A friend went through this (New York firm) decades back:
If you are a young and ambitious lawyer, landing a job at an American law firm in London is the pinnacle of status and pay. But you have to “sell your soul” for it, in the words of Oliver, 27, a newly qualified solicitor in London. US companies are now offering starting salaries of £170,000. In return, staff must work evenings, weekends and on holiday.
These “zillennial” lawyers (aged 26-29) now routinely work more than 70 hours a week in the Square Mile, according to research conducted by the website Legal Cheek. Top US firms pay the best and demand the most from their NQs (newly qualified staff), taking the 11 top spots in the table listing hours worked. Most demanding is Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where young lawyers rack up an average of 67.5 hours, Monday to Friday (an average of 13 hours 23 minutes on every weekday), with weekend working taking their total hours to more than 70 a week. In return, the firm’s starting salary is £170,000. Second is Kirkland & Ellis, demanding an average of 13 hours 3 minutes every weekday and paying starting salaries of £172,000.
Increasingly, top British law firms have the same work ethic. At Linklaters, junior solicitors log more than 60 hours on average (11 hours 39 minutes per day) while at its rival, Freshfields, juniors are reported to be turning in 56.5 hours a week over five days (11 hours 31 minutes per day). These firms offer starting salaries of £150,000.
That’s not working hours. That’s billable hours. Not time at desk, but how many hours – in 6 minute increments – the punters get charged for.
This works both ways. A 30 sec phone call gets billed as 6 minutes. Because that’s the minimum charge. But that chat with the boss about putting nose to grindstone isn’t time at work – because no client is being billed for it.
As laddie said back then, the money’s great, the life not so much.
The US version of this environment is the background to several John Grisham thrillers.
And as readers here will understand, it is impossible to eliminate it through legislation about working hours (and probably undesirable to try). There is a more-than-sufficient supply of smart young people willing to make the trade.
Doubtless in the UK, TTK will ensure exemptions from various taxes on the sly to maintain his hold over the legal system to ensure followers of the same religion as his very, very good friend Lord Alli continue to receive their benefits…
These starting salaries demonstrate how much the legal profession is managing to suck out of society. Multiple levels of judicial appeal is the gift that keeps giving. Every pointless regulation becomes a huge earner for them. Long running enquires are magic money trees, and “anything” rights is the icing on top.
If a junior is being paid that sort of money, just think how much those up the tree are getting. As for a partner, the mind boggles.
“now routinely work more than 70 hours a week”
Pah, sissies! There were times I did 80 hour weeks for months in a row. I tried to hold Saturday afternoons and evenings sacrosanct but couldn’t always manage that. And that was actual work, not “billable”. Occasionally some of the work involved happy hours of clambering around “in the weather” searching for flaws in chemical plant. (Which is grand fun. In summer.)
On t’other hand a young member of my extended family started in the management consulting game. Those youngsters worked long hours. There would be people sobbing with tiredness at their desks. Made for a wonderful Esprit de Corps, apparently. I don’t suppose lawyers do “Esprit de Corps”?
It also explained why people longed to get on a “public sector” project. Much shorter hours – because you could go home or return to base when the last of the civil servants, or whoever, had left their offices. The Beeb was a particular nest of lazy bastards.
If it’s anything like management consulting they’ll need to bill at least 3x their cost. So with a salary of £170k thats an all up cost of ~£250k so billing £750k pa just to keep your job.
@BiND – Yup. I was being paid $50k a year back in 1994 and being billed at $1,000 a day plus the client paid for my apartment, car and expenses. That was about $260,000 a year back then, so more than 5:1
I always made sure I was the highest billing consultant by accepting whatever job I was offered, but it often made for long hours and high stress.
As the saying goes, all jobs pay the same when accounting for the hours actually spent and the physical toll of the job.
One of my daughters has just started at Freshfields. It’s hard world but she’s not doing 11hrs a day. I once caught a five foot trout, though. And you should have seen the one that got away.
