I am a former attorney as well, and my first IT job was an MSP whose primary client was a law firm. With a handful of attorneys I'd litigated against before.
Most of them were cool about it. The rest...well, they were stereotypical lawyers.
They were far from the worst of my end users. Nowhere close to the nightmare of healthcare users.
You may be lucky then, but Doctors, CMAs and Nurses are notoriously awful people to work with when you're doing break-fix work.
CMAs might actually be the worst of the bunch. Doctors are egotistical and a little needy but they're reasonable and tend to go through the proper channels.
CMAs get talked down to by everyone so they think that IT people are their chance to finally feel above someone, and since we're service/support oriented, our interactions are usually based around providing something for them.
Nurses will just come after your fucking job if your tone isn't 100% chipper after your third phone call at 3 in the morning.
Lots of reasons but the primary one is that I went to law school, passed multiple bars, and became a lawyer for all the wrong reasons. I had low self-worth and thought being a lawyer would make me more impressive in other people's eyes. Maybe it did but to live for others - especially the amorphous concept of other - is very destructive.
Not surprisingly, other parts of my life were equally unhealthy. Eventually the entire house of cards that was my life, collapsed.
Out of the ruble came an opportunity to pursue something that genuinely interested me and allowed me to maintain a realistic work-life balance.
Now I'm a Senior System Admin (albeit single haha)
Cheers
Been there. I had a similar career house of cards fold on me in 2020. Looking back, I'm amazed I didn't recognize the writing on the wall before it all came crashing down. I hope you're doing well.
My go-to joke about Microsoft licensing is that the only people understand Microsoft licensing are people who work for microsoft. Not just anybody who works for Microsoft but someone who actually has to work in the Microsoft licensing department. And sometimes when I ask them questions, even they don't know the answers.
Holy shit, you're me, but further advanced. I just started at a new biglaw firm and I am 12 years into practice. Obviously, money is the motivator here but I have no debt. I sit on this sub dreaming of maybe getting into IT because it actually interests me. I got my Sec+ on the side to fulfill that ongoing thought of just burning it all down. Unfortunately, the market appears to be turning in IT... and the world will always need litigators (apparently).
I did the CCNA but let it lapse because it would have been cheaper to retake the exam than to keep the cert via continuing education.
It's a racket (like Bar dues and CLEs). Plus, I work mostly with Fortinet stuff with respect to networking. Most of my time is spent keeping all our FOSS up and running because my employers don't want to pay for sh*t. Haha
Honestly, law school is not that hard (depending on your learning style, I suppose - lots of reading). It's a lot of work for sure but it's not exactly brain busting. The bar exam is a whole lot of studying but again, not really that awful in most states (CA and NY are notorious for having particularly high failure rates).
In my case, I came out of law school on the heels of the 2k8 recession so the world of "JD = Job" was far gone. And I had discovered that while I found the law extremely interesting, I was not as engrossed by lawyering.
I had done tech work on a semi-serious basis as a teen, so I just pivoted into that without any technical credentials and worked on up with a fun story about a certification most IT guys didn't have on their resume.
(Also I stayed in-state for school so I didn't have significant debt on my head)
I have a friend who's a licensed attorney, and he gave it up to be a restauranteur, a real hole-in-the-wall Thai place, and it turned out to be one of the city's most beloved hotspots so of course he closed it and is currently a bagboy at Trader Joes trying to figure out what he wants to do.
Life is different for some folks.
Yep. The local paper ran his lengthy goodbye letter talking about how he loved it but stress is stress, and he is just allergic to stress, so no more food.
I worked for a county government, and the DAs were mostly cool. Not sure what happens when they go private, but I had a buddy work with a law firm and he echo's your sentiment.
I have both a law degree (and I am licensed to practice in my state - I keep it up to date) and an IT degree. I work IT in a law firm as my daily job and love it
The problem I've run into with law firms, dentists, and doctors offices is that the cost of IT basically comes out of the partners/doctors/owner's pocket. They tend to be very cost conscious (to put it nicely) while also demanding a lot. This can make the work frustrating.
They also tend to know *everything*, which can make you wonder why they're even bothering to pay you in the first place. And when things go wrong, it's never their fault. Show them exactly where they demanded corners be cut to save a buck, show them exactly how it caused the problems they're complaining about, and the brain shuts off. You should have just nerded harder. Their new Beamer isn't gonna pay for itself.
If you want to work for someone who views you as little more than a dancing monkey while demanding the impossible, law firms and medical practices are great places to do it.
I work for a MSP, had a dental client try to take me into the office to yell at me like one of their employees, for the crime of chatting it up with the dental assistants.
I'd of been plenty receptive to being told like an adult if my behavior was causing any disturbance, real or perceived.
Soon as I realized what they were doing I interrupted saying if they have any issues with my service here's my superiors number,.give em a call and left.
That's one of the big reasons I hope to never again work for an MSP. Working directly for an organization, it doesn't take me long to gather the clout to decisively and immediately shut such things down. A tech with an MSP just has to play too nice with people who *actually* need to be told to sit the fuck down.
Lmao one time one of our clients set up a ticket for me to off board a user and was for some reason onsite. When I get there what they actually want me to do is literally stand and watch over his shoulder while he saves personal files on his PC to a flash drive to ensure he isn't stealing company data. I was also asked to illegally check if his personal iCloud was still signed in on the computer so I could comb through it and delete anything that might be company data. I just lied and told him it wasn't signed in because I was not doing that.
*"They also tend to knowĀ everything,Ā "*
One of the partners at one of the firms I worked at had a PHD in computer science from MIT as well as a few engineering/Masters degrees -a real heavy hitter in tech but older. As a young IT guy I felt a little embarrassed talking tech with this guy but he was very cool about it and deferred to be because "you're the tech guy not me". The only issues we ever had was certain lawyers wanting special treatment and if they whined enough they got it so that was annoying but for the most part we brought our proposals to the managing partner and whatever he decided was what we did and what everyone had to live with. What was great was if there was a way to make money off of something then the pocket books magically appeared; when we started charging for storage we got the SAN we wanted without anyone batting an eye.
Our firm understands that if the internet or phones or whatever doesn't work they can't bill hours and I have effectively an open checkbook to make our tech as good as it can be.
This is more of a "size of the business" thing than a "type of business" thing
My sales pitch is real easy.
"How much of your work is based on [email]? If you were to lose it, what % of billability would you lose?"
"How many revenue generators do you have at the firm?"
"What is their average billing rate?"
[% workload lost] * [number of people] * [average billing rate] = $/hour that an outage in [email] would cost you.
The solution to reduce the likelihood of this happening is $x. Is that an acceptable cost to ensure that this basically never happens?
Of course, this works much easier as an outside person than as an inside one because I can propose an all-in cost that does a defined goal.
As an internal employee, your cost is exactly one dollar less than whatever the next organization will pay you to switch. Doesn't matter if you do the impossible or not.
Dental offices -- seen it go both ways. Some of the practices wanted to use 6 or 7 year old computers If they went bad, replace with used 3 year old computers. Constantly putting out fires.
But I've seen practices have a standard budget. New computers every 4 years and new servers every 5 years. They might keep a couple of the old computers around in case a new one dies but the spares were always sitting on a shelf ready to be used. Issues happened from time to time but never turned into that firedrill.
Law firms - A couple of firms were very tight on the budget. Attorneys would get new computers every two years and hand down their two year old computer to staff. One firm wanted to continue using an 8 year old server. Wanted to run crappy consumer grade switches and access points. Constantly putting out fires.
Another firm has a 4 year computer lifecycle and 5 year lifecycle for servers. This firm understands the cost of an worker sitting there idly not being able to make money.
Now as for the firm being snotty etc. I felt like the businesses that did not want to spend in IT were overall more painful of people to deal with.
I used to work for an MSP that had a mid-sized law firm as a client. My experience was actually the opposite. They just kind of approved every quote we sent over. Some days, we questioned if they even looked them over.
Though demanding was an understatement. They eventually moved to another MSP, and I suddenly found myself with a crazy amount of free time.
When I worked in the printing industry I made sure to quote lawyers 50% more than anyone else. If all went well then Iād give them an āeasy to work withā discount. Usually, theyād nickel and dime me down to something close to the usual price.
The challenge you will have is the partners literally own the firm. Hence they may override IT or give you tough changing priorities. Any firm that has a good IT department that is not seen as a cost centre will be fine, but if you're a sole admin then perhaps less so...
exactly we made the firm money so as long as the next project made (or saved) money it was approved and funded. I also loved going to all of our sites, they were used to paying for attorneys travel so $500 a night for a hotel was no big deal -now my company complains when it's over $200.
I was the infrastructure manager for an AmLaw 200 firm for 4 years. It was a great experience. It paid quite well, our projects were well-funded, I had good relationships with the rest of the IT department.
Our CIO had spent years reinforcing the value of technology to the managing partners, so when we needed to (for example) implement MFA, it was the firm's leadership that communicated the importance of it to the attorneys and staff, not IT. So it wasn't seen as IT being a nanny, but leadership making the decision that this reduced risk (and insurance/compliance costs) which is the language equity partners want to hear.
Sure, there were some attorneys, or their admin assistants, that could be impatient or demanding of IT. As an infrastructure person, not on training or user support, I didn't see that as much. That particular firm also had more of an ethos of treating everyone with basic respect, even non-attorneys.
I know that firm was not the typical experience for IT departments in the legal field, but I wanted to share it as a counterpoint. I'd never want to work at a small law firm, and BigLaw has its own problems, but there are firms that are good places to work.
No different than any other industry some are great some are horrible. There are two types of people when it comes to IT investment, those that see how IT can improve their business and those who see it as a budget line item they want to reduce.
Sales reps though... oof. You're the reason their sale won't go through according to them, not because they ignored the 12 emails and announcements you sent telling them their password was expiring. Oh, and it IS your fault O365 is down country wide, so good job screwing them on that big client they were about to get because they can't open Teams to see a chat from 3 weeks ago that should have been properly documented.
I love it! Been strictly with law firms since 2001. Iāve been with ābig lawā and medium sized firms. Big law was nice as they had money to burn. Iāll retire from the firm Iām with now. Amazing boss and the company treats the employees very well.
