Faulty agreement in that sentence as well.
It took like 6 posts for some sort of IQ chart to be posted.
Sounds like someone's a little dissatisfied with the expected life of a philosophy professor.
Biglaw is kind of like college tuition increases: the current pattern looks unsustainable but there's much silliness about how to change it.
4: It's a joke that regards your interest in making BigLaw life better.
We are working to ensuring
an aspirational state we want the law firms to commit moving towards
And "Canter" becomes "Kanter."
I think it's great that these folks want to make their work lives better, although they do not seem to have much understanding of the economics of the legal industry (not surprising, given their complete lack of experience). Big law firms certainly recruit associates, but basically, it is a buyer's market--they have more resumes than they need and more people who want to make the big (except when you compare it to investment bankers) income of a big law firm partner that they are willing to work the hours needed to succeed.
If it's a buyer's market for associates, why is it easy for associates to lateral? Why do salaries continue to escalate? (Speaking of industries full of over-compensated douchebags, these law salary hikes were in part to stop associates jumping to finance, at least in the case of the first few firms to raise. Or so I've been told.)
Does $15k really matter that much to your average associate, over reasonable quality of life which a firm could, in theory, offer? Presumably not. But I don't think the alternative--offering lower wages for lower pay--is appealing for the firms compared to the status quo:
(1) Associate wages probably would have to fall substantially per hour billed to make it appealing financially; I doubt this would be tolerated by law students in reality
(2) Clients might mind hiring a self-marketed lifestyle firm; it's certainly not a selling point
(3) You're attracting associates who might be smart and dedicated but are more likely to quit after paying off their loans in three years (just when they're no longer useless fuckups)
(4) You're pissing off your own partners, many of whom are proud of working their asses off as associates and think this made them into the amazing individuals they are.
It wasn't inevitable?
I would be extremely surprised if Craig winds up at a firm.
(4) You're pissing off your own partners, many of whom are proud of working their asses off as associates and think this made them into the amazing individuals they are.
Stockholmesque reasoning like this is one of the causes of many continuing and, from all accounts I've heard that don't sound utterl self-deceived, idiotic practices revolving around residencies in medicine.
Wait, silly-ass dues-paying rituals don't make you a better and more effective professional?
Which isn't to say that 4 isn't a real factor.
(3) You're attracting associates who might be smart and dedicated but are more likely to quit after paying off their loans in three years (just when they're no longer useless fuckups)
My intuitions run in exactly the opposite direction here, actually.
Similiar things are reported from hi-tech, I've heard, and also in various areas of business and sales. A lot of jobs demand total dedication. Sometimes I think less-mercenary, less-fanatical people are suspected of potential disloyalty or insubordination. If you pay someone very well and have verified that they'll put up with anything whatsoever, you know you own them.
It's a service business, as learned as its practicioners may be, and everyone from Thomas More to your local short-order cook can tell you that people who are accustomed to being served can be harsh masters.
Certainly (4) is retarded. That's beside the point.
Basically, biglaw's a risk-averse industry and no established firm is likely to change it alone without a compelling financial reason.
I'd be very interested in evidence that offering a decent lifestyle can be profit-maximizing for an employer. (Specifically I'd like to show my boss.)
Don't law firms buy associates by the year and sell them by the hour? At a very, very large markup?
18: Don't law firms buy associates by the year and sell them by the hour? At a very, very large markup?
Yeah. Based on my dim recollections of my stint as a big-firm associate, I think first-years make less than minimum wage on an hourly basis... but get billed out at 200 bucks an hour.
19: That's a very catchy turn of phrase.
$10/hr * 120 hrs/wk * 52 wks/yr = $62,400
20: Or working at the same problem from the other end:
$125K (what my friend, a 1st year attorney at a corporate firm is making) / 2250 (on the high-end of a typical minimum hour requirement) = $55.55, which is oh, about 1000% of the minimum wage?
21 assumes that n billable hours = n total hours at work. If that were true, JM's friend would only need to work 45-hour weeks (and that's with two weeks vacation).
21: Billable hours != how many hours you spend in the office. After all, with two weeks vacation and ten holidays, 2250 hours is only 9 hours a day in the office and no weekends. I don't know any first year associates who work that little.
Is is pure coincidence that these two law students are very nearly named Canter&Siegel?
Problem is there's too many JDs. There's too many law schools, it's too easy to get in, and too easy to graduate.
You can mow one JD down and 10 will be clamoring to take their place. Just close the freaking law schools for 5 years to help work off the glut. The ABA could also stop accrediting every fly-by-nite Hollywood Upstairs Pat Robertson Law School.
I read somewhere that the average orthodontist makes like $400k because they limit the supply of degrees. Come on people.
23: It's still nothing like minimum wage though. I don't have a lot of real sympathy for C/Kanter's and Segall's position -- if they're not interested in working the hours, there are certainly plenty of small- and mid-size firms who have better, more humane hours at about half the salary of a big firm.
25: what do you think the bar exam exists for? And this is only a problem for associates, who have no power and so would have to take collective action to change anything. And if there's a group of people less likely to subordinate their own interests to those of group solidarity than law students, I'd like to know who they are.
JM, if you didn't notice, neither of them will be working those hours, at least not at a big firm. (I guess I can only speak for Craig.) I think they/he are more concerned about effects on the profession at large. Craig lurks around here occasionally and will probably say something to that effect if he ever stops working.
Ok, I ran the numbers, and based on $80,000 per year (the going first-year salary when I started), 50 weeks a year, 6.5 days a week, and 17 hours a day of working time spent either at the office (billable or not) or outside the office (billable only), I get $14.48 per hour. Which is quite a bit higher than mid-90's minimum wage, but still far, far lower than the rate we were billed out at. Even doubling the salary to today's levels, the mark-up on associate labor is crazy.
29: big-firm-headed law students s/b big, firm-headed law students
30: Okay, I see that. But that they expect to work at a big firm at some point is implied by the fact that they only target big firms. Otherwise, are they acting on behalf of a group of people to which they don't belong? Or are we to buy that changing the conditions at big firms will change conditions at lawyering jobs across the board? Because I don't see that claim being made in the article.
50 weeks a year, 6.5 days a week, and 17 hours a day of working time spent either at the office (billable or not) or outside the office (billable only),
Right. Got it. No doubt. And you have a 14" dick, right?
No, he's caucasian.
John Holmes will rise from the grave and smite thee.
Seems tricky to get rid of billable hours when clients really don't know how long a task should take, and it's often unpredictable. The "less crazy hours for less pay" deal should not depend on that, though.
Good for them for trying, but I don't like their chances. Law grads are highly fungible. OTOH, if they want to loudly rather than quietly opt out of the big firm thing, why not?
Right. Got it. No doubt. And you have a 14" dick, right?
