Lawyers are known for working 50, 60 and 70 hour weeks*. So are investment bankers and consultants. Why is this the case? Sure, some of them are workaholics or want a very expensive lifestyle but that can’t be the case for so many. I know that lawyers often complain about the number of hours they have to work.
How come they do then? Professionals have scarce skills in labor intensive industries where capital requirements are usually quite low which allows them to move to competitors or strike out on their own much more easily than most workers. You’d think they’d have more bargaining power or that employers would make work-life balance a big selling point (beyond talking about it). So why are professionals so overworked?
*Perhaps this is only the case in big firms. I’m sure I’ll be corrected if it doesn’t apply to the average lawyer.
Consultants have to travel. So add in all the time spent traveling to the site on top of the work they’re contracted to do there and you end up with pretty long hours.
I’m not sure what your point is about investment banking and law? There’s a crap ton of busy work involved, and it often takes a long time to do it to the satisfaction of the people you work for.
When I was a lawyer I worked for the federal government in a public-private partnership role (basically I was doing work with the private sector). Our position was such that the private sector entities depended on us, not the other way around, so I got away with a 40 hour work week. Sometimes I would push it to 50 or 60 (no overtime but I got to bank up to 24 hours) if my agency really wanted to meet some goals or I was working with the clients I liked. On the other hand, all the private sector people I worked with usually worked 70 or 80 hours since they originated the business deals.
Actually, my former employers discouraged additional productivity because the process of getting my overtime (+40) became so bloody laborious that I’d either do the work for free if I liked the parties or just pack it in after 40.
Professionalism is performative. Doing the job well is not enough; you must demonstrate your commitment to the job in ways that have nothing to do with practical concerns. If this means face time, busywork, hardass attitude, or complete subservience, that is professionalism.
I don’t know if she works as much as 60 or 70 hours a week. But I do know that my boss, the director of a group of software engineers, puts in very long hours. But her situation is somewhat unusual. Her group (us) is located in California, but the people she reports to are all in Europe. She she often spends a normal day working with us, then is up till very late at night, or early in the morning, talking to people in Europe.
The people I know who fit the ops criteria are the opposite of control freak type A personalities. They are simply willing to work more hours than other people. In fact, I find these people more willing to donate their personal time AND money to help others. It takes someone who is smarter, more organized, and able to handle stress better.
Whatever label best fits their personality type… they’d rather have something to do in a structured situation, than have to figure out what to do on their own.
In certain cases, the hours are required by their employer. In the case of associate attorneys in law firms, they are required to bill ungodly numbers of hours. So, it’s not always choice or personality type.
Yes, this is what my question is mainly about. How come their employers can do that? It’s true that employers usually are at an advantage when it comes to bargaining but professionals (especially lawyers) should be one of the types of employees that have the most bargaining power and should be able to negotiate less hours, even for a lower wage.
For many of these jobs if you don’t want to work 60+ hours there is always somebody else who will do it. Many lawyers really want to work for the big firms and they will do whatever it takes to get and keep those jobs.
I used to know people who worked as radio DJs and many of them got paid really low pay because there were a lot of people dying for those jobs. Supply of people was way above the need so it kept pay low in a lot of cases.
There was a certain level of crap work that I did that my secretary and paralegal should have picked up but didn’t because I worked in the public sector and that’s not how it works. As an example, I used to have to do my own metric asston of transactional closing prep (that involved photocopying, running around to different departments) that my paralegal was responsible for-but I didn’t get on her about it because doing so would have ruined my relationship with her and she wouldn’t have done it anyway.
However, a lot of it is just the billing issue, right? I’m not certain how it works in the private sector-but for example…I was working on one really large scale dispute with an external corporation that was attempting to take over our assets (housed insided another corporation controlled by third parties) via some complicated legal maneuverings, and we were actually designing elections to prevent it from happening (it’s a really specialised area of law, nevermind). My mentor, and then my mentor’s boss asked me to research the law, after which I was assigned to design the elections from scratch (which involved more research). Sometimes they’d send my ballots back because they didn’t like the wording. Sometimes they wanted the letters to be worded differently. I had to produce internal memoranda to back up my work. Sometimes those would have to be revised based on internal political dynamics. I had to meet with people at the corporation to laboriously take them through these elections.