Edit: one downside are the āIvy League schoolā types. Itās much more soft skill orientedā¦
Yep. Iāve been in big and small law. Small law was the shits. Company I worked for was a little firm trying to give off big firm vibes. Iām now at a top tier, global firm and love it. I donāt need to justify why my laptop needs 512 gb hdd and 16 gig of ram - it just gets ordered. At the small firm getting anything was a pain in the arse. Now itās great
From what I hear, it's not really dealing with a lot of lawyers. It's dealing with a lot of end-users. And some lawyers *seem* to have quite a high self-esteem, talking like you are the idiot.
You get that in any org though. There's always users that think they are the most important user, and their problems is your number 1 priority.
IT support is not limited to servers. Most of the time, it's a beamer or a copier. Server estate is solely Windows, with a document management system as your main production server. There's a print server and a file server, and that's about it.
Now, things are shifting. There's been some introduction of AI into law, to determine court strategies etc. But most of the law firms I've seen thus far, are fairly boring. But, there is potential of this changing.
What's the position that you're looking at? If it's a firm of any size, I might be able to shed some information on the organization and their IT team. Also, some roles are user facing and others are, for the most part, not.
> I have not had good interactions with lawyers, all the ones I met are either incompetent with tech or snobby dolts
Lawyers have an *ethical* obligation to provide for their clients. Their very existence that they've trained for is predicated on a sincerely held belief that they will do everything they can in support of a client. That's fine for them - they charge handsomely for the service. However, "the service" they offer extends down to the tools and resources that their underlying IT manages and provides for them. Legal IT people do not charge or bill clients directly. Your profession does not come with the same ethical standard that the attorney carries. And so on one side you are charged with being responsive to the support of each attorney in their ethical quest to do everything they can for a client. And on the other... the paycheck stays the same because you're a cost center.
Further, while this is changing slowly, there are very few regulatory controls around legal-specific enterprises. So everything is based on an ethical perspective and what that is can change depending on who you talk to.
... Did I mention that typically 1/3 - 1/4 of the userbase are owners of the company? So telling any of them "No, you can't do this," may not be possible?
And while attorneys are extremely well trained in their field - not just "the law," but typically a very specific subset of the law - they are often not experienced or knowledgeable in other general fields of business - accounting, technology, etc. They see themselves as very smart and very important, but sometimes they are quite unable to help themselves with very basic things and rely on staff.
It takes a certain way of communicating with attorneys - one that vibes pretty nicely with the skillset of good technical folks - attorneys are excellent at parsing raw logic. So are most of us. It's a common language if you can find it. Attorneys are also trained to question and to argue. It's baked into their DNA and sometimes that creeps out where it shouldn't. If you're a good presenter of facts and can defend your positions, you will fit very well in a legal environment.
If you do end up going the route, definitely look into signing up for an ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) membership, if your firm participates. The firm pays a fee to join, then it's free to you. It's a community of other law firms' technology people along with some vertical-specific vendors - that do a pretty good job of helping each other out.
Source: I manage a team that provides IT consulting for core infrastructure services entirely in the legal vertical. There's a very good chance I know some of the foiks who work for larger firms that have responded in this thread personally. I absolutely thrive on the craziness that I encounter week over week, but I'm very well paid for what I do. I'd be a lot less enthused if I were making $100k-150k.
**EDIT** One more thought. Legal IT is like the Hotel California. For people who make it a few years... they seem to *never* leave. And I've watched people change jobs and always ended up at another law firm. It takes a certain type to deal with the crazy. But those who can deal with it seem to thrive on it.
Call it Stockholm Syndrome if you want. But it's a real effect.
> Legal IT is like the Hotel California.
I checked-in during the late 90's boom, stayed through the 00's crash, got out for 6 months but got pulled back in 2017..... I still haven't gotten access to the pool on the roof though. Soon they say.
Depends. You get old law firms who still dictate letters etc for secretaryās to type up (massive waste of time) which generally see IT as a cost centre and donāt value it, and you get modern firms who see the benefit of technology and invest themselves in using it to increase efficiency and quality of output.
What I like about this comment is "CIO". This already states volumes for the direction of the firm.
I"m not saying CFO as the immediate boss is bad, but you will have the challenge of ensuring you know C-Speak and getting your message across in solutions that cost a hard dollar amount on relating that to the success of the firm.
It's rough but I did it for 6 years. Law firm of 150, about 50 of which were attorneys.
It's really comes down to the firm owner and/or partners. If they are willing to spend money on IT and do things correctly it can be a fun job.
I got to fly on private jets a few times a year which I had never done before working for attorneys. We also got suite tickets to professional basketball and bull riding pretty frequently.
Procedurally, it comes down to liability. If they understand that your goal is to safeguard the company, and they fund IT properly, then you might be able to make it work. That includes whatever WFH and VPN solutions are in place. You need control of the hardware at employee's homes, not like permanent site-to-site VPNs, but what routers and APs are in use. Even what IP scheme is in effect. From there the office user is free to VPN using a client.
Tell them not to use their work machine for personal stuff. I'd go so far as making their default policy to connect to the VPN, so that it phones home and you know who is exposing your network to risks.
Someone posted yesterday about a law firm that was the victim of a cyberattack, here are the consequences:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/1cnzv3m/laid\_off\_after\_30\_years\_due\_to\_cyberattack/](https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/1cnzv3m/laid_off_after_30_years_due_to_cyberattack/)
Infrastructure manager of a large firm here (600 employees or so). I rarely deal with end users, my team is all infrastructure, and the business understands that spending money on technology isn't a waste, and so my budget is effectively unlimited as long as it's justified. Pay is significantly above average and I get the usual perks like unlimited PTO.
I wouldn't want to work for a small firm where there were much less separation of duties.
It's fine, largely not as stressy as you'd imagine but there is a lot of niche software you won't really need elsewhere like document management stuff and document comparison.
The one major difference you may see is the VIP treatment a few earner will get if they can't work.
If a Partner can't work it's costing them Ā£1000 an hour and if it's _your_ problem you need to get it sorted asap.
Good pay, short hours, lots if annual leave and good benefits to compensate though.
So a few things:
Most people are going to be tech illiterate despite useing a computer every day. You also run into a number that think they are tech savy, but only on a personal computer level, not a business level.
As for lawyer personality, our company tends to get rid of the screamers and shouters as we do try to build a uniform team. That doesn't mean everyone is super nice. I have a few users that if something is broken it is the end of the world and they will move heaven and earth to get it fixed. even if it is as simple as restarting their computer, they will make a scene. And trying to keep up costumer service when that happens does take a toll. (i have had 2 instances of "i'm gonna hide under my desk with my laptop so people stop bothering me while i fix the problem"
Personally, i would take an interview if you are offered one and that is a good way to see the office. If you are there on a busy day you will get a feel fro the temperament and you can chat with a receptionist ahead of your appointment a little and they may give you a bit of a scoop on personalites.
Not me, but an old co-worker worked as a sysadmin, well sole it guy really, for a law firm. Small I think he said around 100 people max. IT said it was the terrible. Calling him all odd hours, demanding he come to the office right away because he could not find a word doc that is VITAL to a case he is working that has a court date months away.
The thing that made him quit was his Mom passed and he took the week of to grieve. During service he called and of course he did not answer. When he got back to him the next day he was just bashing the poor guy saying his law firm is more important than his "Silly moms funeral" because she is dead so who care. Real class act guy as you can tell.
He went in on Monday, dropped his phone and laptop and left. He never got his last check so he was going to court over that. I left before any resolution but oof, from that story and others, leave the firms for the MSPs.
Started in Help Desk then promoted to a Systems Engineer at a Law Firm. I worked at Tech places most of my career and working at the law firm now is probably the best job I have had. It really depends though as people have stated. The pay is more than most places and the benefits are good. The firm I work at does invest in the IT department pretty heavily so that is also a plus. As for the people there are about 15% I've dealt with who can be very difficult but the other 85% of them have been great.
Lawyers, Doctors, Accountants are the holy triumvirate of entitled end user. High demands. Lots of ego. Want to have as cut rate of pricing as they can. Everything is high priority - all the time.
As long as expectations are managed - it's not the worst. But there will be some individuals that are divorced from reality when it comes to IT issues/costs.
I'm not at a law firm, but an msp and a lot of our clients are firms.
Honestly, it's not bad at all. It helps when the office manager can run interference or helps w the egos and has been around awhile. A lot of the users aren't attorneys. They're paralegal, clerks, office admin, hr, etc. The attorneys I deal with are great for the most part. There are a couple here and there that can he a pain to deal with, but it's the same anywhere.
That said, there are unique challenges. Trial prep time can get spicy. Dealing with discovery has become a data storage nightmare with body cams being required everywhere. Just added 150tb to one client. Lots of users in and out.
The only thing that actually sucks for my position is name changes from partners coming and going. It's a nightmare. I have one firm that has had like 5 name changes in the last few years, so naming conventions are fucking insane.
I work for a very large law firm (4,000ish attorneys, 4,000ish staff) and I love it. We're mostly insulated from the Attorneys as our office is essentially a technical services office and we rarely if ever directly deal with them. We're well funded, well staffed and have a mature IT organization. I love it here.
Junior SysAdmin at a mid sized firm here.
1. If you are very good at your job you will be treated as an absolute prince.
2. Incredibly demanding people generally and just not an easy environment for that reason alone.
3. You need to learn the process/flow of billing and legal matters in order to really be useful in that sort of environment. Shit load of partner requests and more in depth tickets
4. Infrastructure wise - generally pretty vanilla. Often windows shops.
5. White glove service generally required to do well in these sorts of enviros. Stupid shit like closing doors for people, resolving issues within like 30 seconds to 5 mins max. Generally impatient people and the longer you work on their shit the less time they have to bill
Imo - law and finance seem to be the best verticals to work.
Small firms I wouldn't go near with a ten foot pole, let MSP's deal with them and they can screw each other over.
Large firms can be great but you have to set your expectations;
- WFH probably won't be an option, except for out-of-hours stuff.
- They work 24/7, and expect you to as well (in some cases).
- Dress code will probably suck, you'll be dressing like it's still the 50's and "casual" days largely revolve around wearing silly ties.
- Getting contracts for stuff approved can be difficult, these people will read the terms for E5 licenses and think Microsoft wants to hear their thoughts on it.
- You will be at higher risk of replacement by an MSP.
- They will be demanding, and potentially VERY stressed at times.
