Justifying summer student pay [split]

[BlockedQuebecois]

@loonie in the nicest way possible, your argument makes absolutely no sense to me. It seems to be that students are so obviously useless for profit generation that attributing the costs directly attributable to them is somehow unfair, which strikes me as illogical.

Edited March 30 by BlockedQuebecois

[easttowest]

15 hours ago, Diplock said:

…sealion territory.

 

Okay, what is this now?

[Dinsdale]

7 hours ago, loonie said:

This is kind of silly to bring up with regards to students, no? 

It is not silly in the slightest.  The original question was "how much fee income does a student have to bring in, in order to be profitable".  What would be silly would be to argue that profitability begins with the first dollar beyond the student's salary, without taking account of any overhead whatsoever.  

Of course firms allocate a share of overhead to students when measuring profitability.  If there were no students, we wouldn't have a student director making $200K, amongst many other things, including office space (already discussed in detail), laptops, software and other technology, training and mentoring (both resources and lawyer time), recruiting trips all across the country, lavish cocktail parties during recruiting week, and dinners and social events aimed at convincing the little brats that we have a "unique culture" that is worth signing-on to for the long term.

Not that whether students are "profitable" matters that much, except possibly in this forum.  As I've said, firms have no real expectation of profitability from students at the student stage.  If that is "anecdotal", then so be it.  It is based on years of direct experience.

Edited March 30 by Dinsdale

[Diplock]

1 hour ago, easttowest said:

Okay, what is this now?

Learned this here. Happy to pass it on:

https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/sealioning/

[Kurrika]

12 hours ago, GoatDuck said:

This thread was truly a Warhammer 40k

Don’t drag us into this,heretic.

[myth000]

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations." - Sealion

[LMP]

4 minutes ago, XXX said:

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations." - Sealion

Of course, I will not fall for the propaganda of the users here, touting that most ancient of lies, that biglaw firms actually make money on students. 

[JohnnyCochrane68]

I have never seen student time written down ever. 

Student time often creates a springboard for partner time, e.g. the student's 100 hours on a factum at $85 an hour or whatever also becomes the partner's questionable 15 hours of "review and revision" billed at $1,250 an hour. 

[LMP]

7 minutes ago, JohnnyCochrane68 said:

I have never seen student time written down ever. 

Student time often creates a springboard for partner time, e.g. the student's 100 hours on a factum at $85 an hour or whatever also becomes the partner's questionable 15 hours of "review and revision" billed at $1,250 an hour. 

In fairness that's probably a symptom of the rate being $85 an hour instead of $300 an hour. Even at mid size firms the rate is still easily $180. Probably makes it a bit more palatable.

I'm sure it also depends on the client. I've had to get special permission from certian clients to bill large amounts as a student and they would have 100% just written off my time if we hadn't.

[myth000]

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
― Sealion

[JohnnyCochrane68]

2 minutes ago, XXX said:

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
― Sealion

You're right I'll go produce dockets on actual matters to win this internet discussion and also be freed from the practice of law via disbarment 

[myth000]

"So long as the burden of proof remains with the critic a cult can never lose" - Sealion

[scooter]

 

[JohnnyCochrane68]

10 minutes ago, XXX said:

"So long as the burden of proof remains with the critic a cult can never lose" - Sealion

We're just shooting the shit. Someone can beat their chest about how their students are chained to oars and yet they STILL make no money off them and other people can complain that they billed $500k for their shitlaw boss and only got paid in metropass reimbursements. 

[CleanHands]

I am certain that banning @XXX for dissenting opinions would just validate his belief that the legal profession and this forum are full of insular and corrupt people conspiring against him, however the powers that be here banned @TheCryptozoologist for similarly consistent equally extremely low-quality, disruptive, trollish posts, and he was far more entertaining at least. Just saying.

At least his stupid little quotes above are a step up from when he was literally posting ChatGPT responses here.

Edited March 30 by CleanHands

[loonie]

9 hours ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

@loonie in the nicest way possible, your argument makes absolutely no sense to me. It seems to be that students are so obviously useless for profit generation that attributing the costs directly attributable to them is somehow unfair, which strikes me as illogical.

 

4 hours ago, Dinsdale said:

It is not silly in the slightest.  The original question was "how much fee income does a student have to bring in, in order to be profitable".  What would be silly would be to argue that profitability begins with the first dollar beyond the student's salary, without taking account of any overhead whatsoever.  

