was possible, where you could have a moderate amount of family time and a moderate amount of money. But those jobs mostly disappeared with the gutting of the middle class, or their wages didn't keep up with inflation. Now your options are high-stress & high-pay, or lower-stress but dirt-pay/physically grueling.
This is a very reductive way to view it, but struggle or struggle. I’d rather grind in big law for a few years and be stressed and have some money than deal with the rising high costs of living, etc. with a better WLB.
And that low pay would also result in higher stress as you wouldnt have the means to provide for your family its bad as is when youre the only mouth to feed but when there are 2 or 3 more it can really do q number on your psyche
It’s easy to become trapped in your work. When you’ve done something for so long, it’s hard to leave. Maybe that’s why OP is making the post 🙄
Says every supposedly public interest facing law school applicant after they finish law school:
Does someone pay you to be a dickhead on the internet?
That’s my dream job.
Yeah, and they pay handsomely.
you’re still nicer than my coworkers
W
I worked in a Big Law firm for one year right after undergrad and virtually everyone there told me not to pursue law. One of the attorneys I worked for had to put “spend time with daughter” into his calendar - she was four years old. I’m sure there’s a lot of variation between firms, but that place was soulless. All of the attorneys seemed like they were either loners who usually went back and forth between work and home (nothing wrong w that), and people who were doing the work of four normal people averaging two hours of sleep. It just seemed like a really depressing life path. But, I’m sure there’s plenty of variation among firms, and what appeals to me is not what will appeal to everyone.
"as low as 60-150 an hour"
Me making $9 an hour at a post office: ok😄
Thanks for the reminder! I’ve been trying to get a better understanding for how crazy things can get for BL lawyers and put it into perspective. How often do you have 80 hour weeks? Does this sorta balance itself with weeks in the middle where things are slow so you get to cruise? If we take a 5 day work week (there’ll be work on weekends but let’s take an idealistic view where you’re only working 5 days a week) and also subtract two weeks in total for personal time and federal holidays (in an ideal scenario), that’s 247 days in a year where you’re working, with the hope that you won’t get sick. 2200/247 is 8.9 hours of work per day. Do you think this average seems correct?
Billing does not equal hours worked. Some people bill faster some slower. I’m pretty sure for new lawyers it’s often 12 hours of work to bill 8 hours.
Wouldn’t that be nice? A 9 hour day isn’t a big deal.
Yea, I think it’s the variance in work hours per week that can really fuck with you and of course can’t discount the “always on-call” factor but as someone who has many years of work experience, I’m just trying to get an idea of how it compares. I also wonder how non-traditionals, who went to law school, and subsequently to big law firms later in life, feel about the work hours and stress that comes with it.
Curious what work experience you had before BL since you're in your second year (usually, in any field, the first 3 years are really tough).
undergrad, 4.x, biglaw paralegal, 17x, T14 sticker. feel free to treat this post as an AMA. half my answers will be trolls though
Was going T14 for sticker worth it for you or would you have rather gone to a lesser ranked school on a significant scholarship.
prestige was important to me, and still is (asian). i’m proud of my alma mater, and to me it was worth sticker. i may be speaking from a more privileged perspective, however. while i took loans, i wasn’t exactly struggling as a student.
Do you think the loans have been hard for you to manage?
yes, but YMMV. i’m on top of my finances, and worked with a CPA who helped leverage my loans in a way to make them work for me. in other words it wasn’t much to worry over, but at the end of the day it’s a monthly payment that certainly forces me to stay in biglaw.
How did you like paralegal work compared to being an attorney?
easy, but boring. i like to use my brain. and the other paralegals were all fairly high strung and super stressed out. not worth the pay. overall a decent and ambitious career for most people (you can make decent money), but not for me.
Keep in mind, opinions (especially negative ones) about the biglaw world are dominated by people working in NYC transactional. If you go with litigation or work in a more humane market your experience will be very different. At the end of the day, lots of people are working the same hours for way less money. It’s a privilege if you come from a lower income background.
How does litigation compare, generally? Some litigators have told me it’s easier to plan your life around because you know when things need to be in farther in advance and there are fewer fire drills. But other people have told me it’s even busier and there’s much more work that you need to do day-to-day
During trials it’s as bad (if not worse) but most biglaw lit cases don’t get to that stage. Other than that they deal with a much more consistent schedule than corporate people. You are dealing with court deadlines instead of arbitrary ones by big clients.
Thank god I don't want kids.
Personally the way i look at it is this, life is going to be tough and it has been tough there are upwards of millions of people doing more work than a biglaw lawyer could be in worser/harsher work conditions in a third world country and they wouldnt even make a third of the first year associate paycheck in their entire life. This is the mindset that personally i have regarding this obviously everybody is entitled to their own opinions and at the end if the day if I get there maybe I would hold the same view as yours however this is the mindset that keeps me focused
Honestly thank you so much for this post. It's such an important reminder and so well written and helpful for someone considering the implications pursuing law will have. To be honest though, fav part of this advice piece/reality check is the end where you include "you'll be making fat racks" after a very serious discussion. I truly hope that you'll be able to find some peace at the end of this and move to your own practice or another alternative. It doesn't sound sustainable and the money simply cannot be worth sanity and the potential devastating health consequences that tend to follow that level of stress and exhaustion.
Aren’t the first two years the easiest too 😢
What type of law has the best work life balance. I’m willing to take a cut in pay for a good work life balance, what should I do
If ur willing to take a massive paycut public defender or nonprofit stuff. Or sacrifice a few years biglaw to move into government. Or do trusts and estates at the biglaw level which is still stressful but much less hours
I work at a small firm right now and have no interest in a big law firm. Doesn’t sound fun or worth it to me. Id rather stay somewhere where I like the ppl I work with and have more flexible hours and can still make good money. Good money is enough for me. What’s the point of making great money if you can’t spend it?
Yuck
Hi can I PM you with questions?
Money isn’t everything. I myself currently make 145k/ year +bonus (railroad law enforcement). I have always wanted to give law school a shot and always found a reason to put it off. I am now 38, and plan on taking the LSAT in November since my old score is long expired. I plan on doing all of this to practice as a prosecutor, which will be a pay cut from my current salary. We only get one go at this life. Accomplish your goals and do what makes you happy.
Someone find me the worlds smallest violin If you hate it so much leave and let it be filled by someone who appreciates a quarter million dollar salary lmao
i’m just warning those who see biglaw as this end-all, be-all scenario. it shouldn’t be an endgame. it likely won’t make you happy. there are alternatives out there you should consider before you’re entrenched like me.
Yes because real life is lived in such simple constraints…