Those numbers are hardly outlandish for first-years at a big firm, who are known to bill up to 100 hours a week, not including non-billable time in the office. Can anyone back me up on this?
I cannot completely back you up. When I was an associate at a big firm well known for working hard, I billed over 4000 hours my first two years there (indeed, last year is the first year in almost nine years of law firm practice in which I billed less than 3000 hours (I am so ashamed)). However, I was one of the highest billing associates there, and my highest year (approximately 4300 hours) was still almost 1000 hours less than one would bill if one billed 100 hours each week of the year. I believe that people who bill 5000 hours in a year exist, but they are rarer than hen's teeth.
Further, if you are billing 100 hour weeks, you have to be pretty efficient. I imagine that most of the weeks I billed 100 hours, I was in the office less than 110. The most I ever billed in a week--114 hours just before a trial began--I could do only because I slept in the office all that week.
Still, no denying that a big firm associate's salary is not as princely a sum as it first appears when you divide it into the hours that are worked to get it.
No associates anywhere bill 100 hours a week consistently. Maybe in short, hellish bursts, but those must be followed by down time for rest. You seem some insane people with no lives and abnormallly low sleep needs billing in the 3000-3500 range, but that's the extreme upper end of the distribution, and it's pretty thin up there. 2000-2500 is the big-law norm, and is plenty.
38: Dude, you're asserting that the average biglaw associate works pretty much every waking hour pretty much every day of the year. People work hard, but not that hard.
Well, I'll be damned, Idealist. How the hell do you find time to comment here?
How the hell do you find time to comment here?
You have hit on one of the two main reasons that my billings were down almost 800 hours last year from the year before. The other is the need to do things like business development (last week, for example, I only billed about 20 hours because I was travelling, begging friends, family and present and former clients to send business--oh the glamor of a law firm partner's life).
GB doesn't sound like he's exaggerating. Lawyer friends of mine were working a schedule like that and taking New Lawyer classes in NJ. The reason lawyers get divorced is that they get married to people and then don't see them for four years.
How the hell do you find time to comment here?
Commenting while at work is a way to stick it to The Man. Except that Idealist is The Man, so it's probably less satisfying for him.
Our firm had a legend about a guy who billed a 25-hour day once because he flew to a new time zone.
Our firm had a legend about a guy who billed a 25-hour day once because he flew to a new time zone.
A wise person would tack the extra hour onto the next day to avoid client questions, but I totally can see that happening.
Idealist is The Man, so it's probably less satisfying for him
Well, being the junior partner in a firm that is mostly partners does not do much to make you feel like the Man (I have spent the past seven (non-billable) hours writing content for the firm website, which we are redoing, because I can't get anyone else to pay attention to it). And yes, since my compensation is based on how much I work, cutting hours I work so that I can comment is less than totally satisfying. The reasons why it is worthwhile for me are complex. Suffice it to say that it is.
Horror stories aside, to me the benefit of a proposal like this is precisely this -- i.e., it gets talked about, it gets laughed at, it gets considered outlandish.
In the same way that paternity leave was once considered outlandish, or adoption leave. Or heck, the weekend (hi, LB!). Or child labor. Or or or....
The point isn't that paternity leave is now universal, or that every law firm will be able to have a sustainable model as these guys (are they guys?) are suggesting. The point is that if nobody makes a bold suggestion like this, nothing will change.
I remember reading years ago that Gloria Steinem claimed she had never given a talk where a man stood up and asked her about work-life balance. Well, I think that's changed.
cutting hours I work so that I can comment is less than totally satisfying. The reasons why it is worthwhile for me are complex.
Odd, I could swear that someone just implied that compensation beyond monetary reward is important.
(I'm not picking on you specifically, Idealist.)
compensation beyond monetary reward is important
Of course it is. But that is also part of the reason associates from top-tier schools work like dogs at prestigious top tier law firms.
I agree with 48 that it is good that people talk about this (although if you think that these are the first junior lawyers to say that they gladly would trade money for time, you have another think/thing coming), it's just a lot more complicated than they seem to realize.
Isn't a large part of the reason things won't change is the fact that the people who biglaw hires are the ones with top grades, ie those who spent most of their law school time in the library and not at the bar?
You know, i kinda feel guilty for not doing more from stopping my little sister from following me into law school. Shes a harder work though, so I'm telling myself she'll like it.
Biglaw firms could always just start adjuncting out, the way universities do.
We start our associates at 125 -- or did last fall -- and they average about 1850 per year. Some few get north of 2500, but that's very rare. I think of the hours people are talking about above as a NYC thing, but then we're at the southern range of the AmLaw 100, so maybe it's more that.
I do pay a visit to any of the associates in my office who beat 250 hours two months in a row, to remind them that there's more to life, and see if we can't get them some help. It's a marathon not a sprint.
remind them that there's more to life
That's the spirit! My dad occasionally did interviews for his behemoth corporation, and he looked for sanity-inducing hobbies in the potential hires.
Biglaw firms could always just start adjuncting out
Don't they do this already with contract and staff attorneys?
Fuck if I know, I've never had the least interest in going to law school.
I'm glad Ben pointed you all to the article--it's good to get some thoughtful comments. A few thoughts. On 33, neither of us ever--ever--plans to work at a big firm or, in my case, a firm of any kind (save the small public interest boatique-y kind). I'm an ex-ecologist turned lawyer, basically to help deal with global warming. I wound up as spokesperson and organizer largely because law school and law firms were such an alien experience after spending my summers in field ecology stations. I was really disturbed by the mismatch between what I hoped law to be and what it was--this project was, I suppose, born out of my naivete about law in general. I've since been joined by a bunch of firm-bound folks but, as you might imagine given the rage in the WSJ posts, they're worried about outing themselves (a real and obvious problem in organizing).
The WSJ blog post is pretty truncated--the principles document attached to it and to the website makes things a little clearer. The core concerns are the following:
1. The billable hours escalation is actually a new thing. Billables came onto the scene around 1968 as part of a general quantification vogue and only really started accelerating in the 80s, as big NYC firms competed with banks for associates. The trouble is that everyone's been caught in a prisoner's dilemma for the last few decades. Law firms raise salaries to compete. Hours have to go up to match the new salary. As far as law students are concerned, a combination of messed up sociology (e.g. prestige=a big fast-paced firm), ever-growing debt, and the new expectation that they'll leave the firm in a few years, has kept any sort of resistance from forming. One of the real problems here is that the ratchet reaches out to firms outside of NYC--so the "don't like it, leave it" argument isn't a great one. Not to say that people could and should go to government, mid-sized firms, etc. But that's not really a good reason for objecting to the corporatization of biglaw.
