I agree with a lot of what’s already been posted, but I’ll add this about salary:
Yes, at the firm I worked at along with the other factory firms of equal caliber and size, our billing doesn’t affect our salary. As others have pointed out, it does largely affect your future at the firm. But, what hasn’t been stated yet, and I still state what has happened in my experience (and a lot of other firms are like this, too), that while salary is lock step in terms of yearly pay, bonuses are paid out according to hours worked (there is a lot of fudge factor when the firm doesn’t publish this information). Also, as a first year associate while I billed 2450 hours, I actually worked closer to 3000 (probably more, but I try not to think/remember bad experiences).
Yes. That’s exactly the way it happened in my experience, too. They’ll get you when it comes bonus time. And just to keep your job, you’ll have to work a bunch of hours for which you get no credit. And that doesn’t even include stuff like training, and stupid firm functions and goofy meetings.
In my experience, bonuses were based upon hours billed out, not hours worked. When the bonus system was introduced, all the associates laughed. Not only was the bonus based upon YOUR ability to hit your target, but the bonus was awarded to all associates only when ALL associates hit their target in a given calendar month. HA HA frickin’ HA!
And there’s no way someone could convince me to throw my life away billing 3000 hours for them. Working for myself is a different matter.
Speaking of goofy meetings, one partner at a firm taught a class on pre-trial civil procedure at the local law school. So, he would force all the associates to meet every week to do the same exercises as his students… all non-billable bullshit. Can you imagine having 10 years experience and having some partner sitting you down for an hour at frickin’ 7 a.m. each Wednesday to “teach” and “lecture” you how to write a simple motion that you’ve written 100 times before? Then, you have to actually waste your time writing a hypothetical motion for a hypothetical case for your peers to review when you should be working and billing toward your unattainable billing target, which was especially unattainable at the salary we were being paid.
If you want to know how I would write that motion for real, just look at the Smith case… a real case in this firm where I wrote a similar motion for you last week, dumbass!
Maybe if we didn’t waste our time on your stupid hypothetical work, we might get closer to our billing target doing real work.
Oh, and the partners would never let an associate attend depositions or hearings. You were chained to your desk. You know that hypothetical deposition we practiced? Well, that’s the only depo you’ll ever attend at this firm. Try hitting you billing target while never leaving your desk, never getting direct client contact, and never being the first one to read incoming mail.