<p>The following are some exerpts from today’s online Wall Street Journal:</p>
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<p>Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. I have friends who are clerking next year; with the clerkship bonus some big firms pay (often $30,000 for one-year clerkships and $50,000 for two years), they’ll earn more than their judges in their first year at a firm. And this doesn’t even count the regular year-end bonuses firms often pay associates.</p>
<p>I’ve said it before…I wish firms paid half as much, required half as many hours, and hired twice as many people. I think the quality of work (and quality of life!) would be higher, and fewer biglaw lawyers would be getting laid off. A starting salary of $80,000 would still be pretty sweet–especially if we only had to bill 1000-1400 hours a year. I guess the only problem is that people would want to stay–and the current law firm system relies on most people dropping out, and only a few sticking around the 8 years til partnership decisions are made.</p>
<p>Part of the problem, though, is that many complex litigation matters and transactional matters require a tremendous amount of continuity and knowledge of all available facts by those lawyers working on those matters. Unfortunately, a part time schedule or working only 1000 hours per year in many instances wouldn’t allow one to work with the required diligence and knowledge of all facets of the matter. </p>
<p>Often, BIGLAW attorneys (particularly junior and mid-level attorneys) are working on only one or two large matters at a time. Anything short of their full attention to those matters (thus, the long hours that are often required) or dividing the work on those matters among additional attorneys, each of whom would become an “expert” in only a slice of those matters, might prove to be a disservice to the clients. I honestly don’t believe that that model works when discussing highly complex matters.</p>
<p>For fewer hours and less pay, there are plenty of law firms offering less complex work to satisfy that desire. That’s not to say, of course, that in a client service industry you might not need to work late and on weekends even at a smaller firm, but if the work is less complex, that situation is also less likely to occur frequently.</p>
<p>You know, there are some attorneys working a 40-hour workweek. Most of them work for the Government and are earning less than the starting salaries of their biglaw cohorts, but that’s the trade off for going home at 6, accruing 6 hours of (usable) annual leave a pay period and 13 paid holidays year.</p>
<p>In my experience, it’s a rare case that requires knowledge of all available facts by all lawyers working the case. The most complex litigation I’ve managed as an in-house attorney, including two “bet the farm” IP litigation cases that had a run rate at their peak of more than a million a month in legal fees, were managed by two or three “generals” leading the team who needed detailed information regarding all aspects of the case. Most of the younger associates working on the case could drill down on a few aspects of the litigation and perform perfectly satisfactorily. </p>
<p>The notion that all members of the team need to have knowledge of all available facts can lead to duplicative over-billing. I had to be very vigilant about young associates who didn’t have enough billable hours getting themselves assigned to the cases and billing us a hundred or more hours to “get up to speed” on the whole case.</p>