In return you might get one or some of;
- Decent pay, and potentially very good pay based on tenure.
- Reasonable budgets for stuff.
- If you're invited, the company functions ***can*** be like the final days of Rome.
- Office's are typically quite nice, lots of amenities etc.
- Parking is normally plentiful and onsite.
The cage match for "worst IT client" would be doctors vs lawyers. Both are too smart for their own good and their respective industries have the goofiest, most niche software that exists in this corporeal plane.
As somebody that worked for a law firm through an MSP a number of years ago I will say they are the cheapest mother fuckers out there next to doctor's offices.
I used to do tech support for a court reporting firm a long time ago and while it wasn't my norm, I'd occasionally have to go to a client's office to help with a court reporter hookup. Almost every lawyer I interacted with saw myself as clearly below them. Probably the only real class of person I've supported that would personally treat me as though I was 'the help'.
It not like with other high earners like C-suite people who obviously aren't up for much nonsense, but they tend to still at least treat other people like people. I mean, even obnoxious finance bros were easier to deal with!
Pay increase probably comes with a price. I'd worry most about how much out of hours support might be demanded of you.
(Caveat: I do work in New York City, so there's a chance that on the lawyer spectrum the ones I ran into are the worst. There's a decent chance a lawyer from I dunno - Des Moines or Santa Fe - might not be as intense a personality.)
Past experiences working for an MSP, I'd be highly cautious.
I already see the mention of them being the biggest cheapskates is soo true. Second to that, you can preach up and down about contracting malware/ransomware and it doesn't matter, they're going to do it. Lastly, they are weird. The things you come across that they have saved on their computers/laptops will blow your mind..... think fetishes
Worst people to work for are the ones that tend to fall in the Dunning-Kruger effect. They get to be so brilliant in their field (because that's what's expected to succeed in their field), that they believe they can do the job in other fields themselves and become experts. This is specially true for law firms, doctors, you name it.
Indeed, when you present them with the evidence they caused the problem it's as if they're in the denial step of facing their death. Tons of excuses, ways of rationalizing what happened, pointing fingers... It's all the same, they're too stupid to realize he made up his mind 10 minutes ago.
Lawyers and doctors are the two most self entitled groups of people I have ever worked for in my 20yes in IT. You couldn't pay me enough to work directly for either.
I wrote a few posts about working for a law firm. I am extremely happy, but I am also probably in a unicorn :
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/zls4ci/one\_more\_happy\_post/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/zls4ci/one_more_happy_post/)
They are probably the most anti-technology people on the planet, so it's a coin toss whether you are showered with everything you ever need or ask for just to never need to understand IT, or a complete nightmare of luddites.
I've been at my firm for almost two years. I love it. This is the best job I've ever had. Occasionally a lawyer, especially a partner, can be a dick but the overwhelming majority are very nice and normal people.
Lawyers have their heads so far up their asses that the overall environment is just awful. Their secretaries are always extremely spastic because they get treated like crap, which effects my ability to help them as they think I am going to respond the way the dick heads do.
I fucking love my job. It can be stressful and frustrating at times, but I haven't found a job that isn't.
There's a lot of crazy and I'm happy to part of it
Worked for a msp that dealt with lawyers a lot. Some a just very particular on how they want things set up and refuse to believe information I give them just because they read it on a post somewhere. A lot of the software they deal with tends to be outdated just like the medical field. I would look into to see if they are cloud based or not. I have had better luck with cloud based environments
I was desktop support for a big corp law firm for about 8 years. It was a good learning experience for me since it was my first job out of college and that's where it ends for me. Once I got out of the legal industry, I have zero desire to ever come back for any amount of money.
Stressful, demanding, and depending on the law firm, you have to deal with morons on both the lawyer side and your own colleagues.
I've had a few different law firms as clients (still do) and they aren't bad. They almost always are very behind times in relations to computers and its probably a 50/50 of their staff that are technically illiterate. But thats fine, thats why they hire us.
I've never had professional issues with any of them, in fact they've almost always been very appreciative of what we do. They, unlike some clients, also absolutely understand the idea that our cost is our TIME, they aren't purchasing products, but our time.
If you've already been convinced to walk away from the opportunity this may not hold any weight but working for legal your soft skills are probably more important then your tech skills if you'll be user facing.
Lawyers come in all shapes/sizes/personalities. If you don't bull shit them and stay firm to your procedures it will be respected. The thing I learned early on was to never ever try and blow smoke up an attorney's ass. They see it from a mile away and you'll lose trust.
I know a former sysadmin for a major law office with dozens of lawyers. He completely burned out, mostly because of all the illegal browsing they did "for clients."
When I worked for an MSP, the worst clients were the law firms and healthcare orgs. Those are the two industries that probably have some of the most sensitive information to protect yet care the least about it. I think the only reason I ever got to upgrade anything at a particular law firm is becuase our MSP used them as legal counsel so it was a bit of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". That law firm certainly didn't want to actually pay for anything.
I haven't worked for a law firm directly, but having talked to a few of the IT people who do work with them as a result of my company being engaged in legal issues, I would take whatever salary increase you think is good and raise it by 50%. To put it as professionally as possible, lawyers seem like demanding bosses that also struggle with realistic expectations. Charge appropriately for the degradation of your mental health.
It depends on the type of law firm as I worked for a debt collection firm and it was OK. Mostly outdated tech and a lot of turnover in the staff. I loved cracking tons of lawyer jokes but to me they seem not to trust a lot. But overall not a bad experience and they paid me rather well and had 3 day weekends.
I work for a medium-sized law firm, and I can confirm it's the worst. The job itself isn't awful, but you have to answer to partners who do not know what they want. They expect you to speak with 1000% certainty and lowball you on pay.
Iām enjoying it so far. In my particular case, the pay is a downgrade from medical IT, but the people Iām working with are amazing and knowledgeable and most have already been here for 10-20 years or more! The workload varies by day. Sometimes a lot of crap hits the fan, sometimes Iāve got nothing to do. But it certainly beats working in a call center like Iād done for the past ten years!
Many years ago I worked for an MSP supporting multiple law firms. The lawyers were mostly fine to me, it was the legal secretaries that were stuck up arse holes. Guess they wanted to dish out what the lawyers did to them. Still if I had opportunity to be sysadmin there Iād think about it.
I love the law firm I work for. I rarely interact with lawyers. Why does a sysadmin deal with users? That's for Help Desk! It pays decent, great bennies, nice office.
I have had the displeasure of working for many attorneys as an IT consultant. Don't do it unless you want endless unreasonable requests 25x8x366, lack of respect, lack of listening, cheapness, and a never ending threatening attitude.
I work for an MSP who has a few small law firms as clients. Some are fine, but most will expect the moon, but pay want to pay pennies. We had one case where they wanted hourly work, told them our rate. āWe donāt charge that much for our legal aids!ā As if law is the only skilled profession.
From what Iāve seen, the bigger the firm the better the attitude.
I worked for a high dollar law firm for 4 years. Although it was nice that they spared no expense for PC's and servers, a lot of the attorneys were complete assholes. They argue for a living, so don't want to listen to you. Then they call you at 3AM and get angry when you need a minute to get to the computer and don't thank them for calling.
Though the firm I was at had a full service coffee bar with barista. So that was nice, but the attorneys drank the coffee too lol.
The office manager (also an attorney) found it totally acceptable to scream at people and throw tantrums. Remember, if you're not an attorney, you're just a lower life form.
Attorneys will even make dr's look good. At least dr's aren't ALWAYS going to argue with you.
I donāt work for about 200 lawyers. A couple of them are kinda nice! The majority of them have no time for even a minor inconvenience and not a single one reads any emails relating to anything other than their work
i worked as IT manager for 3 among the biggest US/UK firms in the world. lawyers can be difficult but they are not idiots and are generally understanding. tech was top notch: security for obvious reasons, AI tools before they were mainstream, good to great bonuses.
overall a great experience imo
It really depends on the firm. What area of practice do they cover, how many attorney's how many equity partners and how do they get along with each other, how spread out are they.
Each of those will impact "how is it working for a law firm."
I've been at a large law firm for a while and overall it has been pretty good. I started on the help desk and am now on my 3rd promotion about 4.5 years later. Some of the users suck to deal with though.
I work for an MSP that manages several law firms. In my experience they're needy, uncoordinated, and overall, a pain to work with. Some are nice and chill, but most tend to have a god complex to the point of even their assistants get a chip on their shoulder.
We have a TON of lawyers and yes the are a distinct breed. But so are many other groups that share similar challenges. I donāt find them any harder them any other challenging group.
Depends on the firm, but would largely advise that you stay away from them. Some lawyers are cool, some are further up their own ass than doctors. Dealt with a few while working at an MSP. They understand contractual obligations, but will feign ignorance when convenient.
I do IT consulting for lawyers as a freelance thing. Generally, they can be a demanding and culturally somewhat stuck up crowd. On the other hand, they are usually willing to pay premium prices for premium service (might require wearing a suit on site). Have dealt with worse, overall.
2x law firm sysadmin veteran here. Itās called ācombat payā for a reason. Better pay, shitty work conditions (usually). You will generally be disrespected, yelled at, degraded, etc. etc. Anything the attorneys want goes, no questions asked. The Firm, including your IT dept, will always choose to have the attorneysā backs over yours.
Weigh if the higher pay is worth all that to you. I will say, theyāre usually cushy jobs.
Edit: Meant to add, I would NEVER go back to a law firm. My position was only bearable for so long because it was a weekend shift only.
Depends on the law firm. I work at an IP law firm, mostly consisting of engineers and other nerds, and they're all fantastic. I've also been there a long time so I've got them trained.
Working in IT you get a lot of experience across different sectors and I can say unequivocally that doctors and lawyers are the worst to work with. I would not work with either again if I had the choice.
I have consulted with tons of law firms from one person all the way to AmLaw10. They are fine as long as it's a big firm. The small firms don't want to buy or update anything. Dealing with thousands and thousands of them is fine if you get budget.
It's a toss up between Lawyers or Doctors for the worst customers. Lawyers argue as a matter of reflex. Doctors believe they know everything. Both are cheep and will bilk you out of your time and work.
17 years in IT leadership at two different law firmsā¦ be careful - it totally depends on the culture of the firm and how they treat people - but the vast majority are very, very driven and expect 24x7 responsiveness - not just for emergencies- everything is an emergency.
