Biglaw lawyers’s lifestyles

[disgruntledpelican]

2 minutes ago, Thrive92 said:

wow sounds like a heavenly dream fam

Should also mention I’ve cancelled so many times on friends I no longer get social invites from them (yay!) so I spend almost nothing on social/entertainment, gave up the gym membership as I stopped going anyways and gained 15 pounds this year and a belly to go with it. Just a few hundred bucks of expenses every month with the mortgage and I’m stacking cash like a mofo (no law school debt to pay off thankfully.) I did treat myself to a new iPad last month, but that was really it for bigger expenses this year.

[123]

12 minutes ago, disgruntledpelican said:

Don’t have time to spend my money. Dinner’s on the firm on all the nights I can expense it. Gave up all my hobbies due to work and me being so mentally spent every day that I only wake up, eat, work, repeat cycle.  No time for vacation plans (I didn’t take any of my vacation in 2021). Mortgage is less than a quarter of my paycheque and most of it is principal payments.

[disgruntledpelican]

2 minutes ago, realpseudonym said:

I appreciate the very appropriate Schitt’s Creek reference.

[Judgelight]

On 12/18/2021 at 2:26 PM, disgruntledpelican said:

Don’t have time to spend my money. Dinner’s on the firm on all the nights I can expense it. Gave up all my hobbies due to work and me being so mentally spent every day that I only wake up, eat, work, repeat cycle.  No time for vacation plans (I didn’t take any of my vacation in 2021). Mortgage is less than a quarter of my paycheque and most of it is principal payments.

Honestly that sounds pretty good. I wish i could go into the office at 7, eat breakfast on the government dime, then have dinner when prepping for my next days trial on the government dime lol.

[easttowest]

6 hours ago, Judgelight said:

Honestly that sounds pretty good. I wish i could go into the office at 7, eat breakfast on the government dime, then have dinner when prepping for my next days trial on the government dime lol.

The firms don’t pay for breakfast and expensing dinner means you’ve worked through your evening. 

[Kurrika]

47 minutes ago, easttowest said:

The firms don’t pay for breakfast and expensing dinner means you’ve worked through your evening. 

When I work through dinner the only perk I get is the satisfaction that the taxpayers are getting value for money because I don't get overtime.  It warms the cockles of my heart.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Kurrika

[Rashabon]

I'm working to reset expectations by just ignoring clients when they email on the weekend. I had one email to ask the status of something Sunday and I said sometime this week, and they then asked me to send something around I hadn't started looking at yet and I just ignored it. It's Sunday, in late December. I'll get to you when I get to you.

[disgruntledpelican]

10 hours ago, Judgelight said:

Honestly that sounds pretty good. I wish i could go into the office at 7, eat breakfast on the government dime, then have dinner when prepping for my next days trial on the government dime lol.

Trust me, I'd much rather not be working and have to pay for my dinners. There isn't much satisfaction to lukewarm chicken tikka masala or pad thai that's 20 minutes late via Uber Eats.

2 hours ago, Rashabon said:

I'm working to reset expectations by just ignoring clients when they email on the weekend. I had one email to ask the status of something Sunday and I said sometime this week, and they then asked me to send something around I hadn't started looking at yet and I just ignored it. It's Sunday, in late December. I'll get to you when I get to you.

Good on you for pushing back. I don't have that luxury. Partners I work with will say yes and I bear the brunt as a hapless midlevel.

Edited December 20, 2021 by disgruntledpelican

[Rashabon]

I sent a couple angry emails to a partner in October about it and he was apologetic and took me (and some other associates) out for dinner as an apology lol.

But yeah, I have a lot more latitude given my current stature.

[tails]

I agree with most of the comments here where the biggest thing my lifestyle affords me is the ability to not think about money. 

[thrill]

On 12/18/2021 at 7:31 PM, Thrive92 said:

wow sounds like a heavenly dream fam

If your dream is to wake up and work, you need to get some better dreams....

[GGrievous]

4 minutes ago, thrill said:

If your dream is to wake up and work, you need to get some better dreams....

Did you not see the cat at all? 

[Jaggers]

That cat has been shaking its head for over a month, to no avail!

[thrill]

Cat didn't show up.... error in the system.... trucker strike must be affecting the information super highway

[Jaggers]

Maybe the cat memes are going on strike to protest how stupid the trucker memes are.

[Rusty Iron Ring]

I am not in biglaw, but I have plenty of friends who are.  I've mostly lost touch with them, apart from occasional emails/texts to check in and catch up.  Most don't live in the same city as me, but for the ones who do I've basically stopped inviting them to anything since they either say they can't come, or cancel at the last minute. 

I do not regret not being in biglaw. 

Edit: I should clarify this - pre-covid, I would usually manage to meet up with the local ones for lunch every few months. I stopped inviting them to weekend stuff, birthdays, fishing trips, etc. 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Rusty Iron Ring

[Spreckles]

My spouse and my combined incomes are about $550k. We have two young kids and live in a detached house in the suburbs of Toronto. I don’t consider our lifestyles to be particularly lavish. Kids go to public school, we have two cars one of which we bought used years ago (although paid in full in cash). No gym memberships. I shop at No Frills all the time. No expensive hobbies, neither of us are big drinkers either. Favourite pastime is a picnic at the park with friends. 

