What Being a Big Law Attorney is *REALLY* Like | Cece Xie | Big Bad Law

hey y'all I'm CeCe welcome back to my Channel today I want to talk about one of the most common questions I get what was being a big law attorney in New York really like is it like suits partner track and I wish I could just take you through a day of my life as a big law attorney and a vlog or something but I don't work in big law anymore and even when I did I wasn't really active on YouTube so never quite figured out how to make time to both Vlog for YouTube and also do my laor work so that's just not possible nowadays sorry but but I did make Vlogs for Tik Tok during this time that I worked in big law which can serve as time capsules for us to analyze the realities the ups and downs the good and bad of being a big law [Music] attorney first things first I wanted to spell this notion that I hate big law or hated my time at the law firms I see you rdit and Fishbowl because I do not just because I'm writing a book about big law culture does not mean that I hate big law culture in fact I really loved my time in big law I loved it so much that I want to help ensure that as many other people as possible end up loving their experience just as much because there's a lot of good in big law if you just know how to navigate the system which is a topic I cover in another video in general I really hate extreme viewpoints about the law or being a lawyer the people who tell you don't go and the people who tell you definitely go it'll work out because neither perspectives are usually tailored to your specific situation who you are what you want what research and reflection you've already done about what you want this video won't go into all that but you can find my general thoughts not tailored advice on whether you should go to law school at all in this video over here but this video is about the lifestyle of big law the hours what outside of work time you have exercise routines and social life and I want to present a balanced view here because the Big L lifestyle isn't all good or all bad some days were amazing some days were exhausting and many other days were in between and I want to take a look at all of that because if you want to go into big law You Should Know The Good The Bad and The completely average so let's first look at a fairly typical work day on this day I woke up a little after 7:00 took a workout class that starts between 7:30 and 8: and would then get to the office between 9:30 and 10:00 I settle into my office and begin revising regulatory response letters for a client that suffered a data breach for lunch we get a $25 stipend which I spend on sweet green because I just really love their kale Caesar salad okay I think a lot of companies are offering though because the building even has these lunch delivery cubbies in the lobby to streamline the process I like walking to pick up lunch anyway though so walk to Sweet green where they also have shelves exclusively devoted to pick up orders and head back to my office to eat my lunch I don't like to sit normally in my chair I swear this is way more comfortable and edit the response letters more while listening to my home girl Loi girl and pick up my cuticles whenever I'm trying to think because bad habits yay I leave the office a little after 8 and enjoy the cold New York Street as you saw I left the office a little after 8 meaning that I was at work for about 10 hours I probably went home had dinner and then responded to some emails after dinner a day like this is what I would consider squarely in the middle in terms of stress and hours generally speaking if you aim to work like actually work on stuff that you can record in your time sheets for 10 hours a day Monday to Friday that's a good rule of thumb for meeting your annual hours expectations in big law and some days I would switch it up a little for example by working out in the evening so on those days i' get into the office around 9:00 leave between 6:00 and 7 for a workout class at 6:30 7 or 7:30 and then go home eat dinner and continue working until 10: or 11: if nothing was super time sensitive and yes sometimes calls get scheduled last minute or fire drills occur requiring me to cancel my workout but on a perfectly typical day with no emergencies this was really the schedule I'd also note here that physical exercise was always really important to me which is why I tried my hardest to work around my workout classes but you can replace my workout time with whatever is important to you making dinner picking up your kid working on your novel The Point here is that while it is challenging and takes a little bit of intention and planning to make sure that you still get to do something non-w work rated every day it is entirely reasonable and possible to do so and now let's look at a really relaxing day like one of those days where I look around and I'm like wow I can't believe I get to relax today and I still get paid so much sweet a pretty relaxing day in my life as a New York City attorney I wake up at 8:20 for yoga at 9:00 I can relax a little because I know I'm going to hit my billable hours for the year monthly membership to my yoga studio is 220 for unlimited classes which is great because I need a lot of exercise and meditation in my life I shower on default to an all black outfit and leather jacket because I need to be work to concert ready I use my unlimited monthly Subway card 127 and get to the office around noon to start reviewing merger agreements and due diligence memos for several deals that I'm staffed on I pick up a sandwich and juice for lunch 2036 but it's covered by my lunch stipend and continue working before going to my firm's holiday reception which is a ton of drinks and food I catch up with co-workers and the recruiting team who are my favorite the BLTs were also standouts and I take a few to eat at my desk before wrapping up work I leave the office at 7:40 and get caught in the freezing snow before meeting Nathaniel in line for Stars the opener Shamir was iconic and stars felt like reading all the notes in my high school yearbooks on a rainy Sunday tickets were 8310 for