It was a dark, rainy evening. Elizabeth was laying in her bed, surrounded by her closest family that gathered together. She knew the time has come. Being a 68 years old, successful attorney in a big law firm, she was prepared to face the court one last time and present her case to the highest judge. Right before she died, someone asked if she had any last words. With her dying breath she replied:
“I wish I could spent more time at the office.”
Right. Except that no human being would ever say something like that. During our last moments on earth we regret not spending more time with our beloved ones, wish we experienced more of what the world had to offer for us or we complain about the last meal ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Grasso#Last_meal)).
Obviously spending time at the office is not our life goal and we don’t strive to waste our time there. Sure, many of us enjoy work- we love it as a social place where we meet with other people and we get satisfaction from achievements and praise. But you can’t compare this to spending afternoon with your children playing League of Legends together, spending time with your friends or having a picnic with your significant other.
In most countries worldwide we can observe gradual decrease in work time. Standard working hours around the world are around 40 to 44 hours per week. It’s definitely much more than it should be, but compared to the past it got down by 20 hours and it might be heading in the right direction soon. Few notable exceptions still prevail- among them legal profession.
I will try to make this article as short as possible as I already feel how broad this topic could be, and I did receive feedback that my articles are too long (same with my emails actually, definitely something I need to improve). In order to achieve that, I will focus on the following points: why are lawyers wasting so much time at the office, why is this bad and how to evolve and not adapt yourself to the current workaholic trend of legal career. We will, of course, find out that it’s all about money but it’s less obvious than it seems.
What makes a lawyer spend so much time at the office?
First factor is the comparison game. It starts even before your actual career. You get into a law school and it’s obvious you need to study hard. Not only to pass the exam or learn the subject- the moment you get into this competitive environment, you start comparing yourself to other students and you want to be on top, among the best, to be noticed by a professor or at least not to fall behind. Waiting in line for an exam you will not hear your colleges discussing issues of legal solutions; you will observe and join the game of “who studied the hardest”. For example: John didn’t sleep for 2 nights preparing himself. Anna laughs: “studying two nights for this exam? You must really believe in your luck, I started spending my evening in the library a week ago to prepare myself”. “A library? My father paid for an online prep-course for this subject matter, I started it before we knew about this exam and it took me a month” – added Mathew. “You guys really are chair warmers. My parents locked me in a basement with all the books about this subject when I was 15 years old, 5 years before I even went to Law school. They forced feed me cocaine and only gave food when I was able to recite the whole codex”. This might sound ridiculous but I can bet that if any current student is reading this, there is a blush on his cheek. And this doesn’t end when you finally achieve your Masters of Law degree.
The comparison game goes on once you join a Law Firm as a rookie. You will notice your colleagues-trainees complaining about how they had to stay 12 hours last day because they were given some important “sort the files alphabetically” task by one of the superiors. Someone else stayed 14 hours because he felt the need to study previous cases of one of the partners. Someone else has spent a weekend at the office, because it was that important. No matter how stupid or time wasting this will sound for you, you will find (sooner or later) that by leaving after only 8 hours you feel like you might miss something, compared to them. You will feel regret that they are gaining advantage that you won’t have if you will not join the game. You are afraid of falling behind, of not being noticed, your contract not signed for permanent employment. In some Firms this even becomes a semi-official rule – you don’t leave the office until senior partner leaves first, even if you are done already with all your tasks and you are too exhausted to actually do something productive.
The final stage of this game, starts once you are full time employed, established lawyer, working for that Firm that everyone was talking about. Yes my fellow lawyers, you were having a nice laugh when I reminded you the stories from student years and trainee years, and you think this is all behind you already right? Not quite. You see, the gap between top paid specialists and their colleagues has widened in any profession recently, but I can bet it is the most noticeable with lawyers, bankers and doctors. Human nature is to compare ourselves to other members of our group. A mechanic will compare his earnings and success to other mechanics, a manager to other managers of the same level and a lawyer to other lawyers.