2. Which is really weird. All the mental health indicators for big firm lawyers are miserable. Predictably, crazy hours and stigmatized family leave policies mean that very few women (and men who want to be involved with their families) make partner. The system selects for the sort of people who will sacrifice everything for power and money. It also means that the tiny pro bono aspiration of the ABA (50 hours/year) is met by something like less than 1% of lawyers. Forget about much community service, legal or non-legal.
3. At core, I think, what's really troubling is that law really does have professional values that are being badly lost here. I know that there isn't really a golden age of lawyering past, but things did use to be better on most of the metrics I'm worried about (work/life, service, etc.--but certainly not diversity, which is marginally better). The big firms sit at the core of the modern business of law and increasingly they're sharkpits, unconcerned with almost anything other than making money and, at the upper levels, still pretty monolithically white and male. That isn't good for law and the law--it means a lot of the people driving corporate cases, in particular, have neither time nor inclination to worry about larger social justice values. It doesn't have to be like this.
4. So, yes, this is a pretty silly "oppressed" group: elite, rather pale law students and associates. But because they are so tied up in the administration of justice, I think we'd benefit to have them far more engaged in their communities and looking a lot more like the country. And, of course, it's awful to see friends and classmates go off to be miserable, thinking that they don't have any way to voice more humane values.
That's the story, more or less.
Oh--and on 7. Thanks, Ogged. The Kanter/Canter thing (it's Canter, by the way), is the WSJ, not us--they wrote the post. That horrible jargon-y "aspire" quote is me, though. It was early in the morning when he called and I get tongue-tied.
boatique-y
I think you're thinking of K--t here, in her more craft-oriented moments.
I'm getting the impression that in Sillicon Valley, firms try hard to keep their employees happy (they could aways leave). Google has this reputation and I've heard one of the Pixar bosses say this explicitly. Don't know what makes the difference but tech is definitely not a service industry so hours worked is not really a metric.
Thanks for dropping in with the explanation, Craig.
Ogged really does have impeccable manners.
I'm getting the impression that in Sillicon Valley, firms try hard to keep their employees happy (they could aways leave).
Don't know if this applies to other tech fields, but the guys I've known in the video game sector work crazy hours.
Ogged really does have impeccable manners.
That's their way. "I'm ever so sorry to SAW YOUR HEAD OFF."
61: Yes. I've heard managers say that one of their engineers could do absolutely nothing for a week, and given a general history of productivity, they wouldn't really care. But project-oriented vs. hour-oriented has to be a big part of that. As do huge returns to ability vs. to effort.
44: Cala, do the math. Seventeen working hours per day, 6 1/2 days a week? That leaves seven hours a day--15 1/2 on Sunday--for all non-work activities, including those classes you mention, eating, sleeping, showering, commuting. Every week for years? That's a pace that a few people hit now and then for shortish bursts, but only the very freakiest end of the sleep-need curve would even be physically capable of sustaining it for more than a few weeks. 12 hours a day average, week in and week out and including full Saturdays and partial Sundays, is a hell of a grind. Averaging much beyond that demands not only total commitment to your job but also a lower than average need for sleep.
Not to be cynical or anything, but I also believe that a goodly chunk of the billable hour increases in recent years owe as much to more elastic clocks as to people working harder. When people are already working their butts off and you jack the requirements up, people who are already maxed out aren't going to suddenly find more hours in the day.
Video games are different, because everyone wants to write video games, and (to a much lesser extent) a lot of the work isn't extremely technologically demanding.
There's a Hitchcock movie from the 40s, I can't remember the title, in which the villains all have the impeccable manners of the "better sort" as they try to subvert the war effort. It's hilarious.
69: Indiscreet! Hilarious and creepy. Plus, Ingmar Bergman.
No, wait, it's Notorious. Indiscreet is another (even better) Bergman/Grant film.
Thanks! I have not seen Saboteur. In Notorious, the evil German spies are also exceedingly polite.
62: A pleasure. I'm usually lurking here anyway but am neither charming nor witty enough to comment often. Besides, I'm prone to "boatique."
67: Too right. It's a combination of massive overwork and equally massive fraud. Clients don't seem as wise to this as they should be. They're often, as far as I can tell as a student reading the research and, you know, talking to people, either being directly defrauded or charged for unnecessary work (one last document, one last deposition and so on). When I've been in court against big firms, I've been amazed at how over-litigated their briefs are. They raise every claim, even the bad ones, and brief each exhaustively.
73: In real life, Ben is also exceedingly polite.
neither charming nor witty enough to comment
Doesn't stop some of us.
...in a good way. I was imagining, &c.
A small firm, smelling of fresh pine, bobbing gently.
Yes. I've heard managers say that one of their engineers could do absolutely nothing for a week, and given a general history of productivity, they wouldn't really care.
I've never heard a manager say that, and the vast majority of managers I've known would consider that attitude anathema to getting actual work done. Even at the companies I've worked at that had the best reputation for keeping employees happy, that attitude was nowhere to be found.
And let's not even talk startups. There has never been an expectation among anyone working at a startup that I've known that they'd have anything approaching a normal life.
But project-oriented vs. hour-oriented has to be a big part of that.
Yeah, if you think back on our mutual friend's working schedule, you'll recall that it's not like he's been putting in bankers' hours the past few years; then again, he's in one of the few corners of the industry that's mostly hourly.
When I've been in court against big firms, I've been amazed at how over-litigated their briefs are. They raise every claim, even the bad ones, and brief each exhaustively.
Isn't some amount of this strategy? If you've got to respond to all their bad points, that's more work for you, too.
I don't disagree with 67 either, but 74 reminds me a little of what they call 'defensive medicine.' You or I might think that that last deposition isn't necessary, but any disgruntled client can find an expert who will testify that failure to take it amounts to a breach of the standard of care. What's an extra 10k for a depo against the million in exposure if the deponent turns out to have some critical evidence the lawyer didn't anticipate?
IME, clients are not unsophisticated about such things. Any more than patients are about defensive medicine.
58/74: Thanks for clarifying. But still, I'm not sure why anyone should care. I'm not even sure the problem is real -- a law school graduate can, after all, choose to go to at any number of small law firms that have low (or no) billable hours, do interesting and excellent work, and have no small amount of prestige in their fields. Granted, they would have to take a substantial pay cut, but even then would be making a comfortable living. (In my case, public interest loan forgiveness from my school made this possible, but I think most top-tier law schools have similar loan forgiveness programs.)
Most people who work at firms like mine (small, public interest, good hours, lower salaries) have some ideological or political reason for doing so. On the other hand, most people who go to big law firms aren't doing it for ideological reasons -- they want the money, for the time being at least. Given that the money is the reason for the hours, and vice versa, why should any of the rest of us care? I don't buy that these people are driving the law -- that's being done by law firms to be sure, but by public interest places too, I dare say.