two and worth every penny right off the bat you're probably wondering how many hours I worked or Bill that day so this day I got off to a later start I probably didn't get into the office until 11:30 or noon which was okay because one of the best things about being a senior associate is that you get way more flexibility when it comes to when you work and when you go into the office as long as the teams that you work with are okay with what you're doing I also stopped by the holiday reception around 6:30 and left work at 7:40 which means I probably worked for 6 Max 7 hours that day now I know I told you that the rule of thumb for how much to work every day is to aim for about 10 hours of recorded work but in this case it was already December and I knew I was going to hit my billable hours for the year which is what determines whether I'm in good standing with a firm and also whether I receive my bonus so that gave me more flexibility to work less that month it was great and this day really was an awesome day I got to sleep in a little do yoga do some work socialize with colleagues go to a concert shout out to Stars one of my favorite bands since middle school and hit my billables for the Year by this point you might be thinking big La looks pretty nice why does it have such a bad reputation then because of days like this one a 15-hour billable day in my life as a New York City attorney you guys thought I was all playing no work huh well I've just been staffed onto a potential data breach which means that I have been rooted to my desk since our 8:30 kickoff call and it is almost 2 now I'm still wearing my overnight pimple patches and only managed to reheat some scallion pancake Nathaniel's also swamped today so he throws some turkey bacon at me for lunch which I scarf down in front of my computer while drafting some internal calms I finally get to wash my face before my 3:00 call and only change out of my PJs at 5: and yes my shorts do say Harvard sucks I feel the stress in my shoulders and put on some C which helps a little but still can't stop me from stress eating hot Chesters while revising A Narrative of the facts thus far by 7 I've already buil over 11 hours and desperately need a break so get a James Lewis class in while monitoring my emails every 5 minutes I eat some takeout wantons for dinner and work for the rest of the night my lovely friend send me chocolate cake and homemade macaron and condolence and I finally log off right before midnight after billing this was a data breach so completely unexpected and there will be days where you wake up thinking it's a normal day to get work done maybe a typical day or even a relaxing day like the ones I showed you earlier only to get an email or call letting you know that an emergency has come up and these types of assignments can happen for any practice area in big law corporate litigation regulatory all of it because the value proposition of big law is responsiveness and speed clients pay the rates they do because time is of the essence and while some practice areas like m&a are more notorious for having these extremely high billable hour days more often there's no practice area that will never have these types of days and even for m&a they're also known to have some weeks where you just just sit and do nothing and have multiple relaxing days in a row and this day I had this 15-hour billable day isn't even among the worst I've had friends and colleagues build 20 hours in a day or build multiple 15 to 22h hour days sometimes even week after week one guy I know build 400 hours in a month which comes out to 13 and A3 hours a day every single day of that month and the hours are rarely spread equally like that too it's usually something like 15 17 10 20 13 7 it can be really unpredictable which is the hardest part on your lifestyle this unpredictability is what leads to stories about canceled dinners missing your children's performances or showing up to a wedding but being outside on your laptop the whole time which is a true story and it's really this unpredictability that takes the biggest toll on Associates lives it's a weird concept but working 14 hours from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. ends up feeling very different than working 14 hours but not knowing when those hours might be and you have to be ready to go at all times and it's this constantly checking the phone worrying that something has come up part that I think is mentally difficult to manage because turning your brain on 24/7 in that way is much more exhausting than just knowing you have to be on for 14 straight hours but then you get to turn off your brain for about 10 hours and to be clear this day in the grand scheme of things isn't bad because dealing with fire drills and emergencies is just part of the job in big law it's what we sign up for I call those types of days in sleep deprivation NE Neary pain it's necessary to the overall goal and while I would prefer to have more control over my schedule and fewer fire drills you know what I also get it that's why I got paid so much that was the value proposition for my clients the most frustrating work days in my view were actually the days I worked with other attorneys who ended up creating unnecessary work or unnecessary allnighters that could have been avoided let's take a look a reenactment of my worst day as a big law associate I wake up at 7:00 even though I'm not a morning person because I was so tired TI last night and told myself I would finish it in the morning I get to the firm cafeteria and one of the cashiers pulls me aside she tells me that my dress is half unzipped I work on a chronology for a white collar investigation in the morning I might die of thirst and also need a pee but can't go anywhere because another associate keeps calling me to talk about Search terms during my 5-minute lunch walk I chug the largest bottle of water I can buy at 700 I ask the junior associate where his memo is and he tells me that it'll be late I give up waiting for it and go out the only other me time I have in my day when I finally get his memo I want to scream because it is a disaster unusable