Of course firms allocate a share of overhead to students when measuring profitability.  If there were no students, we wouldn't have a student director making $200K, amongst many other things, including office space (already discussed in detail), laptops, software and other technology, training and mentoring (both resources and lawyer time), recruiting trips all across the country, lavish cocktail parties during recruiting week, and dinners and social events aimed at convincing the little brats that we have a "unique culture" that is worth signing-on to for the long term.

Not that whether students are "profitable" matters that much, except possibly in this forum.  As I've said, firms have no real expectation of profitability from students at the student stage.  If that is "anecdotal", then so be it.  It is based on years of direct experience.

Maybe my message got lost along the way -- it wasn't that I think we cannot attribute costs to students -- I definitely agree with @Dinsdale that there are overhead costs directly related to students. I also agree with what was being conveyed earlier in the thread (students are expensive both because of their salary and these various overhead costs, and firms generally will not profit off of them as they are more of a long-term investment). 

Instead, my issue was with tying in office space cost specifically with students. I felt like there was two large flaws in doing so: i) Office rent costs are typically seen as fixed costs, so I think it is inaccurate to try to factor them into how much a student themselves is costing the firm. For example, we have seen in the past couple of years that firms have hired 2-6 less summer students. In doing so, they did not change their rent overhead cost and, therefore, the cost was not with the student themselves, so it just gives us somewhat of an inaccurate number. ii) The office space split. I do not think it is accurate to divide the total rent cost of the firm (which is predominantly used for associate and partners offices) by number of employees and say X employee is therefore costing us this much. 

Otherwise, I definitely agree with attributing costs like software, licensing fees, training and mentoring, and meal disbursements directly to students. I just don't think firms are spending $150K+ in these overhead costs alone per student. Anyways, I feel like I'm just yelling at the clouds at this point and derailing the conversation, so I'll just stop here, but I think we all mostly agree (besides the office space rent) on the larger topic at hand that students are expensive and typically long-term investments for the firm. 

[Diplock]

There are two discussions happening here, really. One is a perfectly reasonable discussion about how to interpret the value students bring to a firm and how that should bear on their compensation. The other has entered into full QAnon territory, as in "the more people refute or deny the truth I have come here to proclaim, the more it expands the conspiracy to suppress that truth, and the more it proves the urgency of my message."

@loonie - I hardly think you can "derail" this thread however hard you try. You're taking part in the real discussion, as opposed to the one man meltdown everything else is about.

In terms of the real discussion, I'd like to suggest that talking about "students" as a group and ignoring the distinction between summer students and articling students is a hell of a distinction to miss. Articling students actually have rights of appearance in various contexts and can perform various kinds of legal work. Summer students have no status under the LSO (unless working in a clinic, which summer employment is not) and so their role in a firm is essentially that of completely untrained clerks. (NOTE - This applies to Ontario, and I cannot comment for elsewhere). The major distinction being that you onboard an articling student and you have them for most of a year. You onboard a summer student and you have them for a few months. I can see much better arguments that an articling student can become a net benefit over the course of their employment than a summer student. So we really should be clear which we're talking about.

 

[JohnsonWest]

3 hours ago, XXX said:

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
― Sealion

 

I didn't see any evidence for any of this bs that you wrote:

 

"I see this repeated by lawyers ad nauseam: summer students or articling students don't make money for the firm. This is patently not true for most students, whose work is billed at $100-$200 (or sometimes, dishonestly, even at the counsel rate) but who are paid barely minimum wage, if at all. I've scrutinized the billing of a small firm that seems to survive on student and other low-paid labor; I simply don't see how any small firm would make a loss by hiring an averagely competent student. In many cases, the supervising lawyer spends barely a few minutes every day providing guidance or mentoring, so the cost of mentoring isn't a major factor either."

[easttowest]

1 hour ago, JohnsonWest said:

 

I didn't see any evidence for any of this bs that you wrote:

 

"I see this repeated by lawyers ad nauseam: summer students or articling students don't make money for the firm. This is patently not true for most students, whose work is billed at $100-$200 (or sometimes, dishonestly, even at the counsel rate) but who are paid barely minimum wage, if at all. I've scrutinized the billing of a small firm that seems to survive on student and other low-paid labor; I simply don't see how any small firm would make a loss by hiring an averagely competent student. In many cases, the supervising lawyer spends barely a few minutes every day providing guidance or mentoring, so the cost of mentoring isn't a major factor either."

This person has no idea what an averagely competent student looks like… that work would be bad. 

Students are great. They’re enthusiastic and want to work hard and are generally positive about pitching in. Their ability is also widely variable and much of what they produce is not useful without significant polishing, unless they have a lot of guidance along the way (ie. lawyer time). It is not unusual to build in a serious cushion on any deadline where a student is involved at the first step just in case you end up having to do it yourself. The student time in that instance (and many others) will never hit a bill. 