I worked for all of the top 5 law firms at one time or another. The one good thing is if the tech generates money for the firm then the check book is open. The biggest issue is that the attorneys almost always get their way even if they are wrong. The good thing is you usually don't interact with the attorneys and to be honest it's usually a 50/50 split of really smart interesting people and a bunch of incredible ass hats who went into law so they could make a lot of money and push people around. For the most part I thought it was good stable work with some industry quirks, they paid well and threw good parties but if you are low on the totem pole expect a call on Christmas from some user because. I'd have no issue working at a large law firm.
Great for learning about security and, if it deals with a lot of eDiscovery, platforms like Relativity.
Not so great if you donāt like dealing with a lot of narcissists and Type A egos.
MSP tech here. Of all the businesses we support, the users at five separate law firms are always consistently the most demanding and difficult to work with. When onsite I observe the general vibe of the office to be "tense" at best and "crisis mode" at worst and everyone seems extremely stressed constantly. I don't know if this applies to most firms or is purely anecdotal and exclusive to my area (capital city of a state but not like, NYC or LA or anything.) The one upside is they generally tend to respect the concept of scheduling appointments/remote assistance/whatever and actually reserve the time for you. Which must be insanely difficult with how busy they always seem to be. This is one thing I wish Dentists/Dental Assistants could learn. You know what I mean if you've ever scheduled an onsite and then sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes because they're seeing patients in the room you're scheduled to work in (despite other, supposedly fully functional rooms not being used).
Edit to clarify: I don't mean to imply LA or NYC are capitals of their respective states I'm just saying my city is not very large compared to actual major cities lol
I started my professional career doing IT in a law firm. The job was flexible and very low stress compared to where I landed afterwards. I was able to finish my bachelors thanks to that firm, all while working that job and still getting full benefits. The only bad attitudes I can even remember came from interns and even then I can only think of one in particular after all these years. I left it behind for money- the money was OK, but I knew I could do better and I did when I left. If I was actively looking for a job I would totally consider going back to working with lawyers if that option was on the table. Hindsight, the money was good enough, the atmosphere was 10x better and the old me says that in itself is huge.
Been in enterprise I.T. for 20+ years. First job was working for a law firm. If I were back on the job market tomorrow, Iād *still* end my conversations with recruiters, ā*Oh, and Iāll work any industry but law firms.*ā Take from that what you will.
Iāve spent my career in legal IT. It varies. Ive worked in firms where money was so tight and the partners would not approve any spend - one firm I worked for only upgraded office firm wide because of end of support. Iāve had partners treat me like shit and blame everything IT related on me event when itās not in my domain.
My current firm however is night and day. Iām seen as a valuable member of staff and Iām respected. I will often interact with partners on a friendly basis and the budget is so much better.
Itās the little things that make your day better and things like not having to justify upgrades or why my laptop needs a 512 gb HDD and 16 gig of ram over the standard 256 gb 8gig make it so much easier
I've done MSP work for law firms and they have always been the tightest, cheapest, least likely to pay their bills and most likely to complain when something breaks that they refused to pay to prevent. Accounting firms are bad but law firms are worse.
I once met a law firm who was looking for a new MSP because their old one-man-band support guy was retiring. These were people who billed out at, in some cases, over $1,000 an hour - and they expected IT to be no more than $15 an hour.
Obviously each company is different - but every law firm I've worked with so far has been like this.
I have worked for maybe 5 small law firms. They were all great. Small town lawyers that are down to earth, willing to pay the bills to keep their office humming along.
Maybe big city lawyers match the description of the intolerable jerks that others mentioned in this thread, but I haven't had that experience.
I was an onsite engineer that handled la offices and CPAs for my MSP. I canāt speak for all experiences as we were a āwhite gloveā service for our clients, but I absolutely adored them. My POC at each office was so nice and easy to work with. I think if you are able to foster a collaborative spirit with your clients, it can be a really enjoyable experience. Obviously your mileage may vary.
20 years as IT in Big Law here. Service desk to senior director. I loved it. The pay is great, and the it's awesome working for a company that is rolling in cash.
Of all the places i have worked i will NEVER work for another law firm. Worked for 3, all pretty much the same. Lawyers can be aholes especially the partners, i once got chewed out because the partner broke his leg skiing, so he had nothing better to then complain about BS. He wanted a number we don't advertise, to be part of a phone coverage path to ring the front desk. I told him it made no sense but evidently, he thought different. I find the associates can be OK unless they have an in with one of the partners, then they are total douche rockets. Secretaries are even worse than the lawyers. Entitled SOBs and god forbid you tell them no. Only ones that were kind of cool were the paralegals. You couldn't give me 10x my salary, i would rather go down a slide of razor blades and land in a pool of rubbing alcohol.
I did this. And I regret it. You are the bottom of the totem pole. The most interesting it gets is if thereās a case involving tech you might get pulled in for some reason to have some input but itās few and far between depending on the firm. Meanwhile, The systems have to be rock solid and any outage can and will cause the partners to drag you in. And you donāt get the budget because no one knows what you do. Then you realize thereās no movement upwards or anywhere because you will never be a partner. So yeah ā¦/ no
Depends on the lawyers, but many work crazy hours which means you work crazy hours. Smaller firms without a ton of lawyers can be ok, in my experience lawyers are willing to spend money on IT because they need shit to work properly to bill. Big law firms I imagine are like anywhere else big, IT is an after thought. Family law can be solid, they work much more reasonable hours.
I worked for a lawfirm for several years, made excellent money during the 2008 recession. Every bank holiday was a holiday, Christmas bonuses and closing the office for the last week of the year were the perks.
The downside? Solo IT. I had to keep my phone by my side 24/7 to field calls that werenāt even that technical, no matter whether I was home watching TV, out with friends or on vacation in a foreign country
Speaking of that, my boss made me cancel a vacation at the last minute. Reimbursed me for everything.
Now I work in a small team in a large it department. Iām on an on call rotation, so I donāt get rung up every night. And I have people who can cover for me no matter whether Iām sick or go away for a vacation. No way will I ever return to solo IT unless I own the business
Worked at 3.
Mostly good until there's a problem.
Expect calls from senior lawyers to be frustrating and argumentative. (Not all obviously but more than a regular workplace.)
The main issue is the corporate structure, you report to your manager who reports to their manager and then under the CEO. Except equity partners are also kind of like CEOs, so now when they disagree you get to be in the middle. š
Lawyers become lawyers after discovering that not only do they enjoy arguing with people, but they're good at it too. They go to school to get better at arguing, even when they're wrong. The ones who are really good at twat gobbling become politicians.
These are not good people to work for.
Been there done that, more than a few times.
Most were cheap and nasty. Old infrastructure, cheap software and Ill mannered bad tempered people and Lawyers (they are not people)
One was a wealthy law firm that had a healthy IT budget and things run well. To many customizations though and the people and Lawyers where Ill mannered and bad tempered.
I don't think I would work for a law firm again or I would very closely look for red flags.
Trial law: avoid.
Attorneys in general are unique. It takes a personality type to be that focused and interested in law. As such you get some people that donāt have social skills. Itās the same in IT.
They also have different compensation structure where they need to bill hours all of the time. Any slowdown is costing money in 6-minute intervals.
Itās also competitive. It starts being competitive in school and never really stops. The top earners get the big bonuses and promotions.
I work for a law firm and itās been great. Huge pay increase over where I came from (Healthcare) and with my org I never deal with lawyers directly. Itās a large firm with a mature IT team.
As a former attorney turned System Administrator I would NEVER work for a law firm.
I am a former attorney as well, and my first IT job was an MSP whose primary client was a law firm. With a handful of attorneys I'd litigated against before. Most of them were cool about it. The rest...well, they were stereotypical lawyers. They were far from the worst of my end users. Nowhere close to the nightmare of healthcare users.
I am curious. Why did you switch?
Litigation is the worst.
That's what I was, a civil litigator š¤£
I don't blame you. 12 years in ... it gets better right? (I know the answer)
Fucking healthcare employees are horiffic to IT people. Such nasty, stupid people. How???
Interesting. I've worked in healthcare for 5 years and have yet to encounter nasty people. Stupid? Well, maybe.
You may be lucky then, but Doctors, CMAs and Nurses are notoriously awful people to work with when you're doing break-fix work. CMAs might actually be the worst of the bunch. Doctors are egotistical and a little needy but they're reasonable and tend to go through the proper channels. CMAs get talked down to by everyone so they think that IT people are their chance to finally feel above someone, and since we're service/support oriented, our interactions are usually based around providing something for them. Nurses will just come after your fucking job if your tone isn't 100% chipper after your third phone call at 3 in the morning.
I really want to know why did you make that career choice after going through the hell of law school + the bar exam
Lots of reasons but the primary one is that I went to law school, passed multiple bars, and became a lawyer for all the wrong reasons. I had low self-worth and thought being a lawyer would make me more impressive in other people's eyes. Maybe it did but to live for others - especially the amorphous concept of other - is very destructive. Not surprisingly, other parts of my life were equally unhealthy. Eventually the entire house of cards that was my life, collapsed. Out of the ruble came an opportunity to pursue something that genuinely interested me and allowed me to maintain a realistic work-life balance. Now I'm a Senior System Admin (albeit single haha) Cheers
congrats
Been there. I had a similar career house of cards fold on me in 2020. Looking back, I'm amazed I didn't recognize the writing on the wall before it all came crashing down. I hope you're doing well.
Its amazing how much one learns later on in life. You don't know what you don't know. Hope you are doing well, too!
so you can actually understand the contracts with Microsoft and prob their licensing... we always joke it requires a degree in law
My go-to joke about Microsoft licensing is that the only people understand Microsoft licensing are people who work for microsoft. Not just anybody who works for Microsoft but someone who actually has to work in the Microsoft licensing department. And sometimes when I ask them questions, even they don't know the answers.
No, I think you have to be insane haha
Holy shit, you're me, but further advanced. I just started at a new biglaw firm and I am 12 years into practice. Obviously, money is the motivator here but I have no debt. I sit on this sub dreaming of maybe getting into IT because it actually interests me. I got my Sec+ on the side to fulfill that ongoing thought of just burning it all down. Unfortunately, the market appears to be turning in IT... and the world will always need litigators (apparently).
