Practicing Law
 

My girlfriend has recently become interested in law school. She is a junior at a good school (Notre Dame), but does not have spectactular grades. I don't know the specifics, but they seem average to slightly above. She intends on taking a year off after school and doing paralegal work to strengten her resume.

Today, we discussed what her hours would likely be as a lawyer. She thought she could find a good job right out of law school where she would only have to work 45 hours a week. I told her that most good jobs would require her to work around 65 hours a week. I know a bunch of you guys are lawyers, or at least know some. What are the hours like right out of school?

Re: Practicing Law
 

Maybe you can ask 'George Raymer.'

Re: Practicing Law
 

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My girlfriend has recently become interested in law school. She is a junior at a good school (Notre Dame), but does not have spectactular grades. I don't know the specifics, but they seem average to slightly above. She intends on taking a year off after school and doing paralegal work to strengten her resume.

Today, we discussed what her hours would likely be as a lawyer. She thought she could find a good job right out of law school where she would only have to work 45 hours a week. I told her that most good jobs would require her to work around 65 hours a week. I know a bunch of you guys are lawyers, or at least know some. What are the hours like right out of school?

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It varies A LOT depending on city, type of lawyer, what you consider a "good job" etc. If one's definition of a good job is a big law firm in Chicago that pays 160K, then you'll definitely be working much more than 45 hours per week. Even working at a smaller firm in a small city or as a prosecutor can entail long hours. The only jobs as a lawyer where you can be somewhat guaranteed of nice hours is at a government agency, but the pay for those jobs is not very good. I think the bottom line is that if your GF is that worried about hours, she should not become a lawyer.

Re: Practicing Law
 

Sounds wise. She should also keep in mind that those lawyers in private practice who are not on the partnership track -- long hours, bringing in new business, etc. -- are often eased out after that becomes clear.

So "hovering" may not even be a realistic option.

Re: Practicing Law
 

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She thought she could find a good job right out of law school where she would only have to work 45 hours a week.

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women are so stupid

Re: Practicing Law
 

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She thought she could find a good job right out of law school where she would only have to work 45 hours a week.

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women are so stupid

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There are some public interest jobs out there with hours like that, but the pay is really low. That's fine if you have a sugar daddy, but not if you have to pay off 6 figures of law school loans by yourself.

Re: Practicing Law
 

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She thought she could find a good job right out of law school where she would only have to work 45 hours a week.

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women are so stupid

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There are some public interest jobs out there with hours like that, but the pay is really low. That's fine if you have a sugar daddy, but not if you have to pay off 6 figures of law school loans by yourself.

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emphasis mine

Re: Practicing Law
 

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She thought she could find a good job right out of law school where she would only have to work 45 hours a week.

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women are so stupid

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There are some public interest jobs out there with hours like that, but the pay is really low. That's fine if you have a sugar daddy, but not if you have to pay off 6 figures of law school loans by yourself.

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emphasis mine

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Yeah, like I said in my first post, it depends on what one defines as a "good job." It's pretty common in DC, where I went to law school, for female attorneys to work at public interest type jobs with nice hours so that they can crank out kids, while the husband works at the big firm to pay the bills. From the wife's perspective, that might be considered a good job.

Re: Practicing Law
 

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Practicing Law

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I hope my lawyer has had enough practice by the time I hire him!


*zing*

Re: Practicing Law
 

Depends on where you live, but 65 is probably high. There will be weeks where she does have to work that much, but 50-55 is probably more realistic unless she's determined to work at a BigLaw (which would entail her being roughly top 10% of her LS class as well).

Re: Practicing Law
 

Not sure how accurate this is, but

http://averyindex.com/2007_shortest_hours.php

Re: Practicing Law
 

If she doesn't have great grades and doesn't do well on the LSAT she will not get into a top tier school. Unless she goes local (i.e. going to ASU and practicing in Arizona) she will have a difficult if not impossible time getting into a large firm. Out of law school I average 225 billable a month (so about 250-260 real hours) at a large firm.

The worse school, the worse grades at that school the more hours for crappy money you will make. There are lesser firms that pay bad and still make you work. There are decent firms that pay well and you can work 9-5 some weekends. It is so dependant on where she wants to practice, where she graduates from and her class rank.

Re: Practicing Law
 

Maybe she wasn't as far off as I thought. Living in NY might have distorted my perception of average work hours.

Anyways, she accused me of not supporting her because the first thing I said to her was you are going to have to work a lot of hours (when I wanted to do I-banking she said she couldn't imagine anyone working 60hrs let alone 90). I got tired of her bitching at me and told her she was wrong etc... fight ensues...happiness is not a fish that you can catch.

Re: Practicing Law
 

What's up with the one year as a paralegal plan? This makes no sense to me.

"Well, we're not that impressed with your grades or your school...wait, what's this? You spent a year making copies and performing other menial tasks at a law firm? Well, now you have my attention."

In my experience, paralegals are just secretaries who went to community college for two years and think they know it all, and are too good to stuff envelopes or whatever. At my firm, we don't even hire "paralegals" anymore, just generic "legal assistants" and law clerks. Anyway, tell her not to waste a year as a paralegal.

Re: Practicing Law
 

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What's up with the one year as a paralegal plan? This makes no sense to me.

"Well, we're not that impressed with your grades or your school...wait, what's this? You spent a year making copies and performing other menial tasks at a law firm? Well, now you have my attention."

In my experience, paralegals are just secretaries who went to community college for two years and think they know it all, and are too good to stuff envelopes or whatever. At my firm, we don't even hire "paralegals" anymore, just generic "legal assistants" and law clerks. Anyway, tell her not to waste a year as a paralegal.

