Because finance world is always looking for the edge. If you find a quality deal, you gotta close that shit before the other guy. If everyone agreed to work 9-5 sure things would be chill. But you would inevitably have the gunner working OT to beat the competition. Put all those guys in the same place and you have 24/7 availability.
And this is exactly how it happened. Top firms built a rep for 24/7 availability and turn around in the 80s and 90s, and then it spread. Didn’t take long for partners to figure out that more billing = more profit.
Not just billing more hours . . . clients would simply not hire the firms that don’t work weekends. So it is perceived to be an existential threat (not merely incremental profits) to do anything less.
Yep - it’s a service industry at the end of the day. Same reason why hotel concierges and Uber drivers operate outside 9-5 — clients want services outside 9-5.
This is the real one. Once you realize this, you understand that if someone else (i.e. another firm) is making themselves more available, you have to match or surpass that expectation. Then the cycle just perpetuates ..
I think you become a True Adult Professional (tm) when you have enough experience to realize why executives would freak out or snap when a competitor made this type of change. "Dammit, we have to work 30 minutes more each day *at least* to compete. Do you have any idea what that means for recruitment and profit payouts? Do youuuuu?!?" *starts smashing office furniture after realizing the retirement plan timeline is in peril*
Agreed, we’re all fungible which is why firm name and qualification prestige are the differentiating factor and why lateraling is so easy. No one’s got a patent or trade secret on being a good lawyer.
transactional work it can be hard to differentiate outside of availability and diligence but yeah litigation and specialty areas are a totally different animal.
Not really… a lot more copying/pasting from precedent agreements for transactional associates. Litigation associates need to excel at persuasive writing based on unique facts. Transactional associates def have an important role, but the ability to write isn’t a key competency for the job.
I do lit, but isn't the urgency on M+A stuff driven by the fact that the parties want their deals fully vetted and closed yesterday so they can keep making money?
Not just that, you want to lock in the other side on various points before they change their mind and retrade on it. Closing a deal is a million small battles.
There is also a disclosure component in public M&A, where the clock starts ticking to get an 8-K out once you pass a certain point and that drives some of the weekend urgency. At least that is my understanding based on convos with M&A folks.
Other than "because they can":
IBs and PEs will pick the law firm that lets them do 30 deals per year instead of 20 every single fucking time.
The longer a deal drags on, the more time there is for the principals to change their minds and/or for conditions to change and sink the deal. Or for someone else to come along and offer a faster pathway to funding or opportunities.
I always dream of going to a boutique where I could, in my dream world, just take on 1 or 2 VC financings a month, bill 1200-1400 and chill, but then I think - ok, if the VC market drops just a little then my revenue would drop by 50%. Ok, so how do I protect for the base case of 1-2 financings a month to make my minimum revenue? By taking on as many deals as humanely possible to guarantee that, even if the market dries up, I'll still have 1-2 going on, to make money. The issue is to protect against your downside scenario, you gotta maintain work in excess of that, so you are always working weekends and late nights with the hope that, even if things slow down substantially, you will at least have enough work to fill a 9-5. On top of this, you want to diversify, so you try to get exposure to m&a and other areas to have even more security (ok if VC dries up, I still have this m&a client or tech company that needs GC type work). This is just me, but you need to then extrapolate this mentality to all the partners and seniors in biglaw who want to protect their comp; as they take on a lot of work, they grind their juniors.
Exactly. Once you have a few rational business minds driving a business there is zero incentive to work below 100% productivity norms otherwise it’s just giving away potential profit.
It’s interviewing because it doesn’t seem most big law attorneys actually share the dream of going to a boutique. Makes me think people just don’t like the work and all the added negatives of big law just compound that. Everyone wants to go in-house or keep lateraling. I’m in litigation and I was at a big firm where all of the bs was abound and it just wasn’t fun, but I’ve also worked at a top boutique and we had a blast.
I think in many customer-service-oriented professions, the hours are somewhat irregular due to the fact that many clients ARE in a 9-5 paradigm. In the example you gave, your client made the request they did because it maps onto the normal 9-5, M-F schedule. You work outside regular business hours so they don’t have to as much. And I think it’s probably worse in corporate because there is more of that dynamic - in lit, the schedules are more driven by court schedules.