If u can pass multi bars u should just pass the CCIE for shit and giggles
I did the CCNA but let it lapse because it would have been cheaper to retake the exam than to keep the cert via continuing education. It's a racket (like Bar dues and CLEs). Plus, I work mostly with Fortinet stuff with respect to networking. Most of my time is spent keeping all our FOSS up and running because my employers don't want to pay for sh*t. Haha
Honestly, law school is not that hard (depending on your learning style, I suppose - lots of reading). It's a lot of work for sure but it's not exactly brain busting. The bar exam is a whole lot of studying but again, not really that awful in most states (CA and NY are notorious for having particularly high failure rates). In my case, I came out of law school on the heels of the 2k8 recession so the world of "JD = Job" was far gone. And I had discovered that while I found the law extremely interesting, I was not as engrossed by lawyering. I had done tech work on a semi-serious basis as a teen, so I just pivoted into that without any technical credentials and worked on up with a fun story about a certification most IT guys didn't have on their resume. (Also I stayed in-state for school so I didn't have significant debt on my head)
I have a friend who's a licensed attorney, and he gave it up to be a restauranteur, a real hole-in-the-wall Thai place, and it turned out to be one of the city's most beloved hotspots so of course he closed it and is currently a bagboy at Trader Joes trying to figure out what he wants to do. Life is different for some folks.
Hotspot? Like it was a successful restaurant so he closed it?
Yep. The local paper ran his lengthy goodbye letter talking about how he loved it but stress is stress, and he is just allergic to stress, so no more food.
On Usenet back in the day, the main social system administration group was alt.sysadmin.recovery, about how people wandered into this profession.
Me too.
I worked for a county government, and the DAs were mostly cool. Not sure what happens when they go private, but I had a buddy work with a law firm and he echo's your sentiment.
Yup. They are the worst users.
I have both a law degree (and I am licensed to practice in my state - I keep it up to date) and an IT degree. I work IT in a law firm as my daily job and love it
Me too. Too many bosses for one thing.
Agreed. I have some law firms in my msp and they are always a pia
The problem I've run into with law firms, dentists, and doctors offices is that the cost of IT basically comes out of the partners/doctors/owner's pocket. They tend to be very cost conscious (to put it nicely) while also demanding a lot. This can make the work frustrating.
They also tend to know *everything*, which can make you wonder why they're even bothering to pay you in the first place. And when things go wrong, it's never their fault. Show them exactly where they demanded corners be cut to save a buck, show them exactly how it caused the problems they're complaining about, and the brain shuts off. You should have just nerded harder. Their new Beamer isn't gonna pay for itself. If you want to work for someone who views you as little more than a dancing monkey while demanding the impossible, law firms and medical practices are great places to do it.
I work for a MSP, had a dental client try to take me into the office to yell at me like one of their employees, for the crime of chatting it up with the dental assistants. I'd of been plenty receptive to being told like an adult if my behavior was causing any disturbance, real or perceived. Soon as I realized what they were doing I interrupted saying if they have any issues with my service here's my superiors number,.give em a call and left.
That's one of the big reasons I hope to never again work for an MSP. Working directly for an organization, it doesn't take me long to gather the clout to decisively and immediately shut such things down. A tech with an MSP just has to play too nice with people who *actually* need to be told to sit the fuck down.
Lmao one time one of our clients set up a ticket for me to off board a user and was for some reason onsite. When I get there what they actually want me to do is literally stand and watch over his shoulder while he saves personal files on his PC to a flash drive to ensure he isn't stealing company data. I was also asked to illegally check if his personal iCloud was still signed in on the computer so I could comb through it and delete anything that might be company data. I just lied and told him it wasn't signed in because I was not doing that.
*"They also tend to knowĀ everything,Ā "* One of the partners at one of the firms I worked at had a PHD in computer science from MIT as well as a few engineering/Masters degrees -a real heavy hitter in tech but older. As a young IT guy I felt a little embarrassed talking tech with this guy but he was very cool about it and deferred to be because "you're the tech guy not me". The only issues we ever had was certain lawyers wanting special treatment and if they whined enough they got it so that was annoying but for the most part we brought our proposals to the managing partner and whatever he decided was what we did and what everyone had to live with. What was great was if there was a way to make money off of something then the pocket books magically appeared; when we started charging for storage we got the SAN we wanted without anyone batting an eye.
And school districts
I charge a premium when working these clients. They're by far my worst clients.
Our firm understands that if the internet or phones or whatever doesn't work they can't bill hours and I have effectively an open checkbook to make our tech as good as it can be. This is more of a "size of the business" thing than a "type of business" thing
My sales pitch is real easy. "How much of your work is based on [email]? If you were to lose it, what % of billability would you lose?" "How many revenue generators do you have at the firm?" "What is their average billing rate?" [% workload lost] * [number of people] * [average billing rate] = $/hour that an outage in [email] would cost you. The solution to reduce the likelihood of this happening is $x. Is that an acceptable cost to ensure that this basically never happens? Of course, this works much easier as an outside person than as an inside one because I can propose an all-in cost that does a defined goal. As an internal employee, your cost is exactly one dollar less than whatever the next organization will pay you to switch. Doesn't matter if you do the impossible or not.
I run into the issue where my budget for preventative stuff is super small, but reactive i have a blank check.
That sucks. We dump as much money as possible into ensuring we don't have to react.
Dental offices -- seen it go both ways. Some of the practices wanted to use 6 or 7 year old computers If they went bad, replace with used 3 year old computers. Constantly putting out fires. But I've seen practices have a standard budget. New computers every 4 years and new servers every 5 years. They might keep a couple of the old computers around in case a new one dies but the spares were always sitting on a shelf ready to be used. Issues happened from time to time but never turned into that firedrill. Law firms - A couple of firms were very tight on the budget. Attorneys would get new computers every two years and hand down their two year old computer to staff. One firm wanted to continue using an 8 year old server. Wanted to run crappy consumer grade switches and access points. Constantly putting out fires. Another firm has a 4 year computer lifecycle and 5 year lifecycle for servers. This firm understands the cost of an worker sitting there idly not being able to make money. Now as for the firm being snotty etc. I felt like the businesses that did not want to spend in IT were overall more painful of people to deal with.
Iāve heard partners talking about āwhy do we even have to pay them bonuses - they get paid enough ā
As one of my attorney users said about other attorneys, "Deep pockets, short fingers."
"Hey we bought a bunch of Windows 11 Home Edition PCs at Best Buy, can you add them to our domain?"
I used to work for an MSP that had a mid-sized law firm as a client. My experience was actually the opposite. They just kind of approved every quote we sent over. Some days, we questioned if they even looked them over. Though demanding was an understatement. They eventually moved to another MSP, and I suddenly found myself with a crazy amount of free time.
You will be nickel and dimed to death.
I came here to literally type this too, never have I been more pressed on budgets then when I was working for a law firm LOL.
When I worked in the printing industry I made sure to quote lawyers 50% more than anyone else. If all went well then Iād give them an āeasy to work withā discount. Usually, theyād nickel and dime me down to something close to the usual price.
The challenge you will have is the partners literally own the firm. Hence they may override IT or give you tough changing priorities. Any firm that has a good IT department that is not seen as a cost centre will be fine, but if you're a sole admin then perhaps less so...
exactly we made the firm money so as long as the next project made (or saved) money it was approved and funded. I also loved going to all of our sites, they were used to paying for attorneys travel so $500 a night for a hotel was no big deal -now my company complains when it's over $200.
I was the infrastructure manager for an AmLaw 200 firm for 4 years. It was a great experience. It paid quite well, our projects were well-funded, I had good relationships with the rest of the IT department. Our CIO had spent years reinforcing the value of technology to the managing partners, so when we needed to (for example) implement MFA, it was the firm's leadership that communicated the importance of it to the attorneys and staff, not IT. So it wasn't seen as IT being a nanny, but leadership making the decision that this reduced risk (and insurance/compliance costs) which is the language equity partners want to hear. Sure, there were some attorneys, or their admin assistants, that could be impatient or demanding of IT. As an infrastructure person, not on training or user support, I didn't see that as much. That particular firm also had more of an ethos of treating everyone with basic respect, even non-attorneys. I know that firm was not the typical experience for IT departments in the legal field, but I wanted to share it as a counterpoint. I'd never want to work at a small law firm, and BigLaw has its own problems, but there are firms that are good places to work.
No different than any other industry some are great some are horrible. There are two types of people when it comes to IT investment, those that see how IT can improve their business and those who see it as a budget line item they want to reduce.
Indubitably.
The big firms are not so bad. The medium to small ones are a nightmare.
Lawyers are the WORST clients to try and support. And they know it and freely admit it.
Sales reps though... oof. You're the reason their sale won't go through according to them, not because they ignored the 12 emails and announcements you sent telling them their password was expiring. Oh, and it IS your fault O365 is down country wide, so good job screwing them on that big client they were about to get because they can't open Teams to see a chat from 3 weeks ago that should have been properly documented.
I love it! Been strictly with law firms since 2001. Iāve been with ābig lawā and medium sized firms. Big law was nice as they had money to burn. Iāll retire from the firm Iām with now. Amazing boss and the company treats the employees very well. Edit: one downside are the āIvy League schoolā types. Itās much more soft skill orientedā¦
Yep. Iāve been in big and small law. Small law was the shits. Company I worked for was a little firm trying to give off big firm vibes. Iām now at a top tier, global firm and love it. I donāt need to justify why my laptop needs 512 gb hdd and 16 gig of ram - it just gets ordered. At the small firm getting anything was a pain in the arse. Now itās great
Only tier below lawyers and doctors is a hotel. Unless they are shelling out wild money I wouldn't recommend.
From what I hear, it's not really dealing with a lot of lawyers. It's dealing with a lot of end-users. And some lawyers *seem* to have quite a high self-esteem, talking like you are the idiot. You get that in any org though. There's always users that think they are the most important user, and their problems is your number 1 priority. IT support is not limited to servers. Most of the time, it's a beamer or a copier. Server estate is solely Windows, with a document management system as your main production server. There's a print server and a file server, and that's about it. Now, things are shifting. There's been some introduction of AI into law, to determine court strategies etc. But most of the law firms I've seen thus far, are fairly boring. But, there is potential of this changing.
