How many days off work do lawyers get?

drusba
Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:04:12 +0000

This varies substantially from firm to firm and lawyer to lawyer. With government positions, you officially can have Sat and Sun and holidays off and some period of vacation but even many government lawyers, particularly any that are doing trial, investigative or enforcement work, may work numerous weekends. Corporations set their own rules and whether you get weekends off can often depend on how swamped you are to get things done that need to be done in a certain period of time. Internal corporate lawyers on average work shorter hours than private firms but that does not mean they easily fall into a 40 hour per week, Mon to Fri, routine

Private firms set their own rules which are usually not defined in terms of having weekends off or weekends working. Instead, they are often defined both in stated expectations for billable hours per year and the reality that you do what you have on your plate as things becomes due and, as many young lawyers discover, that can easily result in a number of 55 or greater hour weeks. In fact young lawyers at a firm who quickly prove themselves to be competent can soon find that partners are clamoring to give them more work that consume longer hours per week. Also, if you are a trial lawyer and are close to the time of or on trial, you can often count on telling your family not to expect to see you until it is over and there can be long trials (some lasting months).

In other words, you should not enter a law career with the intent that you will invariably do the usual 40 hour week. There may be weeks where you actually do only 30 and others where it is 75, and during a trial it can actually go over 90. Government and corporate lawyers may come closer to that regular 40 hour week but there can be many variances.