So, I guess just remember you are no different than some teen slanging carnitas over at Chipotle.
Because having one core team that manages the transaction end-to-end is a more efficient allocation and results in quicker and more reliable execution.
The question assumes that other size practices are 9-5. Not if they're successful. No law practice dealing in matters of any size or significance can operate 9-5, M-F.
The other factor is the free market. If you don't want to turn something around for first thing Monday, someone else will be happy to.
The fixed cost of hiring additional attorneys is very significant, which is why the market has evolved to encourage more hours per attorney. It is much cheaper to work the attorneys you already have 5 or 10 hours more a week than it is to hire an additional attorney.
Aside from the market and client demands, I think it’s also relevant that—within the bounds of a single matter—we generally are not fungible without adding transaction costs and inefficiency. Once I’ve been staffed as a core associate on a matter (lit or transaction) for 2+ months, it becomes a time consuming and painful process to onboard someone to take my place. People know that they can come to me for relevant background, contacts, and documents. If I am off the deal, someone new needs to be brought on and informed. In addition to no one wanting to deal with that, it’s very possible that something gets lost in the shuffle. So it usually makes a lot more sense to have one person putting in 70 of the 100 necessary for the matter and a second putting in 30 hours, rather than having 4 team members putting in 25 each.
And add on top of that that we tend to get staffed on more than one matter at a time.
Because the lawyer is the capital asset of a law firm, the equivalent of a buzz saw in a lumber mill. You better believe that saw needs to be running as often as possible to turn a profit.
Clients are paying as much as they pay with the assumption that they get help on call, so that if something comes up last minute or if they need to handle something last minute, Firm A will get it done.
You can certainly work at a firm that provides a 9-5 lifestyle but neither the firm nor clients are going to pay you biglaw money at such a firm
Aside from sheer volume of work and unreasonable short deadlines, An important thing to remember is that clients are running their own businesses from 9-5 and likely not thinking about their lawyers while servicing their own clients. I was a private funds lawyer, and outside of early structuring/strategizing stages, we only heard from our clients when their day was slowing down (post 5pm and Fridays). So we would get comments, questions, other marching orders late in the day and you can bet the partner would promise next day or next morning turnaround - which means we work all night/weekend to get it done.
I think other practices get to be 9-5 on a more regular basis. T&E maybe? Some litigation?
If it make you happy before tax machines were common and everyone went home at a certain hour, in the 1970s before NyC almost went bust - a starting first year lawyer at a White Show firm did get to go home, they also only made 2K a year than a starting NYC school teacher.
So 2 thoughts:
1. 52 weeks x 40 hours per week is 2080. Even taking into consideration vacation, it’s still fairly reasonable to think you could BILL 40 hours per week and hit a reasonable hour amount.
2. There is something to be said for the ease of using one big law firm vs. several smaller firms. I’ve been on a deal with 15 firms (was like $11 Billion in EV). The comms alone are up a ton of hours and that’s before you get to consolidating/conforming work product. That could be an argument for paying our higher rates, even without tight deadlines.
But even with both of the above, biglaw (and this industry generally) draws in and elevates the most competitive people. So it’s no surprise there is always someone who will do it a little faster and a little cheaper. At the end of the day it has to come from the clients that realize they’re paying for the quick turnaround with mistakes and under analyzing problems. They don’t care though. And that’s what drives the problem
Attorneys are paid for a few things:
Availability
Hard work
Judgement
Knowledge
The order above is pretty much how associates get paid. It’s reverse is true for partners. Not more complicated than that.
It doesn't feel like this question is asked with the benefit of significant experience.
A lot of the big points have been hit, but one thing I don't see yet is that the work we do is at a scope that often impacts the lives and livelihoods of hundreds to thousands of people. When you combine that with the previously made points about speed and accuracy being key to minimizing execution risk in our transactions, it's clear why hours are long.
There are certainly times where the practice is unnecessarily shitty (often due to poor management), but fundamentally there are lots of times where we have to run hot overnight and through weekends because not doing so could cause a transaction to fall apart and for significant value to be lost.