I hate everything and start doing the legal research myself midnight 2: a.m. 4:00 a.m. I finally sent it off at 5:00 a.m. and crawl into bed immediately I set my La what made this day so bad besides having to stay up until 5 doing work which is never fun is the fact that it didn't have to be that way this happened because of mistakes made by both the junior associate and me he should have started that assignment way earlier and I should have foreseen that this first year associate might drop the ball and built that into my timeline and this type of forced error resulting in unnecessary pain really super irks me I hate inefficient processes and unfortunately inefficient processes can run rampant in big law not just by Junior Associates too I've also had days with a lot of unnecessary pain because some partners are bad at delegating and project managing and a job that already requires a lot of necessary pain necessary all nighters necessary long work days necessary canceled plans piling on unnecessary pain on top of that is just ick a lot of what determines how much unnecessary pain your big law experience will have is simply who you work with if you work with Good People Partners who are conscientious and good at project management and delegating Associates who are good at project planning for their own assignments and asking clarification questions then you'll minimize unnecessary pain but if you wind up working with people who can't or don't think ahead that's the setup for a lot of unnecessary pain in big law which isn't to say never work with people who are bad at management because sometimes those very people who are bad at management are also very powerful within the firm and you'll need them to become your sponsors if you want to advance in The Firm but as with everything in life there is a balance and it is up to you to find that balance for yourself as well as you can maybe you don't mind unnecessary pain or maybe you realize you're great at managing up with a partner who usually sucks at management or maybe you just put in your three to six years in big law and go work somewhere else those are all great solutions to the problem of unnecessary pain in big law but they are very different solutions and you got to figure out which of those work for you because no one else is going to step in and figure it out for you if you don't employ any strategy then your big law experience will be solely due to luck which means you could be lucky great but also could mean you wind up unlucky you have to make your own luck okay all right some final thoughts how often did I work on weekends let's take a look at two different months from my time entries here's November where where I had a pretty crazy m&a deal you'll see that I worked both days most weekends but on Saturdays it was usually under an hour and everything was backloaded onto Sundays even though I did have three five six hour days on Sundays in comparison here's March I worked less than 2 hours each day of the weekend and on one weekend I didn't work at all which was really nice weekend work is inevitable if I only had to work one day on the weekend I considered it a win I don't really know anyone in big law who can avoid weekend work altogether it's more a question of whether the weekend work feels like extension of that 24/7 on call feeling or more of a controlled I need to finish up these three things feeling the latter is a lot more doable mentally and physically than the former obviously if you want to work in big law you will have to work weekends which could either be completely terrible or not that bad depending on the details I never minded weekend work that much because for the most part weekend work did feel like I just had to do a few things I wanted to finish up rather than a strict extension of the work week where I felt like I had to be on the entire time and checking my phone at least once every half hour ultimately that's the thing about the big law lifestyle a lot of it is up to you it is up to you to learn and figure out how to prioritize urgent work and deprioritize less urgent work because if you treat everything as urgent work you'll never stop working it's not like school where you have longer term projects that you work towards all semester long and it's not like a normal 9 to5 because you can't just stop paying attention to work after 5:00 but that doesn't mean you have to work and think about work 24/7 and respond to every single new email immediately it just means you have to figure out how to establish your own boundaries and mental sanity in an environment that is frankly unrelenting all while not sacrificing the quality of your work and your working relationships I'm not going to lie that is hard to do it is not intuitive it is not easy and there is no one-size fits-all solution you just have to listen to yourself and listen to the people around you and check in every once in a while with yourself about if you're happy with the ratio of easy days to difficult days if you think there's too many hard days are they due to necessary pain or unnecessary pain and if it's due to unnecessary pain is there something you can do about minimizing that and if it's due to necessary pain then what are you willing to put up with in order to get what you want there are no easy answers here and I present all of these videos from different days of my life in big law because there is no typical day there is no usual lifestyle there are easy days there are hard days and the only person you can control is yourself all right thanks for watching guys I hope you found this video informative and feel free to share this with anyone who ever asks if being a lawyer is like suits I've made a ton of videos and shorts about law school big law and being a lawyer I'll link to those below so please check Bulls out if you still have questions thanks so much again and see you next [Music] time

Channel: Cece Xie

Views: 46,888

Keywords: nyc, biglaw, big law, attorney, diml, vlog, day in my life, new york city, law school, senior associate, harvard, yale

Id: 0GJmORbtXFs

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023