(In my case, public interest loan forgiveness from my school made this possible, but I think most top-tier law schools have similar loan forgiveness programs.)
I looked into this when I was applying to law schools (& obviously craig did too)—the variation in quality among those programs, even among top-tier schools, is striking.
80: That's true. Over-litigating is characteristic of their practice (and for hours reasons, they have every reason to do it), but it also can bury public interest litigants who aren't prepared for it. We try to mostly respond to the good points and cite the bad ones dismissively. Judges have responded positively to that approach.
So I guess my claim's stronger than I thought--over-litigation driven by an hours emphasis makes it harder for the little guy to win in court, as well as costing clients more.
I was going to say, Junior Mint, that I don't really think of public interest places driving the law in some fields -- antitrust or securities regulation, for example -- but this would ignore the best place to drive such law: the Antitrust Division or the Commission. The ultimate public interest.
New Yorkers may not agree, but in the world in which I live, there is no more prestigious group of litigators than the SG's office. Talk about driving the law.
#71: The kind of big clients that hire big firms are not stupid. The clients routinely negotiate the bill down by a certain percentage to take into account the fact that a certain percentage of billed hours are total BS (either the work was unnecessary, or the hours were exaggerated).
I guess my claim's stronger than I thought
It isn't stronger, it's contradictory. Overlitigating is either bad for one litigant or the other. It's a zero sum game -- you don't get to have it both ways.
81: I take the point. I tend to think there's still overbilling, but the relative costs argument is real.
82: I'm just not willing to sacrifice the money/hours people so readily. An awful lot of them, I think, get swept in there by the odd sociology of law schools--e.g. come in after college or a few years working, learn to equate success with biglaw, go, burn out.
As far as driving the law--I agree that we public interest types do a great deal of this. In a lot of areas, more: precedent has mattered more to some of my clients than outcome. I still do think, though, that the world of business law and liability is dominated by biglaw. Aside from public citizen, I'm not aware of many groups that really crusade for changes in corporate law and tax law. It's the usual large democracy problem on a smaller scale--the public does have an interest in, say, knocking down corporate tax shelters, but none of us are going to sue over it because the benefit is so tiny.
Which is not to say that improving working conditions at biglaw is going to -poof!- turn them into social democrats who litigate that way. But it couldn't hurt to keep things a bit less rapacious. And, in the world of poverty law, where representation is wildly inadequate after Reagan/Bush/Bush2 cuts to legal aid, actually meeting pro bono obligations would make an enormous difference.
#71: The kind of big clients that hire big firms are not stupid.
Still and all, that doesn't mean they know Hitchcock backwards and forwards.
87: I think it can be bad for both, although--you're right--not at once. In the public interest case, that side gets buried. When litigation is between big firms, the client sees their dispute drag on longer and cost more as lawyers, for instance, spend hundreds of hours fighting over discovery motions.
Overlitigating is either bad for one litigant or the other. It's a zero sum game -- you don't get to have it both ways.
It sounded to me that the claim was that overlitigating is bad for the overlitigant not qua litigant, but insofar as it's indicative of overwork and an undesirable mindset generally. This is consistent with it being bad for the other litigant qua litigant.
...although given that 90 seems to contradict this, mebbe I'll just go off elsewhere now.
On overbilling, I've certainly got no problem writing down unproductive time -- mine or an associates. An associate who records time not worked will be unemployed very quickly. This is not a close call, and I don't think my firm is at all out of the mainstream on this.
92: No, no. I was thinking something along the lines of 91 originally, but wasn't clever enough to use "qua." I think 90's true, too, though.
The kind of big clients that hire big firms are not stupid.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've worked in a few large corporations, and big companies make hugely stupid decisions all the time. I really doubt their interaction with lawyers is all that different.
Well, they're smart enough to haggle.
93: Which still leaves a lot of room for interpretation of how much time is worked. I'm not suggesting that it's fraudulent--the billable hour is maybe more a measure of value than purely of time--but I don't think it's unusual for people working at the same pace for the same number of hours per day to record materially different amounts of billable time, and I suspect that the difference between your associates' 1850 hour average and a NYC firm's 2500 or whatever isn't purely that your associates are working less hard.
An associate who records time not worked will be unemployed very quickly.
Let me be so bold as to suggest that there are a thousand ways to do this and not get caught.
I have a real problem with the "well, people can always take different kinds of legal jobs" argument. That's not the issue, I don't think, in deciding whether X situation is inhumane or bad policy or undesirable. Pointing out that so-and-so isn't a migrant farmworker, and if they're really unhappy they can just go pick tomatoes, doesn't mean that their situation is okay or excusable.
99 -- Sure. But I only have to catch them once.
98 -- I don't know what Idealist has been doing, but I'm pretty sure he's been doing a lot more of it that I'm doing of what I do. We don't hope for 1850, by the way, but 1960. Which is basically a 40 hour billed week, taking the month vacation, and substituting overtime (nights or weekends) for holidays/sick leave.
100: agreed! Sadly, it's also the most common argument on the WSJ board and many of the law blogs that picked this up. It's the same sort sort of undergrad libertarian reasoning that says that people who don't like Walmart just shouldn't shop there or that people in Bangladesh, say, take sweatshop jobs and that, therefore. it's paternalistic to worry that they're working with carcinogens.
I have a real problem with the "well, people can always take different kinds of legal jobs" argument.
Next you'll be telling us people should only work 40 hours a week, take vacations, and spend time with family.
Fucking commie.
102 -- Carcinogens in Bangladesh are really a different sort of thing. There really are a whole lot of "non-toxic" options for law grads, and there are also a great many law grads for whom the biglaw option isn't particularly toxic.
Craig has been talking about clueless law students. Granted, this is an issue, but it's not biglaw's problem that people misunderstand what's actually important to them.
What's with 40 hours a week, slave-driver?
What's with 40 hours a week, slave-driver?
Baby steps. First the five weeks of vacation. Then shortening the work week.
It's really hard for me to see the comparison to sweatshop workers in Bangladesh. You're talking about a very elite strata of people here, people who have lots of options and choose the one that is perhaps the most highly remunerated in the field.
107: Well, right. I'm not comparing lawyers to sweatshop workers--that's insane. I'm talking about the dumb-libertarian argument that reifies the present state of the market as right because people "chose it" and then uses that to argue against reform. It turns up a lot in the sweatshop debate and in the Walmart wars--both are offered as examples of the argument, not as analogies to the substance.
No, I see that you are not really making that comparison. But I don't even think the same dumb libertarian argument applies. People who go to big law firms don't just have other options, they have pretty much every other option in the legal world available to them, and they choose the one that is the highest paid.
