lawgrunt
New York, NY
Male, 32
I am a 2nd year associate in the corporate department of an elite law firm in New York, NY. The bulk of my practice is grunt work on corporate transactions like IPOs, mergers & acquisitions, financing. I’ve also some work in derivatives, negotiating contracts between hedge funds and broker-dealers.
Short answer: you don't, but there are plenty of high-end law firms to choose from in NYC, so clients can always vote with their feet and take their business elsewhere if they feel like they're not getting their money's worth. Every so often, there will be a high-profile article written about how the billable-hour system is rife with inefficiencies (not to mention perverse incentives), with the article going on to predict that law firms will inevitably move toward fixed fee billing. But those articles have been around for 40+ years, and here we are in 2012 still punching the clock. Moreover, the amount of time/energy that I have to spend submitting my timesheets (accounting for my work days in 6-minute chunks, no joke) is absurd. Some day a law firm will get it right by hiring smart lawyers, staffing them appropriately, and billing clients equitably, but no one seems to have mastered it just yet.
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Ha! A good question, but not one that has an easy answer. I *wish* every State made it a priority to produce a "layman's guide to understanding the law" that could be understood by anybody. Some do a better job than others, but unfortunately the law can be big and complex...and it simply doesn't lend itself to bite-sized Cliffs Notes.
So I'm going to give a pretty lame answer, but it's what I'd do in your shoes: try a bunch of different Google searches. Yours seems to be a pretty targeted and specific question (which is good). Google can surprise you sometimes: i just ran a search for Musicians age to play in bars and the first page of results was chalk full of relevant sites, like this one or this one.
I don't know what State you're in but you'd be surprised what a few Google searches can turn up:)
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For the uninitiated, “up or out” essentially refers to a policy whereby a lawyer can either be on a “partnership track”, or he’d be asked by the firm to leave. In other words, at some firms, management will tell you “Hey, partnership probably isn’t in your future at this place, but we think you do good work, and you’re welcome to stay on as a Senior Counsel”, whereas at other firms, if they determine that you’re not partnership material, you’ll just be let go. It would probably be hard to quantify how many firms have that policy, since it’s not something that’s publicly discussed. Some firms have reputation as “up or out”-type places, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
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I’ve never seen an on-the-spot ‘take this job and shove it’ moment. Junior lawyers (at least at top firms) are way too cowardly for that – not to mention that in this economy we’d be way too scared to quit with 6-figures of law school debt to be paid off. However, take this for what it’s worth: close to 100% of the female associates I’ve talked to have admitted crying in their offices because of work. And that’s not a knock on the ladies: perhaps men simply express their emotions in different ways (or are too proud to admit to shedding tears.) But that number’s not an exaggeration: close to 100%.
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I’m a corporate lawyer in a pretty bad economy. There just aren’t as many deals happening as there had been in the years before I got here. So my hours aren’t anywhere near the hellish stories you’ve probably heard. I average about 1,700 billable hours / year, which was pretty average among associates in my group (compare that to the 2,800 hours for some of my friends in our insanely busy Bankruptcy practice.) I usually spend a few nights per month at the office after midnight. True all-nighters where I’m still at the office when everyone comes back in the next morning are rare: I think I’ve pulled three of them total, and they’re no fun.
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To be honest, I'm not sure. Diversity is always good, of course. I can tell you that nearly every major law firm in New York loves to tout their diversity numbers....whether that actually plays a role in hiring decisions I can't say (and I doubt they'd admit to it anyway:)
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Not really. I guess I’ve heard co-workers and friends of mine at other firms mention the names of clients / cases they’re working on outside of work, which you’re not supposed to do. As far as ethical violations of the type that you’d get disciplined for by the State Bar, I’ve never seen anything like that first-hand.
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