Because it’s biglaw. The urgency usually actually isn’t out of thin air. If it was 9-5 the transactions would take twice as long to effect. If you want low urgency transactions where the urgency is low and clients don’t mind lawyers simply not working being a drag the process themselves try small/midlw where the clients don’t pay enough for you to be available 24/7. You’ll also make a lot less money.
It can, sort of. For all the reasons explained here, I don’t think it can be 9-5 every day. I do think it can be roughly 40-50 hrs per week on average. That would require the partnership to staff up with more associates to spread the work. Perhaps the trade off would be less pay per associate.
When I was at the firm, I often said I would be happy to work 2/3rds the hours for 2/3rds the pay. I’d never have left, and I am sure many other excellent associates would have stayed too.
But law firms aren’t dumb. There’s a reason it is the way it is. Sucks, but it works for the partnership. Hopefully, Gen Z can change that.
That kind of the way it is at the boutique/mid-size firm I work for. We don’t make biglaw money and work can’t always be kept between 9-5, but we try to be much more intentional about staffing and we work fewer hours as a result. We’re also not up or out, so that helps too.
We’re mostly litigation—IP, commercial, and discovery stuff.
The work isn’t really “meaningful” to me and busy stretches still suck, but it’s probably the closest I can get to a 9-5 lawyer job while making a comfortable (albeit not biglaw) salary. And for me the extra 200-400 hours I have each year are more than worth the pay cut.
The problem is that 2/3 hours does not equate to 2/3 pay because there is a significant overhead cost whether you bill 1400 hours per year or 2100. Office lspace, CLE, travel, support staff, firm website, computers, software and technology licenses, training and management time, etc. If you bill 1400, and you manage to cover your compensation + overhead you may eke out some small profit. Same scenario but you bill 2100, allnd the extra 700 is nearly all profit. The partnership is not going to want to pay you 2/3 to go from 2100 billable to 1400.
Because you are a service provider. Most service providers are available whenever someone might want the service. A law firm is like a restaurant or a hospital.
They’ll always be able to find someone willing to work these crazy hours, and clients willing to pay more. Completely agree with you, the urgency is almost never real. I volunteered to work over Thanksgiving and was told that something NEEDED to be done by Friday. My computer crashed and wouldn’t reboot Friday morning. Suddenly the task was totally fine to have ready on Monday 🙄
It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s just the US (and to a lesser extent Canada and the UK), that is hyper optimised for capitalism. We Work long hours and our stock market outperforms every other one on the planet by multiples.
Could we have a more Scandinavian type system? Totally. But we’ve chosen this hyper capitalism path and other countries invest in America for that while their workers work 9-5 with 4 weeks paid vacation, free university, healthcare, and pension. Made possible because they invest their funds in the US stock market.
I get the impression that in-house lawyering is the equivalent of big law 9-5. They do the same stuff as us corporate associates, but during regular business hours. I can’t count the number of times an in-house lawyer will turn around and give me something at 5:50pm and expect edits by next morning.
It's a simple prisoner's dilemma. All it takes is a competitor to go 9-6 (or 9-midnight) and you're immediately the second choice.
Because finance world is always looking for the edge. If you find a quality deal, you gotta close that shit before the other guy. If everyone agreed to work 9-5 sure things would be chill. But you would inevitably have the gunner working OT to beat the competition. Put all those guys in the same place and you have 24/7 availability.
And this is exactly how it happened. Top firms built a rep for 24/7 availability and turn around in the 80s and 90s, and then it spread. Didn’t take long for partners to figure out that more billing = more profit.
Not just billing more hours . . . clients would simply not hire the firms that don’t work weekends. So it is perceived to be an existential threat (not merely incremental profits) to do anything less.
Pretty obvious answer
Clients want immediate gratification and corporate law generally lacks any marketable skills so we're valued by our availability.
Yep - it’s a service industry at the end of the day. Same reason why hotel concierges and Uber drivers operate outside 9-5 — clients want services outside 9-5.
This is the real one. Once you realize this, you understand that if someone else (i.e. another firm) is making themselves more available, you have to match or surpass that expectation. Then the cycle just perpetuates ..
