Lawyers and Salaries

Annie, I don't want to debate, but being at a small firm, I have much more court room experience than my friends at big firms. Not saying they never meet with clients or go to court, but my court room experience far surmounts theirs and I would not want to sepnd as much time doing research projects and drafting pleadings as they do. In fact, I have law clerks who do that for me.

But I also know people who prefer to do more of what I consider grunt work and do not want to spend a lot of time in court, so it really is up to each person. After having the independence and freedom I have here, I could never go to a big firm, although the $$ can be very tempting at times.

Trusts and Estates, Tax Planning


My suggestion to your friend is to do a little simple division... divide the salary by the # of hours you work.

Then again, maybe taking the position will give her experience, which is very very important. Depending on her long-term goals, gaining experience now, even with lower pay, might be worth it.

ETS- I deleted my friends' salaries... shouldn't talk about other peoples' money.

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Posted by AtticaQT

In september i'm going to be a full time associate at an Intellectual Property firm.

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Which one? That's what I always wanted to do but after 9/11 work in the IP area went downhill.

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Posted by Annieb

What I am looking for now is prestige and exposure. Basically one equals the other. A top tier law firm adds prestige to your resume because of the exposure and experience it gives you which goes far beyond grunt work.

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The converse is also true. Experience and exposure can also give you prestige. The experience I've had and the exposure I've had in court has already garnered me a reputation in my field, both among opposing counsel and judges, and I am expecting to be published in a national review in the upcoming months. I've had several job offers (although none of them were for jobs I wanted to take and 99% of them from opposing counsel) just on the basis of what they saw me do in court.

Nobody can possibly know the other side of things until they experience it firsthand, but can have an opinion based on information they get from people who do experience it firsthand. My statements are not meant in any way to be argumentative. We each have different experiences and get from them what we choose.

I wasn't offended in the least! I understood that you were presenting things from your point of view and I was just sharing my point of view. I hope I didn't offend YOU!

I never expected to work in public interest and to be practicing in the field I'm in. I don't plan on staying here either. I don't think anyone implied that you were just doing your job for the money and that there are no benefits. My point was that sometimes, those who start out in those very high paying jobs wind up waiting a little longer to actually get to 'practice' law than those of us who get smaller salaries. I draft my own motions, my own letters, do all the client intake, do my own research, etc., simply because the money is not there to hire someone else to do it. What I was stating is that the friends that I have in big firms making major money are usually the ones who do the research and write the briefs and don't really get the feel for 'praciticing' law. They simply do more of what they did in law school. Does that make sense?

I never meant to imply that being in court is the only way to be a lawyer and to be practicing. It's an all-encompassing thing - dealing with clients, doing the legwork, planning strategies, etc. No one thing alone is practicing law. As far as the grunt-work thing - I don't know if I ever called it that, and if I did, I apologize, but I think of grunt-work as being the tedious stuff, whatever that may be, and for me, that's document review, research, oftentimes writing, etc. The easy stuff happens for me in court. But you also have to understand that I deal solely with summary proceedings and do not have to deal with discovery and things of that nature that tend to lengthen litigation.

Anyway, I hope you weren't offended in any way. I think the original point that some of us were trying to make, and I can only speak for myself, was that Georgia's friend should also look beyond the money and see what kinds of experience she could get despite the low pay.