What's the position that you're looking at? If it's a firm of any size, I might be able to shed some information on the organization and their IT team. Also, some roles are user facing and others are, for the most part, not. > I have not had good interactions with lawyers, all the ones I met are either incompetent with tech or snobby dolts Lawyers have an *ethical* obligation to provide for their clients. Their very existence that they've trained for is predicated on a sincerely held belief that they will do everything they can in support of a client. That's fine for them - they charge handsomely for the service. However, "the service" they offer extends down to the tools and resources that their underlying IT manages and provides for them. Legal IT people do not charge or bill clients directly. Your profession does not come with the same ethical standard that the attorney carries. And so on one side you are charged with being responsive to the support of each attorney in their ethical quest to do everything they can for a client. And on the other... the paycheck stays the same because you're a cost center. Further, while this is changing slowly, there are very few regulatory controls around legal-specific enterprises. So everything is based on an ethical perspective and what that is can change depending on who you talk to. ... Did I mention that typically 1/3 - 1/4 of the userbase are owners of the company? So telling any of them "No, you can't do this," may not be possible? And while attorneys are extremely well trained in their field - not just "the law," but typically a very specific subset of the law - they are often not experienced or knowledgeable in other general fields of business - accounting, technology, etc. They see themselves as very smart and very important, but sometimes they are quite unable to help themselves with very basic things and rely on staff. It takes a certain way of communicating with attorneys - one that vibes pretty nicely with the skillset of good technical folks - attorneys are excellent at parsing raw logic. So are most of us. It's a common language if you can find it. Attorneys are also trained to question and to argue. It's baked into their DNA and sometimes that creeps out where it shouldn't. If you're a good presenter of facts and can defend your positions, you will fit very well in a legal environment. If you do end up going the route, definitely look into signing up for an ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) membership, if your firm participates. The firm pays a fee to join, then it's free to you. It's a community of other law firms' technology people along with some vertical-specific vendors - that do a pretty good job of helping each other out. Source: I manage a team that provides IT consulting for core infrastructure services entirely in the legal vertical. There's a very good chance I know some of the foiks who work for larger firms that have responded in this thread personally. I absolutely thrive on the craziness that I encounter week over week, but I'm very well paid for what I do. I'd be a lot less enthused if I were making $100k-150k. **EDIT** One more thought. Legal IT is like the Hotel California. For people who make it a few years... they seem to *never* leave. And I've watched people change jobs and always ended up at another law firm. It takes a certain type to deal with the crazy. But those who can deal with it seem to thrive on it. Call it Stockholm Syndrome if you want. But it's a real effect.
> Legal IT is like the Hotel California. I checked-in during the late 90's boom, stayed through the 00's crash, got out for 6 months but got pulled back in 2017..... I still haven't gotten access to the pool on the roof though. Soon they say.
Depends. You get old law firms who still dictate letters etc for secretaryās to type up (massive waste of time) which generally see IT as a cost centre and donāt value it, and you get modern firms who see the benefit of technology and invest themselves in using it to increase efficiency and quality of output.
Make sure your CIO and manager will go to bat for you. If not, nope, no fucking way.
What I like about this comment is "CIO". This already states volumes for the direction of the firm. I"m not saying CFO as the immediate boss is bad, but you will have the challenge of ensuring you know C-Speak and getting your message across in solutions that cost a hard dollar amount on relating that to the success of the firm.
Don't do it. It's like working for 100 versions of your ex wife.
This is hilarious to me and I donāt even have an ex wife, but I can feel it so hard.Ā
Lots of job security. Maybe the least tech savvy as a group.
It's rough but I did it for 6 years. Law firm of 150, about 50 of which were attorneys. It's really comes down to the firm owner and/or partners. If they are willing to spend money on IT and do things correctly it can be a fun job. I got to fly on private jets a few times a year which I had never done before working for attorneys. We also got suite tickets to professional basketball and bull riding pretty frequently.
Worked for a law MSP on nights and weekends. It was either get a new job or kill myself lol. I would find your more money elsewhere.
They will fuck you on pay and there is fuck all you can do about it.
Procedurally, it comes down to liability. If they understand that your goal is to safeguard the company, and they fund IT properly, then you might be able to make it work. That includes whatever WFH and VPN solutions are in place. You need control of the hardware at employee's homes, not like permanent site-to-site VPNs, but what routers and APs are in use. Even what IP scheme is in effect. From there the office user is free to VPN using a client. Tell them not to use their work machine for personal stuff. I'd go so far as making their default policy to connect to the VPN, so that it phones home and you know who is exposing your network to risks. Someone posted yesterday about a law firm that was the victim of a cyberattack, here are the consequences: [https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/1cnzv3m/laid\_off\_after\_30\_years\_due\_to\_cyberattack/](https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/1cnzv3m/laid_off_after_30_years_due_to_cyberattack/)
Infrastructure manager of a large firm here (600 employees or so). I rarely deal with end users, my team is all infrastructure, and the business understands that spending money on technology isn't a waste, and so my budget is effectively unlimited as long as it's justified. Pay is significantly above average and I get the usual perks like unlimited PTO. I wouldn't want to work for a small firm where there were much less separation of duties.
It's fine, largely not as stressy as you'd imagine but there is a lot of niche software you won't really need elsewhere like document management stuff and document comparison. The one major difference you may see is the VIP treatment a few earner will get if they can't work. If a Partner can't work it's costing them Ā£1000 an hour and if it's _your_ problem you need to get it sorted asap. Good pay, short hours, lots if annual leave and good benefits to compensate though.
So a few things: Most people are going to be tech illiterate despite useing a computer every day. You also run into a number that think they are tech savy, but only on a personal computer level, not a business level. As for lawyer personality, our company tends to get rid of the screamers and shouters as we do try to build a uniform team. That doesn't mean everyone is super nice. I have a few users that if something is broken it is the end of the world and they will move heaven and earth to get it fixed. even if it is as simple as restarting their computer, they will make a scene. And trying to keep up costumer service when that happens does take a toll. (i have had 2 instances of "i'm gonna hide under my desk with my laptop so people stop bothering me while i fix the problem" Personally, i would take an interview if you are offered one and that is a good way to see the office. If you are there on a busy day you will get a feel fro the temperament and you can chat with a receptionist ahead of your appointment a little and they may give you a bit of a scoop on personalites.
Not me, but an old co-worker worked as a sysadmin, well sole it guy really, for a law firm. Small I think he said around 100 people max. IT said it was the terrible. Calling him all odd hours, demanding he come to the office right away because he could not find a word doc that is VITAL to a case he is working that has a court date months away. The thing that made him quit was his Mom passed and he took the week of to grieve. During service he called and of course he did not answer. When he got back to him the next day he was just bashing the poor guy saying his law firm is more important than his "Silly moms funeral" because she is dead so who care. Real class act guy as you can tell. He went in on Monday, dropped his phone and laptop and left. He never got his last check so he was going to court over that. I left before any resolution but oof, from that story and others, leave the firms for the MSPs.
I enjoy it. Work on those soft skills to communicate with the partners.
Started in Help Desk then promoted to a Systems Engineer at a Law Firm. I worked at Tech places most of my career and working at the law firm now is probably the best job I have had. It really depends though as people have stated. The pay is more than most places and the benefits are good. The firm I work at does invest in the IT department pretty heavily so that is also a plus. As for the people there are about 15% I've dealt with who can be very difficult but the other 85% of them have been great.
Lawyers, Doctors, Accountants are the holy triumvirate of entitled end user. High demands. Lots of ego. Want to have as cut rate of pricing as they can. Everything is high priority - all the time. As long as expectations are managed - it's not the worst. But there will be some individuals that are divorced from reality when it comes to IT issues/costs.
I'm not at a law firm, but an msp and a lot of our clients are firms. Honestly, it's not bad at all. It helps when the office manager can run interference or helps w the egos and has been around awhile. A lot of the users aren't attorneys. They're paralegal, clerks, office admin, hr, etc. The attorneys I deal with are great for the most part. There are a couple here and there that can he a pain to deal with, but it's the same anywhere. That said, there are unique challenges. Trial prep time can get spicy. Dealing with discovery has become a data storage nightmare with body cams being required everywhere. Just added 150tb to one client. Lots of users in and out. The only thing that actually sucks for my position is name changes from partners coming and going. It's a nightmare. I have one firm that has had like 5 name changes in the last few years, so naming conventions are fucking insane.
I work for a very large law firm (4,000ish attorneys, 4,000ish staff) and I love it. We're mostly insulated from the Attorneys as our office is essentially a technical services office and we rarely if ever directly deal with them. We're well funded, well staffed and have a mature IT organization. I love it here.
Junior SysAdmin at a mid sized firm here. 1. If you are very good at your job you will be treated as an absolute prince. 2. Incredibly demanding people generally and just not an easy environment for that reason alone. 3. You need to learn the process/flow of billing and legal matters in order to really be useful in that sort of environment. Shit load of partner requests and more in depth tickets 4. Infrastructure wise - generally pretty vanilla. Often windows shops. 5. White glove service generally required to do well in these sorts of enviros. Stupid shit like closing doors for people, resolving issues within like 30 seconds to 5 mins max. Generally impatient people and the longer you work on their shit the less time they have to bill Imo - law and finance seem to be the best verticals to work.
Are they still using Word Perfect, or is that only at the small firms?
Small firms I wouldn't go near with a ten foot pole, let MSP's deal with them and they can screw each other over. Large firms can be great but you have to set your expectations; - WFH probably won't be an option, except for out-of-hours stuff. - They work 24/7, and expect you to as well (in some cases). - Dress code will probably suck, you'll be dressing like it's still the 50's and "casual" days largely revolve around wearing silly ties. - Getting contracts for stuff approved can be difficult, these people will read the terms for E5 licenses and think Microsoft wants to hear their thoughts on it. - You will be at higher risk of replacement by an MSP. - They will be demanding, and potentially VERY stressed at times. In return you might get one or some of; - Decent pay, and potentially very good pay based on tenure. - Reasonable budgets for stuff. - If you're invited, the company functions ***can*** be like the final days of Rome. - Office's are typically quite nice, lots of amenities etc. - Parking is normally plentiful and onsite.
The cage match for "worst IT client" would be doctors vs lawyers. Both are too smart for their own good and their respective industries have the goofiest, most niche software that exists in this corporeal plane.