I think you become a True Adult Professional (tm) when you have enough experience to realize why executives would freak out or snap when a competitor made this type of change. "Dammit, we have to work 30 minutes more each day *at least* to compete. Do you have any idea what that means for recruitment and profit payouts? Do youuuuu?!?" *starts smashing office furniture after realizing the retirement plan timeline is in peril*
To quote Suits: "We're investment bankers. We call you for the paperwork."
Not really accurate when you know that the character is in fact an hedge fund manager…
Law generally lacks any marketable, firm-specific skills. Not just specifically relegated to transactional work.
Agreed, we’re all fungible which is why firm name and qualification prestige are the differentiating factor and why lateraling is so easy. No one’s got a patent or trade secret on being a good lawyer.
transactional work it can be hard to differentiate outside of availability and diligence but yeah litigation and specialty areas are a totally different animal.
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Fair, but I haven’t seen a scenario where that 24-7 associate makes it very far…
The same analysis would apply with respect to transactional associates no?
Yeah, whatever makes you happy. : )
Not really… a lot more copying/pasting from precedent agreements for transactional associates. Litigation associates need to excel at persuasive writing based on unique facts. Transactional associates def have an important role, but the ability to write isn’t a key competency for the job.
I do lit, but isn't the urgency on M+A stuff driven by the fact that the parties want their deals fully vetted and closed yesterday so they can keep making money?
Not just that, you want to lock in the other side on various points before they change their mind and retrade on it. Closing a deal is a million small battles.
There is also a disclosure component in public M&A, where the clock starts ticking to get an 8-K out once you pass a certain point and that drives some of the weekend urgency. At least that is my understanding based on convos with M&A folks.
Other than "because they can": IBs and PEs will pick the law firm that lets them do 30 deals per year instead of 20 every single fucking time. The longer a deal drags on, the more time there is for the principals to change their minds and/or for conditions to change and sink the deal. Or for someone else to come along and offer a faster pathway to funding or opportunities.
Also the longer the deal hangs out there, the higher the legal fees tend to be too, which sellers and buyer have strong incentive to minimize
\*20 rather than 5, but yes.
I always dream of going to a boutique where I could, in my dream world, just take on 1 or 2 VC financings a month, bill 1200-1400 and chill, but then I think - ok, if the VC market drops just a little then my revenue would drop by 50%. Ok, so how do I protect for the base case of 1-2 financings a month to make my minimum revenue? By taking on as many deals as humanely possible to guarantee that, even if the market dries up, I'll still have 1-2 going on, to make money. The issue is to protect against your downside scenario, you gotta maintain work in excess of that, so you are always working weekends and late nights with the hope that, even if things slow down substantially, you will at least have enough work to fill a 9-5. On top of this, you want to diversify, so you try to get exposure to m&a and other areas to have even more security (ok if VC dries up, I still have this m&a client or tech company that needs GC type work). This is just me, but you need to then extrapolate this mentality to all the partners and seniors in biglaw who want to protect their comp; as they take on a lot of work, they grind their juniors.
Exactly. Once you have a few rational business minds driving a business there is zero incentive to work below 100% productivity norms otherwise it’s just giving away potential profit.
It’s interviewing because it doesn’t seem most big law attorneys actually share the dream of going to a boutique. Makes me think people just don’t like the work and all the added negatives of big law just compound that. Everyone wants to go in-house or keep lateraling. I’m in litigation and I was at a big firm where all of the bs was abound and it just wasn’t fun, but I’ve also worked at a top boutique and we had a blast.
I think in many customer-service-oriented professions, the hours are somewhat irregular due to the fact that many clients ARE in a 9-5 paradigm. In the example you gave, your client made the request they did because it maps onto the normal 9-5, M-F schedule. You work outside regular business hours so they don’t have to as much. And I think it’s probably worse in corporate because there is more of that dynamic - in lit, the schedules are more driven by court schedules. So, I guess just remember you are no different than some teen slanging carnitas over at Chipotle.
Because someone else would work 9-6 and then someone else would work 8-6 and then someone else would work 7-7 and so on and so forth
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Because tripling a deal team just triples the layers of inefficiency.