Edited March 30 by easttowest

[JohnsonWest]

3 hours ago, easttowest said:

This person has no idea what an averagely competent student looks like… that work would be bad. 

Students are great. They’re enthusiastic and want to work hard and are generally positive about pitching in. Their ability is also widely variable and much of what they produce is not useful without significant polishing, unless they have a lot of guidance along the way (ie. lawyer time). It is not unusual to build in a serious cushion on any deadline where a student is involved at the first step just in case you end up having to do it yourself. The student time in that instance (and many others) will never hit a bill. 

Exactly. He doesn't seem to be able to grasp the fact that much of what a student does is written off. This is simply due to the fact that law school doesn't teach you anything about the actual practice of law. 

[canuckfanatic]

11 hours ago, Diplock said:

So we really should be clear which we're talking about.

Given that the artist formerly known as "myth000" responded to me initially: I was talking about summer students, specifically.

Edited March 31 by canuckfanatic

[Diplock]

3 hours ago, canuckfanatic said:

Given that the artist formerly known as "myth000" responded to me initially: I was talking about summer students, specifically.

Yeah, I gathered. And it's even right there in the subject line for the split discussion. Despite that, I feel like the distinction has been missed in practice any many people are implicitly thinking of articling students in their examples.

[Rashabon]

In Big Law at least there's another factor which is I have spent countless hours mentoring and training students who have no intention of coming to my group and both of us know it. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to treat them differently. So I have tons of unrecoverable time spent training dozens and dozens of students that come through my office. I enjoy mentoring so I don't view it as a waste. But there's a huge cost in bringing on students (my personal time) that is worth more than any $ figure could account for.

[Vizslaw]

100% agree with @Rashabon comments above. I am the firm's articling principal and spend significant time training students. I also don't find it a waste of time, but I don't know why there is skepticism about whether students are money-makers or not. At best, students are a break-even proposition for us (small litigation firm in the GTA). I was going to dredge through the data in CosmoLex to prove my point but I don't really owe that level of time or commitment to anyone here.

The bottom line is we write off a significant amount of our student's billable time. At least 50%. Clients get very upset when they see huge chunks of time on their invoices. They don't care if the student costs them $1,000, but if they spend 10 hours doing something they are going to freak. Everyone accepts that hiring students is part of the business and that we providing training (kind of like a teaching hospital) but there is quite a low amount of tolerance for seeing student hours on invoices unless they are adding value to a file, or actively participating in a file, which they usually are not. Having a student is usually for my/their benefit, not the client's. For example, when I conduct hearings or appear before tribunals, the student attends to observe, take notes, and get experience (usually by learning what not to do by watching me). There is no benefit to the client other than them taking notes to help me, so we don't charge for that time.

Students are expensive. There are obvious expenses like software licenses, laptops, and other monthly/recurring expenses like benefits, phone allowances, paying for their transportation/food when on work outings, etc. There are also opportunity costs to me. Every hour I spend training takes away from my own billable time. I like having students, but they don't make money for our firm given the time/expense involved in overseeing/training them. 

 

[easttowest]

48 minutes ago, Vizslaw said:

100% agree with @Rashabon comments above. I am the firm's articling principal and spend significant time training students. I also don't find it a waste of time, but I don't know why there is skepticism about whether students are money-makers or not. At best, students are a break-even proposition for us (small litigation firm in the GTA). I was going to dredge through the data in CosmoLex to prove my point but I don't really owe that level of time or commitment to anyone here.

The bottom line is we write off a significant amount of our student's billable time. At least 50%. Clients get very upset when they see huge chunks of time on their invoices. They don't care if the student costs them $1,000, but if they spend 10 hours doing something they are going to freak. Everyone accepts that hiring students is part of the business and that we providing training (kind of like a teaching hospital) but there is quite a low amount of tolerance for seeing student hours on invoices unless they are adding value to a file, or actively participating in a file, which they usually are not. Having a student is usually for my/their benefit, not the client's. For example, when I conduct hearings or appear before tribunals, the student attends to observe, take notes, and get experience (usually by learning what not to do by watching me). There is no benefit to the client other than them taking notes to help me, so we don't charge for that time.

Students are expensive. There are obvious expenses like software licenses, laptops, and other monthly/recurring expenses like benefits, phone allowances, paying for their transportation/food when on work outings, etc. There are also opportunity costs to me. Every hour I spend training takes away from my own billable time. I like having students, but they don't make money for our firm given the time/expense involved in overseeing/training them. 

 

No, this is not sufficient. We need to see the accounting data. Show us the books!