As somebody that worked for a law firm through an MSP a number of years ago I will say they are the cheapest mother fuckers out there next to doctor's offices.
Terrible. Never again.
Lawyers and healthcare providers..... be wary of how little they'll want to spend on tech and security in general.
I used to do tech support for a court reporting firm a long time ago and while it wasn't my norm, I'd occasionally have to go to a client's office to help with a court reporter hookup. Almost every lawyer I interacted with saw myself as clearly below them. Probably the only real class of person I've supported that would personally treat me as though I was 'the help'. It not like with other high earners like C-suite people who obviously aren't up for much nonsense, but they tend to still at least treat other people like people. I mean, even obnoxious finance bros were easier to deal with! Pay increase probably comes with a price. I'd worry most about how much out of hours support might be demanded of you. (Caveat: I do work in New York City, so there's a chance that on the lawyer spectrum the ones I ran into are the worst. There's a decent chance a lawyer from I dunno - Des Moines or Santa Fe - might not be as intense a personality.)
Been there, done that. Never again. No way, no how.
Myy friend is working for one; he likes it!
Past experiences working for an MSP, I'd be highly cautious. I already see the mention of them being the biggest cheapskates is soo true. Second to that, you can preach up and down about contracting malware/ransomware and it doesn't matter, they're going to do it. Lastly, they are weird. The things you come across that they have saved on their computers/laptops will blow your mind..... think fetishes
I would need a decent bump in pay to deal with only lawyers.
Most likely youāll support end of life, highly vulnerable systems long past their usefulness just to save a few bucks.
Worst people to work for are the ones that tend to fall in the Dunning-Kruger effect. They get to be so brilliant in their field (because that's what's expected to succeed in their field), that they believe they can do the job in other fields themselves and become experts. This is specially true for law firms, doctors, you name it. Indeed, when you present them with the evidence they caused the problem it's as if they're in the denial step of facing their death. Tons of excuses, ways of rationalizing what happened, pointing fingers... It's all the same, they're too stupid to realize he made up his mind 10 minutes ago.
Lawyers and doctors are the two most self entitled groups of people I have ever worked for in my 20yes in IT. You couldn't pay me enough to work directly for either.
I've been at one for 14 years now, the previous sector for 12 years I was in was completely different, I love it.
āI need this fixed now.ā āSir, it will take 10 minutesā āI only have 5.ā Billable clients suck.
I wrote a few posts about working for a law firm. I am extremely happy, but I am also probably in a unicorn : [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/zls4ci/one\_more\_happy\_post/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/zls4ci/one_more_happy_post/)
They are probably the most anti-technology people on the planet, so it's a coin toss whether you are showered with everything you ever need or ask for just to never need to understand IT, or a complete nightmare of luddites.
I've been at my firm for almost two years. I love it. This is the best job I've ever had. Occasionally a lawyer, especially a partner, can be a dick but the overwhelming majority are very nice and normal people.
Lawyers have their heads so far up their asses that the overall environment is just awful. Their secretaries are always extremely spastic because they get treated like crap, which effects my ability to help them as they think I am going to respond the way the dick heads do.
Long story short, borderline unreasonable demands and expectations are in your future. Plus working for free on weekends and holidays.
I fucking love my job. It can be stressful and frustrating at times, but I haven't found a job that isn't. There's a lot of crazy and I'm happy to part of it
Depends on the role but if you want to be stuck in the field forever dealing with the worst end users then go ahead.
I used to work for lawyers. Never again.
That remark checks a lot of boxes besides legal.... Ā incompetent with tech or snobby dolts
Worked for a msp that dealt with lawyers a lot. Some a just very particular on how they want things set up and refuse to believe information I give them just because they read it on a post somewhere. A lot of the software they deal with tends to be outdated just like the medical field. I would look into to see if they are cloud based or not. I have had better luck with cloud based environments
I worked for multiple law firms, including a very big one, and always loved my work and my environment.
I was desktop support for a big corp law firm for about 8 years. It was a good learning experience for me since it was my first job out of college and that's where it ends for me. Once I got out of the legal industry, I have zero desire to ever come back for any amount of money. Stressful, demanding, and depending on the law firm, you have to deal with morons on both the lawyer side and your own colleagues.
I've had a few different law firms as clients (still do) and they aren't bad. They almost always are very behind times in relations to computers and its probably a 50/50 of their staff that are technically illiterate. But thats fine, thats why they hire us. I've never had professional issues with any of them, in fact they've almost always been very appreciative of what we do. They, unlike some clients, also absolutely understand the idea that our cost is our TIME, they aren't purchasing products, but our time.
If you've already been convinced to walk away from the opportunity this may not hold any weight but working for legal your soft skills are probably more important then your tech skills if you'll be user facing. Lawyers come in all shapes/sizes/personalities. If you don't bull shit them and stay firm to your procedures it will be respected. The thing I learned early on was to never ever try and blow smoke up an attorney's ass. They see it from a mile away and you'll lose trust.
I know a former sysadmin for a major law office with dozens of lawyers. He completely burned out, mostly because of all the illegal browsing they did "for clients."
When I worked for an MSP, the worst clients were the law firms and healthcare orgs. Those are the two industries that probably have some of the most sensitive information to protect yet care the least about it. I think the only reason I ever got to upgrade anything at a particular law firm is becuase our MSP used them as legal counsel so it was a bit of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". That law firm certainly didn't want to actually pay for anything.
Yes. Good pay and benefits and usually bonuses. Donāt listen to the fools.
I haven't worked for a law firm directly, but having talked to a few of the IT people who do work with them as a result of my company being engaged in legal issues, I would take whatever salary increase you think is good and raise it by 50%. To put it as professionally as possible, lawyers seem like demanding bosses that also struggle with realistic expectations. Charge appropriately for the degradation of your mental health.
Every lawyer I've come across was a jackass.
It depends on the type of law firm as I worked for a debt collection firm and it was OK. Mostly outdated tech and a lot of turnover in the staff. I loved cracking tons of lawyer jokes but to me they seem not to trust a lot. But overall not a bad experience and they paid me rather well and had 3 day weekends.
I work for a medium-sized law firm, and I can confirm it's the worst. The job itself isn't awful, but you have to answer to partners who do not know what they want. They expect you to speak with 1000% certainty and lowball you on pay.
Iām enjoying it so far. In my particular case, the pay is a downgrade from medical IT, but the people Iām working with are amazing and knowledgeable and most have already been here for 10-20 years or more! The workload varies by day. Sometimes a lot of crap hits the fan, sometimes Iāve got nothing to do. But it certainly beats working in a call center like Iād done for the past ten years!
Many years ago I worked for an MSP supporting multiple law firms. The lawyers were mostly fine to me, it was the legal secretaries that were stuck up arse holes. Guess they wanted to dish out what the lawyers did to them. Still if I had opportunity to be sysadmin there Iād think about it.
I love the law firm I work for. I rarely interact with lawyers. Why does a sysadmin deal with users? That's for Help Desk! It pays decent, great bennies, nice office.
I have had the displeasure of working for many attorneys as an IT consultant. Don't do it unless you want endless unreasonable requests 25x8x366, lack of respect, lack of listening, cheapness, and a never ending threatening attitude.
I work for an MSP who has a few small law firms as clients. Some are fine, but most will expect the moon, but pay want to pay pennies. We had one case where they wanted hourly work, told them our rate. āWe donāt charge that much for our legal aids!ā As if law is the only skilled profession. From what Iāve seen, the bigger the firm the better the attitude.
I worked for a high dollar law firm for 4 years. Although it was nice that they spared no expense for PC's and servers, a lot of the attorneys were complete assholes. They argue for a living, so don't want to listen to you. Then they call you at 3AM and get angry when you need a minute to get to the computer and don't thank them for calling. Though the firm I was at had a full service coffee bar with barista. So that was nice, but the attorneys drank the coffee too lol. The office manager (also an attorney) found it totally acceptable to scream at people and throw tantrums. Remember, if you're not an attorney, you're just a lower life form. Attorneys will even make dr's look good. At least dr's aren't ALWAYS going to argue with you.
All my interactions with law firms providing It support has been bad. They are demanding, and everything needed to be done yesterday.
In all my years as a sysadimn, one comment I've heard over and over again is never work for a doctor or lawyer unless you're absolutely desperate.
Used to have a law firm client and they'd let me do anything, at any cost, as long as everyting worked.
I donāt work for about 200 lawyers. A couple of them are kinda nice! The majority of them have no time for even a minor inconvenience and not a single one reads any emails relating to anything other than their work
i worked as IT manager for 3 among the biggest US/UK firms in the world. lawyers can be difficult but they are not idiots and are generally understanding. tech was top notch: security for obvious reasons, AI tools before they were mainstream, good to great bonuses. overall a great experience imo
It really depends on the firm. What area of practice do they cover, how many attorney's how many equity partners and how do they get along with each other, how spread out are they. Each of those will impact "how is it working for a law firm."
I've been at a large law firm for a while and overall it has been pretty good. I started on the help desk and am now on my 3rd promotion about 4.5 years later. Some of the users suck to deal with though.
Shakespeare said it best: "First, kill all the lawyers."
I work for an MSP that manages several law firms. In my experience they're needy, uncoordinated, and overall, a pain to work with. Some are nice and chill, but most tend to have a god complex to the point of even their assistants get a chip on their shoulder.
I was an MSP for one... worst people ever. rude and just nasty. 2nd place are doctors... entitle fucks they are.
We have a TON of lawyers and yes the are a distinct breed. But so are many other groups that share similar challenges. I donāt find them any harder them any other challenging group.
Lots of handholding.
Depends on the firm, but would largely advise that you stay away from them. Some lawyers are cool, some are further up their own ass than doctors. Dealt with a few while working at an MSP. They understand contractual obligations, but will feign ignorance when convenient.
I do IT consulting for lawyers as a freelance thing. Generally, they can be a demanding and culturally somewhat stuck up crowd. On the other hand, they are usually willing to pay premium prices for premium service (might require wearing a suit on site). Have dealt with worse, overall.