Hard *work* obvs
Why is this even noteworthy?
Do the hours (while you’re still young “) and reap the rich rewards. That way you stay ahead of the pussies who want to be paid the same for a 4-day week complete with safe spaces, mental health days and a unicorn. You know, like the girlies who made those “one day in my life as a Google team manager” videos where they drank mojitos, ate salads, petted dogs, played ping pong, did yoga and still managed to find time for two one-hour online meetings. Absolute heroes.
Sorry should have said
Absolute heroes. CV’s available on request for immediate re-employment.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/13/guardian-owner-appoints-ex-rothschild-banker-board-observer/
In other news,
Divide the hours worked up for the salary. It still ends up being much more than you could make per hour worked in any other field.
As a young father with two sprogs I regularly worked 12+ hours a day. In fact my record was 17+. And when my region accepted Rest Day Working you could work 7 days a week, every week*.
*Until Clapham put the kibosh on it and Hidden 18 came into play.
( I also had a second job moving office furniture in BP’s Victoria HQ, so yeah, dearime @ 9.34, sissies……).
JG,
I had some pretty sane billing rates of well over 100% but these we usually due licence bids or due diligence projects where it was 7 day weeks, but they didn’t last more than about 3 months.
Our minimum billing target as managers was set at 80% x ((5 x 52) – 30 (hols) – 8 (public hols) – 5 (notional CPD)) = ~170 days. You must have received a nice bonus at the end of that project 🙂
And of course the client paid all expenses, which on one project was business class travel to Vienna every week for about 18 months, my wife got a BA silver card on the back of that one.
That company never did pay bonuses, but base salaries were okay for the work. Since I was based in California, the usual American rules applied with very little vacation time (10 days a year), so billing days were closer to 250 a year.
Then again, this was 30 years ago.
The old lawyer met St Peter at the Pearly Gates who asked him how old he was when he died. The old lawyer replied 82. St Peter checked his file, looked at the lawyer, shook his head and said “based on your billing records you’ve got to be at least 640”.
Sorry, but the idea of desk jockies “working hard” is somewhat amusing. Being 5 stories up tiling a roof in driving sleet might be.
5 storeys? Pah, sissie. Try being up at the top of a high distillation column with a gale blowing off the North Sea while you wrestle with dud valves.
At least I’m indoors crawling around the floors of Post Offices through dust bunnies and worse, dragging cables around. But then, I’m also on minimum wage. 🙁
My filthiest job earned me money in my school summer hols when I was 15, 16, 17: unloading cement in hundredweight bags from “steamers” in the harbour and then stacking them in the warehouse. Summer hols, working hard, therefore warm and pores open. The bloody dust seemed to get into every pore.
Happily could later go for a swim in the river.
I suppose the logic must have been that I was strong enough to play loose-head in the school first XV so I was strong enough for that work. I wouldn’t have enjoyed a career as a manual labourer but bursts of casual labour around the harbour were satisfying and topped up my savings for a motorbike.
Ah dearieme, that’s when bags were 50kg, not the girls’ ones they use now. I could particularly recommend bagged sand/ballast, bagged dry then left out in the rain for a few weeks to acquire another 10kg or so.
Like I said, I am amused when I hear of people claiming of the hardness of their work. The majority will be desk jockies & the rest working in the public sector. Maybe those genuinely work hard are too tired to complain?
Who would have guessed that this thread would end up as the ‘four Yorkshiremen’ sketch?
Everyone, that’s who.
The first four Yorkshiremen I ever saw was when the London train stopped in Leeds. They all seemed to be brown.
(Is there still a Glasgow-Leeds-London route?)
“an American law firm in London is the pinnacle of status and pay”
Dunno about now, but back in the ‘90s, while a US law firm was indeed the ‘pinnacle of pay’, it was a definite step down in status from a Magic Circle firm, or even a 2nd tier English ‘City’ firm. That was why they had to pay so much, to attract anyone to work somewhere that was regarded as a stain on your CV.