I suppose where we do have freedom is in being able to pay for things without having to check the price. Daycare, kids programming, Uber eats, or impulse purchase at the mall. We also don’t really have to save up to go on vacations. Last year we were able to throw down a big chunk of change to prepay our mortgage. This year we have the good fortune to decide whether to throw some extra cash at our investments, mortgage or slush funds. We don’t have debt except for the mortgage and one car, which we could technically pay off now but we financed it at like 0% APR. 

[happydude]

On 12/18/2021 at 2:26 PM, disgruntledpelican said:

Don’t have time to spend my money. Dinner’s on the firm on all the nights I can expense it. Gave up all my hobbies due to work and me being so mentally spent every day that I only wake up, eat, work, repeat cycle.  No time for vacation plans (I didn’t take any of my vacation in 2021). Mortgage is less than a quarter of my paycheque and most of it is principal payments.

This was closer to my reality in private practice. Not enough time to enjoy my money. All of my hobbies were had to be dropped as there simply was no time. Except the gym, which I did force myself to create time for on account of the health benefits, but I was spent and exhausted from work. so the workouts became a chore as opposed to enjoyable like they were before becoming a lawyer. I could take a vacation in the sense that the firm would have approved it and I had vacation days, but it would not be worth the stress of falling behind at work. Not to mention losing a week of billable hours. So I didn't. Savings grew at a very nice rate. But I was essentially a work robot and it led to pretty bad depression and irritability.

I am now in house and 10x happier despite a lesser current salary and future trajectory. I do not consider my "Bay Street training" worth the 2 miserable years I spent there and, if I could do it over again, would have targeted in house articling positions and avoided practice altogether. 

[Jaggers]

I had a decent time in my work at the firm. I worked more than I would have liked to long term, but it opened up good in-house opportunities. I have been in house now for almost 10 years, and I like it better, but I did gain a lot of good experience at the firm.

[C_Terror]

10 hours ago, Jaggers said:

I had a decent time in my work at the firm. I worked more than I would have liked to long term, but it opened up good in-house opportunities. I have been in house now for almost 10 years, and I like it better, but I did gain a lot of good experience at the firm.

It's funny; during OCIs all of us were so gung ho about working big law/7 Sisters etc, and I never understood why people left after 1-3 years. They were living the dream! Harvey Specter and Mike Ross! 

Now a bunch of people I know are just putting their heads down, grinding for another year or two before jumping ship to an in-house role. The higher compensation + prestige is just not worth the sacrifice demanded of us in other areas of our lives if you want to grind it on the partnership track (and even then you're busier than ever as a junior partner!) 

[Jaggers]

Believe it or not, there was no Mike Ross/Harvey Spector when I interviewed. It was long before Suits was even dreamed up.

[easttowest]

I like my Biglaw job so far. But I’m lucky in that I’m in a great group with only a few bad apples, who I have no relationships with. I have seen the other side and want no part of it. A good friend is on a stress leave six months in because of a bad group and is actively looking to go almost anywhere else.

[t3ctonics]

I worked in biglaw* for four years and it was my lifestyle. I didn't stick around long enough to get into the high end of associate pay, let alone partner money, but by the end I was in a position where my wife and I owned a detached home and two cars, were socking money into our RRSPs, went out for fine dining every couple of weeks, and went out for dinner and drinks a couple of times a week (like going to a pub). I attended a lot of firm, client, and legal community events in expensive restaurants, clubs, and event venues (including some travel to different cities in Canada), all of which the firm or clients paid for. 

We'd bought a fixer-upper when I was articling, and a good chunk of our disposable income went to renovations and upgrades early on. We also budgeted very strictly before my PSLOC went into repayment so that we could knock it down as much as possible while we were still living like students (aside from owning a house). Articling and my first year as an associate were tight for money, but that was because we were investing in our future. 

After that, life was pretty easy financially. We got our house sorted out the way we wanted it, and I was able to buy things like guitars and amps without really thinking about the cost. We took international vacations without having to save up.

But, as I mentioned, my job was my lifestyle. I often worked through lunch, eating at my desk, though occasionally I went out for lunch with colleagues, clients, or (much more rarely) friends. I often had to work evenings or weekends with no notice, so I regularly had to break plans and eventually stopped making any weeknight plans. My wife spent a lot of evenings alone. My friends and extended family got used to never seeing me, and stopped inviting me to things because I was always having to cancel at the last minute. Saturday night was the only night we could fairly reliably make plans, so we had to stretch those out to cover date nights, meeting up with friends, and seeing both of our families.

I bought some nice guitars and amps, but almost never played them. I bought some nice golf clubs, but only played for work-related things (i.e. never just going out with some friends). I still played videogames and read books, but mostly just things that took little mental energy. When I had free time I was usually both exhausted and on edge from stress. I often had to work on my vacations - not necessarily because a partner asked me to, but because if I didn't I'd be crushed when I got back, or because something was going on with my active files and there wasn't another associate that could deal with it.