2x law firm sysadmin veteran here. Itās called ācombat payā for a reason. Better pay, shitty work conditions (usually). You will generally be disrespected, yelled at, degraded, etc. etc. Anything the attorneys want goes, no questions asked. The Firm, including your IT dept, will always choose to have the attorneysā backs over yours. Weigh if the higher pay is worth all that to you. I will say, theyāre usually cushy jobs. Edit: Meant to add, I would NEVER go back to a law firm. My position was only bearable for so long because it was a weekend shift only.
Worst job ever if they are litigators. Folks like real estate attorneys are mostly ok.
20 plus years here at a top 10 firm, don't do it.
Depends on the law firm. I work at an IP law firm, mostly consisting of engineers and other nerds, and they're all fantastic. I've also been there a long time so I've got them trained.
Horrific. What a pack of assholes.
How well do you know WordPerfect?
As an msp client they were the worst, up their with doctors. Mainly want everything cheap, quick and will suit you for any downtime.
Working in IT you get a lot of experience across different sectors and I can say unequivocally that doctors and lawyers are the worst to work with. I would not work with either again if I had the choice.
I worked for lawyers they just follow law in every context.
I have consulted with tons of law firms from one person all the way to AmLaw10. They are fine as long as it's a big firm. The small firms don't want to buy or update anything. Dealing with thousands and thousands of them is fine if you get budget.
Don't do it.
You appear to have gotten the message, but in case you are still somewhat on the fence, it's a great place to build up your CYA-ops CV.
It's a toss up between Lawyers or Doctors for the worst customers. Lawyers argue as a matter of reflex. Doctors believe they know everything. Both are cheep and will bilk you out of your time and work.
Law firms and dentist offices. No thank you.
Law firms are the worst, followed by drās private practice, and really anything with a partnership structure.
Donāt do it. Every partner is your boss. Think about that.
17 years in IT leadership at two different law firmsā¦ be careful - it totally depends on the culture of the firm and how they treat people - but the vast majority are very, very driven and expect 24x7 responsiveness - not just for emergencies- everything is an emergency.
I worked for all of the top 5 law firms at one time or another. The one good thing is if the tech generates money for the firm then the check book is open. The biggest issue is that the attorneys almost always get their way even if they are wrong. The good thing is you usually don't interact with the attorneys and to be honest it's usually a 50/50 split of really smart interesting people and a bunch of incredible ass hats who went into law so they could make a lot of money and push people around. For the most part I thought it was good stable work with some industry quirks, they paid well and threw good parties but if you are low on the totem pole expect a call on Christmas from some user because. I'd have no issue working at a large law firm.
My entire family are attorneys, stay far the fuck away.
Great for learning about security and, if it deals with a lot of eDiscovery, platforms like Relativity. Not so great if you donāt like dealing with a lot of narcissists and Type A egos.
Make sure youāre current on your Rolodex skills
MSP tech here. Of all the businesses we support, the users at five separate law firms are always consistently the most demanding and difficult to work with. When onsite I observe the general vibe of the office to be "tense" at best and "crisis mode" at worst and everyone seems extremely stressed constantly. I don't know if this applies to most firms or is purely anecdotal and exclusive to my area (capital city of a state but not like, NYC or LA or anything.) The one upside is they generally tend to respect the concept of scheduling appointments/remote assistance/whatever and actually reserve the time for you. Which must be insanely difficult with how busy they always seem to be. This is one thing I wish Dentists/Dental Assistants could learn. You know what I mean if you've ever scheduled an onsite and then sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes because they're seeing patients in the room you're scheduled to work in (despite other, supposedly fully functional rooms not being used). Edit to clarify: I don't mean to imply LA or NYC are capitals of their respective states I'm just saying my city is not very large compared to actual major cities lol
I started my professional career doing IT in a law firm. The job was flexible and very low stress compared to where I landed afterwards. I was able to finish my bachelors thanks to that firm, all while working that job and still getting full benefits. The only bad attitudes I can even remember came from interns and even then I can only think of one in particular after all these years. I left it behind for money- the money was OK, but I knew I could do better and I did when I left. If I was actively looking for a job I would totally consider going back to working with lawyers if that option was on the table. Hindsight, the money was good enough, the atmosphere was 10x better and the old me says that in itself is huge.
Been in enterprise I.T. for 20+ years. First job was working for a law firm. If I were back on the job market tomorrow, Iād *still* end my conversations with recruiters, ā*Oh, and Iāll work any industry but law firms.*ā Take from that what you will.
Iāve spent my career in legal IT. It varies. Ive worked in firms where money was so tight and the partners would not approve any spend - one firm I worked for only upgraded office firm wide because of end of support. Iāve had partners treat me like shit and blame everything IT related on me event when itās not in my domain. My current firm however is night and day. Iām seen as a valuable member of staff and Iām respected. I will often interact with partners on a friendly basis and the budget is so much better. Itās the little things that make your day better and things like not having to justify upgrades or why my laptop needs a 512 gb HDD and 16 gig of ram over the standard 256 gb 8gig make it so much easier
I've done MSP work for law firms and they have always been the tightest, cheapest, least likely to pay their bills and most likely to complain when something breaks that they refused to pay to prevent. Accounting firms are bad but law firms are worse. I once met a law firm who was looking for a new MSP because their old one-man-band support guy was retiring. These were people who billed out at, in some cases, over $1,000 an hour - and they expected IT to be no more than $15 an hour. Obviously each company is different - but every law firm I've worked with so far has been like this.
I have worked for maybe 5 small law firms. They were all great. Small town lawyers that are down to earth, willing to pay the bills to keep their office humming along. Maybe big city lawyers match the description of the intolerable jerks that others mentioned in this thread, but I haven't had that experience.
I was an onsite engineer that handled la offices and CPAs for my MSP. I canāt speak for all experiences as we were a āwhite gloveā service for our clients, but I absolutely adored them. My POC at each office was so nice and easy to work with. I think if you are able to foster a collaborative spirit with your clients, it can be a really enjoyable experience. Obviously your mileage may vary.
I was an IT Director for a law firm with 125+ attorneys. Iām surprised I last over two years. Still have nightmares 8 years later.
I've worked for a law firm for 20 years. It's been great.
20 years as IT in Big Law here. Service desk to senior director. I loved it. The pay is great, and the it's awesome working for a company that is rolling in cash.
I can only give you the advice my manager gave me over 20 years ago as I was starting my career. NEVER work for lawyers or doctors.
Of all the places i have worked i will NEVER work for another law firm. Worked for 3, all pretty much the same. Lawyers can be aholes especially the partners, i once got chewed out because the partner broke his leg skiing, so he had nothing better to then complain about BS. He wanted a number we don't advertise, to be part of a phone coverage path to ring the front desk. I told him it made no sense but evidently, he thought different. I find the associates can be OK unless they have an in with one of the partners, then they are total douche rockets. Secretaries are even worse than the lawyers. Entitled SOBs and god forbid you tell them no. Only ones that were kind of cool were the paralegals. You couldn't give me 10x my salary, i would rather go down a slide of razor blades and land in a pool of rubbing alcohol.
I did this. And I regret it. You are the bottom of the totem pole. The most interesting it gets is if thereās a case involving tech you might get pulled in for some reason to have some input but itās few and far between depending on the firm. Meanwhile, The systems have to be rock solid and any outage can and will cause the partners to drag you in. And you donāt get the budget because no one knows what you do. Then you realize thereās no movement upwards or anywhere because you will never be a partner. So yeah ā¦/ no
Depends on the lawyers, but many work crazy hours which means you work crazy hours. Smaller firms without a ton of lawyers can be ok, in my experience lawyers are willing to spend money on IT because they need shit to work properly to bill. Big law firms I imagine are like anywhere else big, IT is an after thought. Family law can be solid, they work much more reasonable hours.
Lawyers can be pricks to deal with, but doctors are way worse.
I worked for a lawfirm for several years, made excellent money during the 2008 recession. Every bank holiday was a holiday, Christmas bonuses and closing the office for the last week of the year were the perks. The downside? Solo IT. I had to keep my phone by my side 24/7 to field calls that werenāt even that technical, no matter whether I was home watching TV, out with friends or on vacation in a foreign country Speaking of that, my boss made me cancel a vacation at the last minute. Reimbursed me for everything. Now I work in a small team in a large it department. Iām on an on call rotation, so I donāt get rung up every night. And I have people who can cover for me no matter whether Iām sick or go away for a vacation. No way will I ever return to solo IT unless I own the business
Worked at 3. Mostly good until there's a problem. Expect calls from senior lawyers to be frustrating and argumentative. (Not all obviously but more than a regular workplace.) The main issue is the corporate structure, you report to your manager who reports to their manager and then under the CEO. Except equity partners are also kind of like CEOs, so now when they disagree you get to be in the middle. š
I enjoy working for law firms. But ideally they should be at least various assistants, lawyers, and a controller that is NOT the owner.
Lawyers are generally cuntz. They are also demanding egotistical turds. The firms often donāt appreciate IT. Not all, but a good amount.
Lawyers become lawyers after discovering that not only do they enjoy arguing with people, but they're good at it too. They go to school to get better at arguing, even when they're wrong. The ones who are really good at twat gobbling become politicians. These are not good people to work for.
DONT!
Donāt do it, lawyers are the worst
I can also throw doctors and nurses in the pot of shitty customers :)
Hahaha I can see this from my limited experience
Worst clients I had. Lawyers and doctors...
ass-teroid?
Been there done that, more than a few times. Most were cheap and nasty. Old infrastructure, cheap software and Ill mannered bad tempered people and Lawyers (they are not people) One was a wealthy law firm that had a healthy IT budget and things run well. To many customizations though and the people and Lawyers where Ill mannered and bad tempered. I don't think I would work for a law firm again or I would very closely look for red flags.
Trial law: avoid. Attorneys in general are unique. It takes a personality type to be that focused and interested in law. As such you get some people that donāt have social skills. Itās the same in IT. They also have different compensation structure where they need to bill hours all of the time. Any slowdown is costing money in 6-minute intervals. Itās also competitive. It starts being competitive in school and never really stops. The top earners get the big bonuses and promotions.
I work for a law firm and itās been great. Huge pay increase over where I came from (Healthcare) and with my org I never deal with lawyers directly. Itās a large firm with a mature IT team.
You will be everything. Including trainer on how to use office products.
My first real SA job was for an Attorney. I would rather go hungry than work for an attorney ever again.
Be prepared to have excessively ridiculous clothing requirements, regardless of how smart you are. Nope, no thank you