Also, Craig, I am not opposing your efforts at reform. I agree it would probably be a shitty deal to work at a big law firm, and I wouldn't want to do it myself. But there seems to be a lot of people who do.
Got it--and I understand why your sympathy is limited. Mine too, really.
As BitchPD notes in 100, though, this doesn't change that conditions at biglaw really are lousy or that improving conditions (which would at least create room for more of a community service culture) would be generally good. I continue to think that the culture of biglaw deforms the justice system in importantly bad ways.
For all that I've devoted time to this, though, I really do get that people making that choice aren't all that sympathetic and that this is low on the list of social justice priorities. Like I said back when I dropped in, I spend the vast majority of my time working on global warming (which is why I'm up so late tonight). But given that I'm in law school, this was a problem right in front of me that needed fixing.
Anyway, thanks for all the thoughts and chances to test the argument. Off to bed.
re: 106
I'm sort of kidding. I work an 'official' 36.5 hour week in my 'day job'. However, jobs I've had in the past where I worked 40, the extra couple of hours a week was no big deal either way. I wouldn't want to be officially contracted to more than that though, sod that.
Working a lot more every now and again when there are emergencies or urgent projects to be completed is cool if there's a culture of give and take within the company, but regularly working much more than that, week in and week out, I'd rather not, frankly.
111: I think your argument could be even stronger. It's not just that current conditions (presumably) damage the justice system or make it impossible for Biglaw associates (is that the right word?) to do pro bono work. It's that conditions at the top of the social hierarchy help create expectations for everyone, including people who don't choose those jobs. If "success" means X, then even jobs that are lower ranked will be measured in comparison to X. Whether it's "we don't require you to do 100 billable hours, so we don't have to raise our salaries" or "well, the top firms expect you to bill 100 hours, so we can say we're family-friendly by only expecting 90" or whatever. At least, that's how it seems to work in academia: if Research I U requires a book for tenure, then why shouldn't Mini U? Asking for less would be admitting our inferiority (and nevermind that our teaching load is higher and our available research funding and library collection much worse). . . .
"we don't require you to do 100 billable hours, so we don't have to raise our salaries"
In fact, while the 100-hour firms pay the most (as they damn well should), salaries at law firms with much lower expected workloads have also risen consistently over the years. Generally, some firm like Wachtell or Cravath will raise salaries to some new, unheard-of peak, and any firms that want to stay competitive with them in the market for new hires raise their own salaries in turn. The wage-hike wave then ripples outward, all the way to far lower-pressure firms, who raise salaries, too.
The social-hierarchy pressure you speak of thus actually works to the advantage of lawyers at these less-demanding firms, who are benefiting from the competitiveness at the top of the heap.
Have the workloads, also, increased over the years?
Data on that are harder to come by, but certainly salaries have increased far more quickly than workloads, if indeed workloads have increased at all. Salaries have roughly doubled in the past 10 years, but workloads have not.
I realize that my observation in 116 is not completely fair, since the marginal value of each extra dollar decreases as you get paid more, while the marginal value of each remaining hour of free time increases as you work more.
I still don't think average workloads have increased meaningfully in the past 10 years, although some of the current lawyers here would presumably have better information.
Inflatable lawyers seldom give a decent return on the investment.
Unless you already have an airtight case.
According to this site, $80,000 in 1996 equaled $102,382 in 2006. That's about 25% inflation, while the nominal value of salaries rose almost 100%. So the inflation-adjusted increase was about 60% (160,000 versus 102,382). Still not too shabby, and much greater than any increase in workloads over that time.
Also, inflatable lawyers are no good under pressure.
11: These partners who are proud of how hard they worked as associates are a little like my dad talking about how he walked uphill both ways to school. Barefoot. In the snow. Twenty years ago, 1800 hours was hard-core; today, that would be a lifestyle firm. I think the majority of partners do recognize that. It's just that the more important recognition is that their profits per partner go way up if associates are billing 2400 hours instead.
I'm somewhat skeptical about the idea that corporate clients would balk at a lifestyle firm -- most big corporations these days have evolved considerably toward providing more "lifestyle" to their employees. They obviously did so less out of a general sense of humanity as from the recognition that lifestyle changes are ultimately profitable -- happy employees are more productive and easier to retain. I would think corporate America could deal with a law firm reaching the same conclusion.
On this idea that lawyers shouldn't complain about the hours situation b/c they choose to be where they are -- truth is, once you've been out a few years and have specialized to some degree, it can be very, very hard to choose your way into something else. It's a little like saying a cardiologist could just choose the more relaxed lifestyle of a family practice doc -- after a certain amount of time in cardiology, she's probably not all that sharp on seasonal allergies and skin rashes anymore. (Apologies to the docs if I've misjudged which practice is "easier"!) Not that job changes can't be done, but figuring out how to find a more humane legal job is not exactly as simple as it would be to say, "I hate Wal-Mart so I'm going to Target instead."
The easiest job for a graduate at a top school to get is biglaw. Not in terms of least competitive at a given firm, but in terms of them actually recruiting on campus. Far, far, more difficult to find an entry level public interest or gov't job.
On the other hand, more difficult doesn't mean it can't be done, by any means....I wonder how much of this is driven by type A law students' fear of failure. I remember absolutely freaking out by the Thanksgiving before I graduated--crazy, right? But all my friends had jobs, and I didn't, and getting rejected 90 times for clerkships was a new experience for me....
Of course, I'm just like that, but so are a lot of people in law school.
(btw, speaking of lawyer angst: my job has gotten like, a thousand times better.)
I'm too disgruntled for the past couple of years to be worth much on this. But a couple of thoughts:
One force that drives lawyers into BigLaw rather than smaller, more humane firms that pay less is that competition on salaries is transparent, competition on lifestyle isn't. When they tell you what you're getting paid, you know -- when they tell you how hard you're going to work, you don't. The hardest I've ever worked as a lawyer was at the little 'lifestyle' firm I worked at before I came back to BigLaw, and part of the reason I moved back to BigLaw was that if I was going to spend a month in a hotel in Brooklyn because the hours I was working were too long to get home at night, I might as well do it for a BigLaw salary.
I do think there's a fair amount of overbilling -- one of the things pressure on associates to bill a lot of hours does is allows firms to effectively raise their rates without changing their nominal per-hour rates. An associate who's trying not to drop below a billing target is going to take longer to do the same amount of work -- a document could be proofread two or three more times just in case there's an error, research can be done by reading even the marginally relevant cases carefully from start to finish rather than scanning for what you need to know... under pressure, people will still work efficiently, but in slightly slower periods, there's a strong incentive to pump up your hours by doing work wastefully. Partners don't have any real incentive to crack down on this -- for uncritical clients, they can pass inflated, if not literally dishonest, billing along and make more money, and for more sensitive clients, they can write the billing down to their best guess of what the market will bear, which still might be more than what an efficient job would have cost at the same rate.