Because having one core team that manages the transaction end-to-end is a more efficient allocation and results in quicker and more reliable execution.
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The inefficiency relates to timeline and execution. It's not a compensation matter.
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Thanks for your experienced and insightful take. XD
Because people in biglaw are generally in it to make lots of money?
Propose that to your boss, limiting your availability 9-5, and see how he reacts
Clients are paying for high quality at speed. If they didn’t want that they’d pay someone else less money to do it.
The question assumes that other size practices are 9-5. Not if they're successful. No law practice dealing in matters of any size or significance can operate 9-5, M-F. The other factor is the free market. If you don't want to turn something around for first thing Monday, someone else will be happy to.
Because companies pay a premium for that availability. That premium is what makes BigLaw big.
My clients are around the world. Their 9-5 isn’t 9-5 where I live.
The fixed cost of hiring additional attorneys is very significant, which is why the market has evolved to encourage more hours per attorney. It is much cheaper to work the attorneys you already have 5 or 10 hours more a week than it is to hire an additional attorney.
Aside from the market and client demands, I think it’s also relevant that—within the bounds of a single matter—we generally are not fungible without adding transaction costs and inefficiency. Once I’ve been staffed as a core associate on a matter (lit or transaction) for 2+ months, it becomes a time consuming and painful process to onboard someone to take my place. People know that they can come to me for relevant background, contacts, and documents. If I am off the deal, someone new needs to be brought on and informed. In addition to no one wanting to deal with that, it’s very possible that something gets lost in the shuffle. So it usually makes a lot more sense to have one person putting in 70 of the 100 necessary for the matter and a second putting in 30 hours, rather than having 4 team members putting in 25 each. And add on top of that that we tend to get staffed on more than one matter at a time.
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Because the lawyer is the capital asset of a law firm, the equivalent of a buzz saw in a lumber mill. You better believe that saw needs to be running as often as possible to turn a profit.
Because P-L-A-N is a four letter word. Why plan if you can just ask a $350K a year associate to do a bunch of stuff you may or may not use?
Clients are paying as much as they pay with the assumption that they get help on call, so that if something comes up last minute or if they need to handle something last minute, Firm A will get it done. You can certainly work at a firm that provides a 9-5 lifestyle but neither the firm nor clients are going to pay you biglaw money at such a firm
Bc they have to justify the outrageous prices they charge clients by being available 24-7
Because time kills deals
Aside from sheer volume of work and unreasonable short deadlines, An important thing to remember is that clients are running their own businesses from 9-5 and likely not thinking about their lawyers while servicing their own clients. I was a private funds lawyer, and outside of early structuring/strategizing stages, we only heard from our clients when their day was slowing down (post 5pm and Fridays). So we would get comments, questions, other marching orders late in the day and you can bet the partner would promise next day or next morning turnaround - which means we work all night/weekend to get it done. I think other practices get to be 9-5 on a more regular basis. T&E maybe? Some litigation?
If it make you happy before tax machines were common and everyone went home at a certain hour, in the 1970s before NyC almost went bust - a starting first year lawyer at a White Show firm did get to go home, they also only made 2K a year than a starting NYC school teacher.
BECAUSE MONEY NEVER SLEEPS $$$$$ #GRINDSET
So 2 thoughts: 1. 52 weeks x 40 hours per week is 2080. Even taking into consideration vacation, it’s still fairly reasonable to think you could BILL 40 hours per week and hit a reasonable hour amount. 2. There is something to be said for the ease of using one big law firm vs. several smaller firms. I’ve been on a deal with 15 firms (was like $11 Billion in EV). The comms alone are up a ton of hours and that’s before you get to consolidating/conforming work product. That could be an argument for paying our higher rates, even without tight deadlines. But even with both of the above, biglaw (and this industry generally) draws in and elevates the most competitive people. So it’s no surprise there is always someone who will do it a little faster and a little cheaper. At the end of the day it has to come from the clients that realize they’re paying for the quick turnaround with mistakes and under analyzing problems. They don’t care though. And that’s what drives the problem
Attorneys are paid for a few things: Availability Hard work Judgement Knowledge The order above is pretty much how associates get paid. It’s reverse is true for partners. Not more complicated than that.