Part of all this was who I worked with. I worked for a firm with high expectations, but no worse than any other large firm I've heard of. My specific issues arose from two partners I worked with frequently, who both tended to take on more work than they could realistically manage and were obsessed with providing the highest level of client service (i.e. unlimited availability, willing to agree to virtually any deadline). They loaded me up heavily, and kept me loaded up because I always found a way to keep up. It didn't help that one of them was very disorganized and was an extremely inefficient legal project manager. 

That said, I'm glad I did it and stuck it out for a few years. I learned a lot. Being so busy those four years meant I got substantially more experience than I would have at a 9-5 like my current in-house job. I don't know if I would have been able to get this job without that experience. For unattached people looking to jumpstart their careers, I think biglaw is a great option. It can easily take over your life though. Most partners seemed to do very little in life that was not work-related in some way.

*Large regional firm that kept me as busy as my friends at national firms in Calgary, Vancouver, or Toronto at the time. Pay scale was between Vancouver and Calgary biglaw. Bear in mind this was in Saskatoon, with a substantially lower cost of living than the larger Canadian cities - I was able to purchase a detached home with a garage in a nice neighbourhood, 15 minute biking distance from work, for $300k.

[C_Terror]

1 hour ago, t3ctonics said:

I worked in biglaw* for four years and it was my lifestyle. I didn't stick around long enough to get into the high end of associate pay, let alone partner money, but by the end I was in a position where my wife and I owned a detached home and two cars, were socking money into our RRSPs, went out for fine dining every couple of weeks, and went out for dinner and drinks a couple of times a week (like going to a pub). I attended a lot of firm, client, and legal community events in expensive restaurants, clubs, and event venues (including some travel to different cities in Canada), all of which the firm or clients paid for. 

We'd bought a fixer-upper when I was articling, and a good chunk of our disposable income went to renovations and upgrades early on. We also budgeted very strictly before my PSLOC went into repayment so that we could knock it down as much as possible while we were still living like students (aside from owning a house). Articling and my first year as an associate were tight for money, but that was because we were investing in our future. 

After that, life was pretty easy financially. We got our house sorted out the way we wanted it, and I was able to buy things like guitars and amps without really thinking about the cost. We took international vacations without having to save up.

But, as I mentioned, my job was my lifestyle. I often worked through lunch, eating at my desk, though occasionally I went out for lunch with colleagues, clients, or (much more rarely) friends. I often had to work evenings or weekends with no notice, so I regularly had to break plans and eventually stopped making any weeknight plans. My wife spent a lot of evenings alone. My friends and extended family got used to never seeing me, and stopped inviting me to things because I was always having to cancel at the last minute. Saturday night was the only night we could fairly reliably make plans, so we had to stretch those out to cover date nights, meeting up with friends, and seeing both of our families.

I bought some nice guitars and amps, but almost never played them. I bought some nice golf clubs, but only played for work-related things (i.e. never just going out with some friends). I still played videogames and read books, but mostly just things that took little mental energy. When I had free time I was usually both exhausted and on edge from stress. I often had to work on my vacations - not necessarily because a partner asked me to, but because if I didn't I'd be crushed when I got back, or because something was going on with my active files and there wasn't another associate that could deal with it.

Part of all this was who I worked with. I worked for a firm with high expectations, but no worse than any other large firm I've heard of. My specific issues arose from two partners I worked with frequently, who both tended to take on more work than they could realistically manage and were obsessed with providing the highest level of client service (i.e. unlimited availability, willing to agree to virtually any deadline). They loaded me up heavily, and kept me loaded up because I always found a way to keep up. It didn't help that one of them was very disorganized and was an extremely inefficient legal project manager. 

That said, I'm glad I did it and stuck it out for a few years. I learned a lot. Being so busy those four years meant I got substantially more experience than I would have at a 9-5 like my current in-house job. I don't know if I would have been able to get this job without that experience. For unattached people looking to jumpstart their careers, I think biglaw is a great option. It can easily take over your life though. Most partners seemed to do very little in life that was not work-related in some way.

*Large regional firm that kept me as busy as my friends at national firms in Calgary, Vancouver, or Toronto at the time. Pay scale was between Vancouver and Calgary biglaw. Bear in mind this was in Saskatoon, with a substantially lower cost of living than the larger Canadian cities - I was able to purchase a detached home with a garage in a nice neighbourhood, 15 minute biking distance from work, for $300k.

Love the disclaimer haha. As a newer associate in Toronto and a detached house going for close to $2M nowadays, I was scratching my head wondering how long ago this was. 

[Rashabon]

I do think it also largely depends on what you make time for. I'm in big law, in a busy area and have been on the top end of billing for most of my career. I have still found time for a lot of my hobbies and still do, but I have to make time for it and it became easier as I got more senior and more efficient and had more control over larger tasks.

I certainly don't think it is easy to do and in the early stages your schedule is going to be much tougher. But I play video games most nights a week with my partner and have for years, because that's the hobby we picked to share a lot of. I watch a lot less TV than I used to and I read less than I would like, but it's hard to do everything.