On this idea that lawyers shouldn't complain about the hours situation b/c they choose to be where they are -- truth is, once you've been out a few years and have specialized to some degree, it can be very, very hard to choose your way into something else.
You betcha.
And this:
The easiest job for a graduate at a top school to get is biglaw. Not in terms of least competitive at a given firm, but in terms of them actually recruiting on campus. Far, far, more difficult to find an entry level public interest or gov't job.
Is absolutely true. Someone from a top-end school can get a BigLaw job effortlessly, while anything else is really quite difficult.
And loans. This might not be a consideration for most of you guys, but when your loan payments are $600 a month (and yes, there are bigfirm lawyers outside the top-tier with their ineffectual loan forgiveness programs), you think "I can work this BigJob for a few years, I'm only 25, pay down the loans some, then settle into a more reasonable lifestyle."
So while this isn't the most pressing social problem ever, there's a sense in which more or less the only workable option is one that is going to kill your life.
And if you start from there, and add on 127, it can be hard to get out.
loan payments are $600 a month
If only. Try $1500 a month.
Also, as to the easiness of taking other options? Two of my best friends decided to say "fuck you" to the firm route. Know what they are? Unemployed. I'm very lucky in that I managed to land a public interest job (in November, no less!) but I know almost no one else that has one.
My other friends are rocking in the fetal position, saying "my firm's a lifestyle firm, my firm's a lifestyle firm" over and over. I predict that "three years to pay off my loans" will be 'til they're 35 and bitter.
Being a 3L is fun.
Right. And once you've gotten those loans paid down some and start looking seriously at settling into a more reasonable liefstyle, you discover that the 5 or so years you spent paying down your loans pigeonholed you into a limited area of practice from which there is not nearly the mobility you had once imagined.
131: Judging by a friend who is managing to pay $600 but may only finish paying his loans sometime in his 60s. But yeah, that's on the low end and probably the #1 reason I didn't go into law.
"One force that drives lawyers into BigLaw rather than smaller, more humane firms that pay less is that competition on salaries is transparent, competition on lifestyle isn't. When they tell you what you're getting paid, you know -- when they tell you how hard you're going to work, you don't. "
This is absolutely true.
(And of course, none of this should keep anyone from remembering that those of us with BigLaw jobs we dislike are getting very well paid for a job that's indoors with no heavy lifting. I complain, but it's not like having real problems.)
LB, did I mention that you're delightful?
An associate who records time not worked will be unemployed very quickly. This is not a close call, and I don't think my firm is at all out of the mainstream on this.
I completely agree with this. Lawyers, as a class, are no more saintly than anyone else, and I am sure it is done, but most lawyers take fraudulent billing very seriously. It's all fine for lawyer jokes, but the reality is that padding your bills generally is recognized as completely unacceptable behaviour and is not tolerated.
Of course, figuring out you time is hard even when you are trying your best to be honest.
The hardest I've ever worked as a lawyer was at the little 'lifestyle' firm I worked at before I came back to BigLaw
But you did a great job. And we had fun!
I have to say, this thread is making me remember how fucking lucky I am. With two loan forgiveness program as I understand them, I'll have to pay about $200-300 a month on my $35K salary. Not too terrible, and kind of like what, you know, a normal person with a college degree and a post-college job might have to pay. Also, the idea of not having to figure out how to handle what would be (to me) massive sums of cash coming into my bank account that I would be making at a law firm is really comforting. That sounds crazy, but it's true. I've never had lots of money, and I don't particularly want to start now. Handling modest sums of cash I can do, I'm good at it; you live in a cheap-ish apartment, don't spend money on furniture, eat lots of thai food, don't buy anything too frivolous, shop at Old Navy, and save your extra for traveling. I don't know what I would do with myself if I could actually in good conscience, say, buy a real couch.
Of course, figuring out you time is hard even when you are trying your best to be honest.
This. Doing my billing makes me entirely miserable.
I imagine you'd deal with it, as others have before you.
And this is what you-all do so that you won't "fall off the ladder" into the insecure lives of the regular middle class? Jeeeeezus, I never thought I'd say this, but you're making me feel a lot happier with my low-paying union secretarial gig. You could drop my wages into your salary and lose them, but man, at least I get to go home at night.
Oh, m. leblanc, you beat me to it, except I wish I made 35K. I have a fantastic couch though--a fancy custom-built number that I got at the Salvation Army for $49.
I do think there's a fair amount of overbilling I don't know about that but I do know there can be some largish differentials in billing. One of the partners at a firm I did some consulting for mentioned he liked having Biggie, First, & Foremost as an opponent because their clients had to fight a two front war; him and BF&F's fees.
Two weeks ago I bought a couch for the first time in my life.
I do know there can be some largish differentials in billing.
Yeah -- there's room for an awful lot of flexibility before you get into something that's literally dishonest.
there can be some largish differentials in billing
No question about that. Different approaches to a litigation can create huge differences in the size of bills. On the other hand, sophisticated clients know what they are signing up for when they hire a big law firm for a big case (of course, they should hire my firm instead--same high quality lawyers, more focus on efficiency, hire us ,please, please, please) [oops, sorry, too much business development on my mind (I was in the office until after 1 AM working on content for our new web site)]
Ack -- I meant to get in touch with you. Your web developer is feeling unloved and thinks you don't mean to go ahead with the project or pay him. Give him a call sometime, maybe? He's weird and emotionally fragile.
Wow. I guess it's a long way from my day on teh interwebs. I come late to this party and there's only one comment. *one* comment about the first thing that popped into my mind reading this post. Thank you 24.
Why would Canter and Siegel^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSegall need to get a BigLaw job when they'll have offers from SpamHaus pouring in? Besides, I thought they already made a killing on green cards.
I even have the damn t-shirt.
there's room for an awful lot of flexibility before you get into something that's literally dishonest.
I disagree with what I take the implication of this to be, which is that even if not exactly dishonest, lots of big firms do dubious things just to run up the bills. This is not my experience. Big firms do lots of things that run up the bills, but they are done because they are seen as necessary to an approach--reasonable in truly big and compex cases, but less reasonable, but often expected by big clients in others--that leaves no stone unturned. If you are in a bet the company billion dollar case, for example, it likely would be irresponsible not to research every issue and run down every lead. This costs a huge amount of money.
Give him a call sometime, maybe?
We spent about an hour on the phone last night.
151: But a lot of the judgment of what needs to be done, and which rocks need to be turned over, is left to junior associates who haven't yet developed a lot of judgment about what's useful and what isn't under a great deal of pressure to bill more hours. That's a recipe for pointless work.
152: Spectacular. The wistful complaints I was hearing second-hand were from last week.
