JESUS CHRIST, DIDN'T I TELL YOU TO CHANGE IT FROM APPENDIX I TO APPENDIX A????? GODDAMN IT, WHAT KIND OF KEYSTONE KOPS OPERATION ARE WE RUNNING (it is 4 a.m. on sunday morning)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23421229)

THA FUCK

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23426633)

1. soulcrushing hours (in NYC typical hours are 10-10 M-F with 4-8 hours on the weekend)

2. annoying clients (includes other lawyers in firm) who make everything a firedrill that HAS TO BE DONE ASAP

3. assholes coworkers (every firm has some)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23427539)

5. surprisingly limited/complicated/competitive exit options

6. being forced to spend some of the best years of your life in a metaphorical prison

7. perhaps the hardest to appreciate: golden handcuffs. You never want to see that paycheck get smaller.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23427552)

8. stupid, tedious and inconsequential work

9. everyone knows the work is mostly BS and yet take it extremely seriously (you will be forced to skip your grandmother's 100th birthday to check for typos)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23428882)

Which reminds me, fuck billing, that shit is terrible.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23428890)

Now, when things are slow I go home. Biglaw would be a lot easier to deal with without the billable hour.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23428929)

it's why sooooo many people gun for biglaw

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23428954)

i lucked out and worked with pretty good people for the most part, but coworkers/bosses is probably a big complaint for a lot of other associates. the more senior you get, the decent people all leave so the people get worse and worse.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23429645)

One partner's opportunity to create leverage by hiring more associates is another's certain cost for a highly speculative benefit (i.e. that resources invested in hiring and training new attorneys will result in increased billings that far outpace those costs to a degree that the broader partnership receives non-trivial profits). This essentially puts each partner in a position to look for flaws and reasons to fire associates that don't directly contribute to their profit-generating work. And even when a firm finds a highly productive associate, the firm then has to manage the risk of losing that associate both as a business asset and as a potential threat to take business with him to whatever place he goes.

Rate setting is an absurd process that leaves virtually all firm members dissatisfied to some degree, since certain practice areas can command much higher rates than others and the incentives of associates to be valuable to the firm and attractive to firm customers are diametrically opposed.

Generation of new business is done in an essentially random manner, with zero real effort expended to analyze particular customers and tailor service offerings to fit their needs. For this reason people who reliably generate new business are kings, even when they are horrible lawyers, which makes the entire purpose of the firm seem insignificant and largely unappreciated/resented by customers as a transaction cost and an annoyance that's tangential to the actual business purpose the customers want to achieve.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23429897)

why are we so risk averse

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23429927)

It speaks to the larger idea of the client in the lawyers mind, which is "I'm impressive and have a prestigious list of accomplishments, and this client likes that and doesn't care about the details of what I do. He only cares that I give him comfort that he will not suffer bad consequences that might otherwise result if he had a less impressive lawyer. Also I am his insurance policy if something bad happens." It's not "this person can put a relatively specific and accurate number on the value I add to his efforts, and he knows it will be difficult to find that much value somewhere else." In that sense it reflects that lawyers still have a very pre-digital, data-free perspective on the world and the place their work occupies in it, in no small part because they are afraid that asking the questions that a more data-intensive approach raises would likely reveal a number of inefficiencies and create motivation for broader, more disruptive change. So far, from firm managers' perspectives, they have a pretty good thing going.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23430039)

The short, glib answer is that I'd gather data and try to make choices that the data supported. But I can imagine all sorts of changes, and obviously the scope and aims of changes would effect the type of data you'd gather. I'd definitely want to have a ton of rate flexibility and openness to alternative billing arrangements. Just in terms of biz dev, I'd want materials and messaging going out to clients to reflect data about the specific taxonomies of risk that specific clients face and highlight any legal spend that's particularly disproportionate (both over and under). So blasting out whitepapers that are basically identical to every other firm's white paper on some new development would stop and be replaced by client-specific materials that provide clear context of how that client could be affected and specific actions they should consider. Maybe develop that data into some sort of regular reporting for the client that can provide analytics of performance on particular matters, benchmarking against competition. A lot of this ought to come out of conversations with clients about their business, what they would want to see/could use to justify e.g. budget increase asks for the new fiscal year in their org. I.e. a ton of non-billable client sucking up that is used to fuel data driven proofs of service value.

In terms of recruiting and hiring I'd want to be completely different from other firms. I'd probably want to go away from at-will and move to some sort of 3-5 year "rookie contract" with a much lower initial base and incentives for young associates to hit certain milestones for more base and bonus, so that by the last 12-18 months of the contract they were paid at or above biglaw market, but they'd proven their worth along the way. I'd also pair that with a really intensive training program and I'd use the training program as a component of marketing materials (i.e. "our juniors aren't useless assholes like every other firm's are," possibly also some data about how shitty and useless law school is). Some of this might also involve partnering with law schools via clinics or something to build a unique data set.

I'd also consider making that "rookie contract" program end in a formal "partner track/not partner track" designation that would be forecasted in annual evaluations and measured according to pre-disclosed benchmarks and a scoring/ranking system that's transparent to each individual re: where they rank through out. For "not partner track" associates, there would be some additional period of effort to route them toward training, deals, networking opportunities, non-billable work, and anything else we could come up with to make them more attractive candidates for in-house jobs. If the "non-partner track" associate was instead interested in pursuing a partner position at another firm, they would need to have signed a super-onerous non-compete/non-solicitation component to their employment agreement that the firm would have to spend resources to enforce and give it teeth. Maybe also have a (short, like 3-6 month) "non-practicing track" where you could work with associates to transition out of law based on some other interest or pre-law school background. Also I'd spend way less on summer associate bullshit. I might not even have a summer program at all, and would instead just do 3L recruiting or something like that starting out.

All of this is just me talking out of my ass, though. The whole point would be to look at the points of failure and inefficiency in the law firm business model and then gather as much data as possible to inform the fixes. Maybe the data says to pay incoming associates 200k, or to not hire anyone for five years and just shuffle and re-train existing resources. The whole idea would be to move toward actually having a strategy that's more intelligent than "clients pay us for our brains, so let's send them a bill and hope they don't read it."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23430677)

2) Total meritocracy but a ton of it is based on luck. You got put in the right practice area, you got lucky to be assigned to certain matters over others, etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23429978)

i don't know about all this stuff about not hollistically serving the clients needs.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#24679975)

i know a guy who started his own firm after doing a clerkship in 2009 (got ITEpwn3d after graduating from a tier 2) and he's now making over $125k (his actual income, not just gross revenues) doing mostly criminal/dui/divorce work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23435577)

1. He's probably working out of someone else's office, thus keeping his overhead low.

2. SOmeone is FEEDING HIM BUSINESS otherwise he'd be in a knife fight with every other EXPERIENCED CrimDef attorney in the city/surrounding county.

3. He's not making $125k doing shitlaw. If he did TAKE HOME that much money with less than 5 yrs experience it's because he sucked enough cock and was able to join in on a MedMal lawsuit that settled.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23441937)

*adjusts his crotch*

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23441942)

2. 1. is made worse by the fact that you work 12+ hour days with constant fire drills which make such mistakes more common.

3. ... And, all of that wouldn't be a big deal if getting fired meant you could find another job but no, even under the best of circumstances, you're worried about exit options.

So you end up with a shitty, boring job where you hate your life (yet it is your life) but where you're still terrified all the time and worry about your future.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2285259&forum_id=2#23441841)