All that shit adds up hours-wise. My understanding is that in the private sector, there are some billing rules that prevent you from re-billing some of the work I just described-so to make your billables, you have to work those hours. Fortunately, that didn’t impact me, since our tracking methodology was different…but I had to have these elections pulled off before a certain date (by law) so I was working over what I was getting paid for in order to make that happen. Because…you know, it’s my job and it’s kind of what I get paid to do. Plus, the idea of failing at something I knew I was capable of (successfully designing these elections to be held up in Court) because I didn’t put in the time is just…galling to me. There’s no other way to explain it.
And at least in my case, the concept of “client” is difficult to express because I was a federal attorney. Very technically, my clients were the Secretary and the various programs within the department. However, that’s a very limited definition. Because I was required to interact with so many outside private parties and I owed them at least some duties, I came to see them as my clients as well (although I protected the interests of my technical clients). This is partially why I survived the bloodbath at my office-my private sector friends spoke up for me.
Many reasons for the long hours for lawyers have been discussed, but I’ll throw out a few more:
– Obligations to the other side. If I assure the lawyer on the other side of a matter that I will respond to a request he or she has made by Friday, then I will respond by Friday. It may take working late on Thursday, but I’m professionally obliged to keep my word by responding on or before Friday.
– Many things are time-sensitive. According to the rules of court and local civil procedure, I have only X days in which to draft and file certain documents with the court. My assistant can take care of the filing, but it’s up to me to do the time-consuming task of drafting. At any rate, if I am to make the necessary deadline, additional hours outside normal business hours may be needed.
– Research. I can do legal research and produce a legal opinion from that research; my assistant/paralegal cannot. Sometimes, research takes a lot of time, especially if the matter is complex. And once again, time considerations and deadlines and limitations periods can affect working hours here.
– Clients. Some are good at understanding that legal things take time, but others are in a hurry to see a resolution, and will not give an inch on professional courtesies normally extended to the other side, and to extensions to deadlines/limitations on filings. With these clients, sometimes it is necessary to do the work outside of normal business hours in order to get it done on time; as well as to make them happy and thus, keep the business.
My assistant/paralegal is terrific, and does what she can (and does it very well). But there are many things she cannot do, simply because she is not a lawyer; and thus, not licensed to do a number of the things I can.
I think they’re in competitive professions. Everything else being equal, a firm whose employees work sixty hour weeks will produce fifty percent more work than a firm whose employees work forty hour weeks. That’s a significant advantage in determining which firm will be more successful.
And these businesses offer enough financial incentives so they’re able to find competent employees willing to work sixty hour weeks.
Another Professional chiming in - but from a different profession, a CPA working in public accounting. Many of the reasons for long 60 to 80 hour work weeks have been listed above such as insane billable hour requirements laid down by the Partners of the firm. The money you generate goes directly to their pockets so they will work you as much as they can without having to pay you overtime pay.
The big reason for the long hours though are deadlines. Everyone knows about the April 15 tax day deadline, but many folks have a skewed view of public accountants and think we only work crazy hours for 2 to 3 months a year during the spring. This is absurdly false. Deadlines happen throughout the year and there are only a few “slow” times.
The deadlines require so much work because the size of the client base is predicated on the staff working those hours. If the staff did not work those hours, filings would be missed, etc. Most people who only do their own taxes would be shocked to learn how many 1040s just one CPA prepares during tax season, and I mean at big CPA firms, not H&R Block, so the tax returns are for clients usually having yearly incomes of $250,000+ with very complex returns. The number can easily exceed 300 tax returns prepared by just one person during a 12 week period. Factor in an average bill for each tax return of lets say $700 combined with the partners only having to pay the staff CPA a modest fixed yearly salary with no overtime and you can see why they are required to work so many hours. The Partners rake in the benefits of the staffs work, while the staff is willing to work those hours for the experience and in the hopes of making Partner themselves or to possibly start their own business.