153: And outside of client complaints, no resistance to this sort of busywork inflation (what you described). So if the entire industry slowly inflates costs, it's more difficult for corporate clients to resist the change (and those costs are just passed on anyway). Sound right?
I'm just happy to hear that there are loan forgiveness programs in place at a lot of law schools. That was one of the things I really liked the sound of in England: any undergraduate loans would be forgiven after enough years in a public service job or after enough years below a minimum salary (GBP 15,000 at the moment).
And outside of client complaints, no resistance to this sort of busywork inflation I dunno. I've heard plenty of negotiation going on beforehand about how deep to go, etc. Some clients are savvy, others look for the lowest cost, and others figure high cost = high quality. The lawyers I did work for were sensitive to that, they were well aware there was plenty of competition and an unhappy client was not at all a good thing to have ranting about them on the golf course.
157: I don't think I articulated that well. I'm not saying nobody is sensitive to cost, of course they are. What I meant is that there could be a slow drift in expectations (i.e. over many years) and that would support the sort of padding LB was talking about. If it happens too quickly, you'll have actively unhappy clients. I guess what I'm saying is that absolute billing numbers are less important than relative billing numbers. So there is the potential for the industry on average to do more busywork and bill more hours (and hence juniour people performing those hours, I'm not talking about actual fraudulant billing or anything) but less efficinetly, i.e. without a comparable increase in actual performance. Net effect is more money changing hands per unit of `effect' rather than per unit of `work'. Outside of clients deciding their is a problem, there is not pressure to resist this effect (if it is real) that I can see.
re: 156
Yeah, except 15K is a long way below median wage and would be hard to live much of a life on in many parts of the country -- it'd not be impossible to have a reasonable frugal life in some places, but if you are in a major city, it'd be hard.
159: Yeah, that sounds more like `you're already screwed, we're not going to make it worse' than anything really helpful to a significant number of graduates.
There's a deferment program on my own student loans -- which are under the previous scheme but I gather are run in a similar way. If earning less than about 18K a year I could defer payment until such time as my income went above 18K, but I still owed them the money. It's only if you defer for some lengthy period (20 years or something) that it gets wiped.
As you say, it's just a way of not making people's lives harder than already. Although the actual amount of my own student loan repayments isn't really that high -- current undergraduates end up owing much more.
getting very well paid for a job that's indoors with no heavy lifting
Are those supposed to be plusses? I would love to have a job that was outdoors and involved lots of heavy lifting. The happiest and healthiest I've ever been in my life was the period I spent building fences outdoors all day for a landscaping company. Not exactly an upwardly mobile career, though.
It's lovely when you're young and strong and healthy. When you're fifty with a hernia and get fired for it, not so much.
162: better to go with outside and medium lifting. The heavy stuff does nasty things to your body over time. But all in all, humans really really weren't designed for office work.
A 15K GBP (or 18K GBP) deferment-level in the US would be very generous. The overall median income in the US (age 25+) appears to be 32K USD. That's less than 18K GBP. (For US college graduates the median income is 49K USD.)
The UK considers the lower half of US workers too poor to be forced to pay back student loans. Wow. There's a contrast.
Proposing such a plan would face hard sledding here. Too bad, I think.
165: You aren't considering the cost of living in the UK, which is significantly higher.
159: Yeah, but it helps, especially since your ability to pay is only based upon your pay above 15K. Plus I think taking public jobs allowed you to make much lower repayments, even with a higher salary.
Also, don't forget that a European paying for UK university really can't graduate with much debt relative to the typical American. Even assuming you take out loans for full tuition (including all top-up fees) and 5K per year living expenses (very reasonable at my school, since I lived at home and worked during breaks) for a three-year degree, you only end up with GBP 24,000 in debt. That's a year and a half at a US private university.
160: The significant number of graduates don't need that much loan relief. Extra wages from a college degree have an present value of something like $300,000, so their college debt is easily paid with some extra for themselves. Hell, some other countries have shown that people will attend college even if there's no net monetary benefit, just because it's that fun.
The heavy stuff does nasty things to your body over time.
This is true. I'm already starting to worry about my back. It's not a bad gig, but I wouldn't be thrilled about making a career out of it.
164: Exactly. US life in general is becoming well-suited to fewer and fewer people, and office-grunt work is seriously bad.
Okay, medium-lifting. But definitely outdoors. We'd be better off if we were all park-rangers.
I've been lucky with my back (ergonomics is not junk science, those rules really work) but have chronic problems of moderate seriousness in both shoulders. I did a lot of physical work off and on for about 30 years, without ever doing it all day every day for longer than a month or two at a time.
In the old days guys doing heavy labor didn't build up strength, because they didn't get rest periods and probably weren't terribly well fed either. 10 hours a day 6 days a week breaks your body down more than it builds it up.
I agree, cost of living is a big variable. But I also don't like extraplotating from a lot of the simple comparisons I've seen. I suspect that NYC vs. London for the upper middle class is not the same as NYC vs. London for the folks who stock shelves. Getting away from the very expensive cities the comparisons get tougher. Even in the US the cost of livign differences for being poor in Maine (big heating costs) vs. Mississippi are wide.
What most caught my eye was ttaM's viewing 15K GBP a year as hard to live on when I know folks (with college degrees) who do live on that. Most of them are not in expensive cities, but some are. (Ignoring non-wage compensation issues such as health insurance, etc.)
174: Sure, but in my limited experience, it's a *lot* harder to find somewhere to get by on 15KGBP in the UK than it is to get by on the equivalent in the US. You're quite right though, that it is a difficult thing to find apples-to-apples comparisons. It's also made difficult by the fact that student debt structure is very different anyway.
UK living expenses are just in a whole different place, I think.
Put it this way, where I live, renting an average small (2 bedroom) house would cost around 24,000 dollars a year. That's before you think about any other expenses.
re: 177
Buying a house would be even more impossible. The quite nice 3 (or 4) bedroom house two doors along from ours sold for roughly $1million US earlier this year. And we don't live in a particularly upscale or posh neighbourhood. It's a nice solidly middle-class area, lots of retired couples, some grad students, a few young families, but it's not especially expensive for the south of England.
I was kind of kidding -- those prices are in line with my downscale part of NY. But NY is about as expensive, real estate wise, as anyplace in the US, so your point still stands.
Yeah, where I live is the slums compared to London in terms of rental prices.
My impression from time spent in various bits of both US and UK is that the sort of place you could buy a house for say $200k in the US is most like the sorts of places that the same thing would cost at least 3x as much in the UK. It just really is a different structure. But this has cultural implications too, and there isn't such an emphasis placed on home ownership, etc.
the sort of place you could buy a house for say $200k in the US...is very hard to find.