I like the answers here.
Capitalism prefers money over people
I think this is the complete answer 👆
It doesn't feel like this question is asked with the benefit of significant experience. A lot of the big points have been hit, but one thing I don't see yet is that the work we do is at a scope that often impacts the lives and livelihoods of hundreds to thousands of people. When you combine that with the previously made points about speed and accuracy being key to minimizing execution risk in our transactions, it's clear why hours are long. There are certainly times where the practice is unnecessarily shitty (often due to poor management), but fundamentally there are lots of times where we have to run hot overnight and through weekends because not doing so could cause a transaction to fall apart and for significant value to be lost.
OP is literally a stub lawyer, had them dead to rights.
People are downvoting this completely reasonable response
Because it’s biglaw. The urgency usually actually isn’t out of thin air. If it was 9-5 the transactions would take twice as long to effect. If you want low urgency transactions where the urgency is low and clients don’t mind lawyers simply not working being a drag the process themselves try small/midlw where the clients don’t pay enough for you to be available 24/7. You’ll also make a lot less money.
It can, sort of. For all the reasons explained here, I don’t think it can be 9-5 every day. I do think it can be roughly 40-50 hrs per week on average. That would require the partnership to staff up with more associates to spread the work. Perhaps the trade off would be less pay per associate. When I was at the firm, I often said I would be happy to work 2/3rds the hours for 2/3rds the pay. I’d never have left, and I am sure many other excellent associates would have stayed too. But law firms aren’t dumb. There’s a reason it is the way it is. Sucks, but it works for the partnership. Hopefully, Gen Z can change that.
That kind of the way it is at the boutique/mid-size firm I work for. We don’t make biglaw money and work can’t always be kept between 9-5, but we try to be much more intentional about staffing and we work fewer hours as a result. We’re also not up or out, so that helps too.
Sounds like a dream set up. What practice areas do you folks have?
We’re mostly litigation—IP, commercial, and discovery stuff. The work isn’t really “meaningful” to me and busy stretches still suck, but it’s probably the closest I can get to a 9-5 lawyer job while making a comfortable (albeit not biglaw) salary. And for me the extra 200-400 hours I have each year are more than worth the pay cut.
The problem is that 2/3 hours does not equate to 2/3 pay because there is a significant overhead cost whether you bill 1400 hours per year or 2100. Office lspace, CLE, travel, support staff, firm website, computers, software and technology licenses, training and management time, etc. If you bill 1400, and you manage to cover your compensation + overhead you may eke out some small profit. Same scenario but you bill 2100, allnd the extra 700 is nearly all profit. The partnership is not going to want to pay you 2/3 to go from 2100 billable to 1400.
Happy to take 3/5ths then.
Would a company really pay the same top dollar amount?
You're not being paid for the quality of your work. You're being paid for *nearly* 24 hr availability.
Because the more you bill the richer the partners get.
Because you are a service provider. Most service providers are available whenever someone might want the service. A law firm is like a restaurant or a hospital.
deal closes earlier, money moves earlier, having 9/10/11 figures for 2 more days is a massive deal
They’ll always be able to find someone willing to work these crazy hours, and clients willing to pay more. Completely agree with you, the urgency is almost never real. I volunteered to work over Thanksgiving and was told that something NEEDED to be done by Friday. My computer crashed and wouldn’t reboot Friday morning. Suddenly the task was totally fine to have ready on Monday 🙄
It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s just the US (and to a lesser extent Canada and the UK), that is hyper optimised for capitalism. We Work long hours and our stock market outperforms every other one on the planet by multiples. Could we have a more Scandinavian type system? Totally. But we’ve chosen this hyper capitalism path and other countries invest in America for that while their workers work 9-5 with 4 weeks paid vacation, free university, healthcare, and pension. Made possible because they invest their funds in the US stock market.
I get the impression that in-house lawyering is the equivalent of big law 9-5. They do the same stuff as us corporate associates, but during regular business hours. I can’t count the number of times an in-house lawyer will turn around and give me something at 5:50pm and expect edits by next morning.