The problem with lawyers is the huge salary gap between them. A first time employee lawyer can earn anywhere between 50000$ and 170000$((data from The Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011)), top lawyers depending on their specialization, worked overtime and size of the Firm can earn as much as 600000$ up to 4 000 000$ if they are real rainmakers. Unfortunately your comparison point (and maybe even more importantly your life partner’s comparison point) will come from media and general opinion of how much lawyers make. To keep it short, when you come back home with your trusted 1998 Audi A6, and your wife just watched this new episode of “Suits” you will feel like you are falling behind, by not having a Bentley with a personal driver. As a lawyer the most common way of earning more in a corporation is to bill more hours. It becomes natural to stay long hours in the office doing extra work and raising those numbers on your pay slip spreadsheet. But you are used to it already right? Remember law school and trainee-ships – this lifestyle wasn’t designed and embraced yesterday. This brings us to the second factor, billable hours.
Unlike the comparison game, this factor is unavoidable and is included as a target, bonus, goal or a performance index. Big Law Firms are just as much of a corporation as their clients are. Structure of a typical corporation and traditional management contributes to focus all efforts on achieving one goal – making money. The unfortunate result of this is the way in which legal corporations earn money – clients pay for every hour an attorney is working for them. This means that a lawyer has to work enough hours not only to cover his salary but also to generate revenue for the Firm. The more hours, the more revenue and bigger salary.
A junior attorney got into a famous lawyer’s family by marrying his daughter. Father in law, as a gift, passed the leadership of one of his biggest cases onto his son in law, to get him started. Next month they meet again. “Father, great news, I have studied the case very hard and won it!” – says the son. “What have you done! You idiot, our family was living off this case for years, and you closed it in one month”.
Just like in the joke above, billable hour doesn’t make any sense. You get punished for being effective – if quality is your priority and you win a case early on, you are practically putting yourself out of work. You have to work as long as possible to get the best salary. Usually the yearly minimum target is around 1800-2000 hours((http://www.nalpdirectory.com/)). While this doesn’t sound too scary, keep in mind that for this minimum target only hours that are considered billable count. No talking with coworkers, no lunches, no breaks etc. So how much time do we really work? Let’s take a look at an average annual associate hours worked in 2014 in DLA Piper LLP. I have chosen this famous company because they recently made an appearance in one of the tv shows, and also because of something you can find in footnotes((http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/suit-offers-a-peek-at-the-practice-of-padding-a-legal-bill/)) . On average, associates of DLA Piper in 2014 worked 2407 hours – we might assume 47 hours weekly, which translates to roughly 9,5 hours daily in a 5 day working week. Now if that seems like a lot, it is still just a mean. According to an article in New York Times ((http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/nyregion/10silda.html?pagewanted=print)) Silda Wall Spitzer (former First Lady of New York) of Skadden was routinely billing 3200 hours a year. That’s 61 hours weekly!
Why is it bad?
It is a risk for clients.
If you are in need of legal assistance, trust me, you don’t want a lawyer that is encouraged to work more than 8 hours a day on your case. A specialist can only be focused for limited amount of time each day, until his brain has to rest and recover. After he becomes tired, his quality and focus suffers and mistakes are more likely to happen. Lawyers are human too, and not having enough rest will kill their creativity, logical thinking and ability to reason.
It is bad for client’s wallets. “Churn that bill, baby!”
If your lawyer’s payment is based on the amount of hours he bills, and not his results, you can be sure that he will do anything is his power to work as long as possible. That means that it is in his best interest not to be effective. His manager is actually punishing him for being brilliant and solving your case fast, because he wants you to pay more for nothing.
It is bad for lawyers.
Working long hours reduced the time you have for family, sleep, relax, learning, entertainment, health, exercise and love. Lawyers are among the most depressed people in the world. Sure, there are other reasons, but staying at the office does not help.
It is bad for society.
Working long hours discourages all activities outside of business. Pro Bono Cases are discouraged, because time spent on those can’t be billed to a client. Participation of lawyers in city council, neighborhood societies, mentorship activities, social work or gatherings is discouraged.
How to avoid it?
If you are working in a corporation that is focusing on number of hours billed instead of quality and talent, just run away. It’s just not worth it. If you are not doing something that you believe in, then you should not be doing it. It is better to work for less money, but with better purpose. In the end, work should not be slavery. For clients: if a Law Firm is not respecting their own people’s time, do not count on them to respect yours. There are many alternatives to billable hours (flat fees, result fees, incentive arrangements, contingent fees, reverse contingent fees, blended rates etc.)
Think about what kind of values are really important in your life. Then check what values are important for your Corporation. But do not judge it by their empty slogans- only actions truly speak. If the values are aligned, you are in a good spot.
