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: Magic Cookie

$160,000

Over at Ms. JD, a first-year biglaw associate discusses a meeting with law firm partners about work-life balance. The partners' view was basically, "Your starting salary is obscene, so don't complain to me about balance."

To me, the most interesting part of the post is that she describes law firm partners as "angry" about the ever-increasing first-year associate salaries. It seems like it's a vicious cycle that nobody wants to be in. Law firms think they have to keep raising salaries to compete for top students. Students aren't going to turn down extra money for doing the same job. But the point isn't that students are getting more and more greedy -- it's that to get them to choose based on the firm without factoring in money, the salaries have to be equal. Whether they're equal at $160,000 or $135,000, where they were just a few years ago, I don't think matters much to anyone.

Last year, I got to discuss the same issue with a managing partner at a law firm. (The dynamic was different because, unlike the author of the Ms. JD post, I hadn't already signed on with the firm; if the partner I spoke to was angry, I doubt he'd express that to me.) I told him that I was suspicious when I heard about another salary hike, because I expected that would mean increased pressure to bill. He said that, in fact, the firms just passed the costs on to their clients. "How do the clients feel about that?" I asked. He explained that, just like the pressure to increase salaries to keep up with other firms, there's also pressure to increase billing rates to keep up. If your rates get below market, clients think they're getting cut-rate service and perceive you as a "discount" firm. "But is that sustainable?" I wondered. That's where he shrugged and said, "We'll see."

Even though my starting salary will be market, I expect to make less at my firm than I would elsewhere because I've heard that bonuses are not at all guaranteed and are far less generous than at other firms. But that's fine, because I'm still making plenty of money and it seems like my firm is a place where attorneys make time for their families and outside commitments.

I would love to see firms competing on work-life balance rather than on price. We're always hearing about how the current generation coming out of law school cares about balance at least as much as money. How about offering basically a reduced schedule, where you make $125,000 and bill 1600 hours? Or increased vacation time (and a policy of encouraging people to actually take it), or periodic sabbaticals (maybe not as generous as colleges, but something like a continuous month off at the end of five years with the firm). The 1600-hour option would be incredible -- if firms routinely offered that, I would have had far less hesitation about becoming a lawyer in the first place.

Full post as published by Magic Cookie on January 22, 2008 (boomark / email).