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Working as a paralegal at a firm can be a way of getting a job at THAT law firm after law school. I know several people who got jobs as an associate that they might not have gotten but for the fact that they had paralegaled at that firm. That being said, paralegaling at a firm is only a plus factor in getting a job there. To begin with, you have to have good grades at a good college to get a job as a paralegal at big firm in a big city. And obviously if you get really [censored] grades in law school they are not going to hire you. But it definitely can help in getting a job at a particular law firm, probably a little bit more than you think it would. The paralegal route is probably best for people who did well at a good college, but do not have the LSAT scores to get into one of the elite law schools. Assuming you go to a decent law school and get good grades, you can still be considered for a job at that law firm even though you probably would not have even get an interview had you not paralegaled there.

The primary benefit of working as a paralegal is that you get to see what it is like inside of a law firm and get a sense of whether you could picture yourself working at a law firm. I know A LOT of people who worked as paralegals straight out of college and then decided not to go to law school because they were so turned off by what they saw. I think figuring out that you don't want to do something is a very valuable experience.

Re: Practicing Law
 

The Student Life forum has some good info on Law School and Law Firms. This paper also has some good info on the Big Law life in general as well.

Re: Practicing Law
 

Sounds like she is not going to be a very good lawyer.

Re: Practicing Law
 

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Depends on where you live, but 65 is probably high. There will be weeks where she does have to work that much, but 50-55 is probably more realistic unless she's determined to work at a BigLaw (which would entail her being roughly top 10% of her LS class as well).

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This quote is probably the most accurate one. It's possible to work 50-55 hours per week at a BigLaw Midwest (not Chicago) firm (Starting is now $110K for 1900 hours billable), but you better be Top 15% to get in the door. You also don't need a top tier law school to do this, just a good local school.

If you bill 90-95% of target every year and are a good lawyer, you'll make partner in 6-8 years. No, it's not NY and the monster salary that comes with that, but women do manage to make it a career and pop out a couple kids at the same time, which the NY career requirements make practically impossible.

Re: Practicing Law
 

If she plans on working at a big or mid-sized law firm, 45 hours/week is not realistic. Big Chicago firms expect 1900 to 2000 billable hours a year, at a minimum -- that's hours billed to clients, not hours spent in the office, which will be higher. And if she expect to be on track to make partner, she can expect substantially higher than that. Certainly closer to 55 hours/week than to 45. And junior associates typically get hit with some of the heaviest hours, so it's not like she'll be able to get acclimated by starting slow.

Like a few people have said, there are some jobs -- usually public interest/government-type positions -- where hours are generally lighter. But even in these jobs, during weeks where she's on trial or something similar, she'll be putting in substantially more than 45 hours. And, assuming she's paying for law school herself (i.e., taking out loans), the lower pay at these jobs will make it very hard to pay off debts and make ends meet, unless she has some $$$ coming in from parents or somewhere else.

Also, mediocre grades at even a good regional school like Notre Dame means that she'll probably get into a fairly mediocre law school. This means that, unless she's in the top 5 or 10% of her class, she'll be out of the running for jobs at pretty much any big firm, and from a lot of the plum government jobs as well (like federal prosecutor or staff attorney at a "name" public interest group, for instance).

Of course, if she thinks she'd really love practicing law, it might be worth rolling the dice. Lots of people beat the odds and have fulfilling, lucrative careers out of second- and third-tier law schools (though they usually work their asses off and put in mucho hours). But it sounds like she's looking at law school now more as a default option than as something she really dreams of doing. Almost without exception, everyone I know who went into law from this position (even some very smart people who got into Harvard, Columbia, etc.) ended up within five years either (1) hating life, or (2) burning out and dropping out of law to do something else, but with $100k+ of debt that they otherwise wouldn't have.

I'm a little dubious whether a paralegal job will be a major help in snagging a good job, but it could be a good experience for other reasons. First, it can pay fairly well for someone right out of college (though the hours are often even worse than lawyers' hours, and with less control over them). And it will give her a real look at what practicing law is like, and a better perspective on whether it's what she wants to go (kind of like the "Scared Straight" programs where they send juvenile delinquents to ass-rape prisons).

Re: Practicing Law
 

I did 2 yrs at a BIGlaw firm in DC as a paralegal and no way in hell would I want to go through law school and face that on the other side. Your girl needs to talk to some attorneys who are doing what she thinks she wants to. Find out if they're happy and what they would do differently.

Don't get me wrong some people do thrive, but usually they're not right in the head. Those who go into 100K+ debt for law school and end up hate being a lawyer are just indentured servants doing their 6 years of slavery to pay back the debt and then move on to something else.

Re: Practicing Law
 

If not working a lot of hours is your goal, you should probably pick just about anything other that law.

Lawyers are paid by the hour for the most part, even if it's a lot per hour. There is always always always pressure to bill bill bill more hours hours hours.

Re: Practicing Law
 

A couple of things to consider. If you want to be a good lawyer you have to work, I don't care what you are doing. Big law firms you have to work hard anyway, but even in lower hour government work to do a good job you have to work. I am not saying you have to work 80 hours a week, but even in a "9 to 5" job you have to figure on some late nights and weekends sometimes. As others have said, if you are in trial expect more. 6 am to midnight or something in a significant trial. It never bothered me that people wanted to work mostly regular hours, but it drove me nuts when they would fail to put in the extra 2 hours of research or the half day on a weekend when they needed to. Then they always seemed to ask what to do after you already told them. Well, do the 3 hours of work I told you it would take and get back to me. They would invariably go down the hall to ask somebody else. Bad way to practice law IMO.

Re: Practicing Law
 

Tell her to go to business school. I just graduated from law school and I have a week left before I take the Bar exam.

Right now I am wishing somebody had slapped some sense into me when I was filling out those law school applications 3 1/2 years ago.