Re: hours "padding" -- it doesn't even have to be a question of necessary v. frivolous work. I have a friend with a solo practice who will tend to stop the clock when he feels like he's not being efficient. Though I may sometimes feel guilty if I feel I'm not being efficient enough, with a billable quota to meet, I won't generally "cut" my own time -- I bill for how long the job took, not how long I think it should have. Similarly, some folks debate whether you should stop the clock when you get up in the middle of a task to use the restroom (and does this depend on how much you are still thinking about the task for that 5 minutes?). Personally, I don't bill for chatting about a case with a colleague unless we've specifically scheduled time for a formal conference. Others have fewer qualms about billing the client for these moments of "analysis" -- and, realistically, they are probably right, as the client does get value for that time spent. Sometimes the time billed depends on how you break down the tasks. The 2 hours you spend reading a transcript might become 2.4 if you break it into smaller tasks billed in 6 minute increments. (Three 4 minute tasks bill out at 0.3 billed separately, 0.2 if billed as a lump. Personally, I prefer just billing it as a lump, but I've had clients insist I do otherwise.)
I guess what I'm saying is billing is a pain, and often quite squishy, no matter how conscientious you aspire to be.
179: Yeah, even NYC has nothing on London. Coming from Chicago prices, I looked at London rents on some small apartments and thought "Hmm... a bit expensive, but I suppose it's not that bad". Then I realized the rent numbers were per week.
I honestly don't know how people live in England, the costs are one of the two big reasons I chose to move back to the States.
I guess what I'm saying is billing is a pain, and often quite squishy, no matter how conscientious you aspire to be.
This is absolutely true. There is a huge tension between between scrupulously fair and honest with the client and not being a chump and working for free. Most people I know put the first requirement above the second, but they both are important.
182: Not around here.
Ok, two caveats: one, in lots of the UK you simply cannot buy an equivalent to the default US house, because the lot is 4x too big. Second $200k is downmarket in lots of the US, and I probably haven't been keeping up with the real estate inflation of the last few years. However, that being said. I can buy any number of houses (used) for that here in a major metro. Sure, not in a `nice' part of town, but we aren't talking about terrible markets either. I have a friend who bought for under $150 this year; bit banged up but serviceable. I'm certain it's still fairly common in small markets all over the country, but this is one of the largest cities in the country! I've equivalent houses sell in the S.E. of the UK (admittedly an expensive area) sell for about $700k equivalent, outside of any major metro (to the degree that makes sense, in this part of the UK). So it really, really isn't comparable.
Doing my billing makes me entirely miserable.
The single greatest thing about leaving the legal industry (well, other than the pay raise), was never having to bill my time again. Even when I was contracting and had to account for my time on a daily basis, it was still better than breaking my day up into 90 different 15-minute tasks and coming up with a description for each that the client wouldn't kick back.
(My favorite was the time a few hours I'd billed got rejected by the client on the grounds that while they'd pay for clerking, they wouldn't pay for clerical work.)
90 different 15-minute tasks and coming up with a description for each that the client wouldn't kick back
You had to do that? That's crazy. I find it burdensome enough to write a one sentence description of what I did for each client during the day and the total time spent on that client's work.
It's lovely when you're young and strong and healthy. When you're fifty with a hernia and get fired for it, not so much.
Even if you don't get fired for it, it still sucks. shivbunny's dad has had this idyllic Western man sort of life: work on oil rigs, run a ranch, ride horses, reap the hay, build the greenhouse, split rails, build homes, owns the land his father owned.. At 50, he is in the sort of shape that most 25 year olds would love to get at the gym, and but he's developing debilitating arthritis in his shoulder and figures he has five years left living his active life before he has to retire (and spend his time restoring old trucks.)
Basically, human existence is a catch-22.
188: Depends on the client. Some don't like seeing 8 hours with a single description and ask you to break it down. They perhaps don't seem to realize that the more you break things down, the more time sometimes ends up fitting into an hour (b/c 15 minutes is 0.3, e.g., allowing that you might in complete, scrupulous honesty, bill 1.2 in an hour). Tedious for the lawyer, more costly to the client, but if it's what the client wants, the customer is always right!
On that rancher's life in recent times, Ivan Doig's This House of Sky.
182: It's not that hard. I'm closing next week on a house in a nice neighborhood of New Haven (90 minutes from NYC by train) for 207k. It's 3BR, 1500 sf. No garage or offstreet parking is the main drawback, but the house itself is pretty nice.
I think of this area as relatively expensive as the US goes as a whole, though it's nothing compared to CA or closer to new york. One bit to recall about comparing SE england to the US is just how close most of it is to London. I'm looking at google maps and I see that Southampton, Swindon and Northampton are about 60-70 miles from London proper, and while I don't know the local custom, I'm assuming those represent the outer edge (or maybe beyond) what people are calling SE england.
If you start towards NYC from where I will live (about 80-90 miles away), house prices and rents start climbing fast, and they get pretty astounding long before you get to the city.
So while I can still get a decent house for 200k and a really nice one for 3-400k, about 30 miles down the shoreline toward new york, you can double those numbers (except in the parts of Bridgeport that are either majority black or not safe), and triple them by the time you get to westchester county (still a good 30 miles from Manhattan). Same thing on Long Island and in New Jersey. If you're within about 60 miles of the city, your housing starts to be pulled by the economic engine of the city you are near.
So I would guess that London is very much like New York, and that SE England is essentially represents the large London metro area. Very much like Long Island, Westchester and much of NJ and CT are part of New York metro and priced accordingly. Even relatively rural areas, if they are near mountains or water and within 2-3 hours of NYC are pretty expensive as huge numbers of New yorkers buy second homes or retire there.
"Lawyers, as a class, are no more saintly than anyone else"
Not a point that would engender much dissent among most of the world, I'm thinking.
Tokyo real estate is no picnic, either, and the amazing thing is it's about 90% cheaper now than it was during the late-80's/early 90's "bubble" years. Because no one could afford to buy anything at those prices, banks in Japan started giving "two-generation" mortgages, in which your kids would take over the payments on your mortgage once they got old enough.
I'll second the recommendation of This House of Sky.
I don't consider billing 1.2 hours for an hour to be scrupulous honesty. If you have a client who wants his hour broken down into subsections, you can round one segment up and another segment down. Adding 20% and saying that the client deserves it because they want detail isn't something I'd approve.
And I'd better not catch an associate going slow on a project because they have some available time, and want to meet their hours target. People not making their targets are supposed to look for additional projects. Not do work that doesn't need to be done.
I did once hear of some very inexpensive houses in teh North of England. I'm guessing that there were no jobs in those areas, but they were close to real cities. Nothing fancy, just terrace houses, but I think that they were going for around 30,000GPB. It wasn't M