I wouldn't touch White & Case with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole.

We don't put in "requests" for time off at our firm.

the small(er) boutique i used to work for was notorious for demanding all employees, including staff, be present the days before and after x-mas.

sounds fake

is this the norm for BigLaw?

Will I be working every Christmas Eve?

Associates, please weigh in.

Our practice group leader sends a similar e-mail, and advises that if you do make travel plans, make sure the tickets are refundable. All warm and fuzzy.

I can't conceive of working at a place like this. Maybe you get used to it, but I would take such an email as a sign that it's time to look for mostly the same salary and a hell of a lot less bullshit.

I don't understand why this would be strange. My college job only allowed 15% of people to be off on any given day. We worked the day after Thanksgiving, Xmas, etc. and I sure as hell made a lot less than $160K.

Grow the F up.

Our practice group leader sends a similar e-mail, and advises that if you do make travel plans, make sure the tickets are refundable. All warm and fuzzy.

---PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT TO Piercie Shafton---

We can prevent the trolling of lousy posters on XO. DO NOT COMMENT TO Piercie Shafton

---PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT TO Piercie Shafton---

-Petitioners to restore Merck (gag) to power in the absence of Lat.

This is both completely believable and utterly unbelievable at the same time.

>>Grow the F up.

you're so cool. anyway, the premise is that this job is so terrible throughout the year that your vacation is the one chance you have to enjoy your life for a while. that's why infringing on biglaw vacations is so disheartening.

Dont' clients slow down over that week also? Or have I been living in a dream world in which law partners aren't the functional equivalent of the pre-dream Scrooge?

Of course everyone wants time off at Christmas, but the reality is that the world does not cease between Christmas Eve and New Year's. I don't think it's Grinch-like for a firm to expect its attorneys to be present on days surrounding holidays.

"I don't understand why this would be strange. My college job only allowed 15% of people to be off on any given day. We worked the day after Thanksgiving, Xmas, etc. and I sure as hell made a lot less than $160K.

Grow the F up."

Oh, so we all should receive analogous benefits, perks and vacations as your college job? Guess there goes everyone's health coverage, bonus and 4 weeks vacation...if you didn't have it for your college job, why should we have it now?....great argument

What's the big deal? At my biglaw firm we get yelled at for taking vacation any time of the year

"Oh, so we all should receive analogous benefits, perks and vacations as your college job? Guess there goes everyone's health coverage, bonus and 4 weeks vacation...if you didn't have it for your college job, why should we have it now?....great argument"

No, it was a good job. It had great medical benefits, full 401K match, paid the bill for undergrad, 4 weeks paid time off a year, etc. etc. The point is that business doesn't stop at Xmas and requiring their employees to be in the office doesn't seem that scrooge like to me. Take a vacation in January.

guess the partners at WGM won't be sending out a similar email...

If White & Case hired more Jews, they wouldn't have this problem.

Everyone can't take the same week off, regardless of what holiday it is. Yes, client's offices slow down that week but they do not close, meaning there will be questions to answer, deals to close and research to be done. A certain percentage of associates must be in the office that week. I see nothing wrong with this expectation by firm management.

Not sure what the big deal is....wouldn't it be weird if a firm let everyone take off at one time?

Requests? Who has to put in requests? Our first years don't get time off at all during their stub year. Everyone else gets to take off what they want, if it doesn't interfere with the work they are doing. It can be a big "if," but still . . .

I would never even think about taking vacation around the holidays. It isn't done and at my firm (V50, not a NY firm) it will likely result in loss of vacation days since we can only roll over a week at the end.

Why does everyone think this is strange? There is no business in the world that can operate without coordinating vacation times. At the end of the day, the firm cannot shut down completely. There are often transactions that have to close by year end or briefs to file. I have relatives who work in the post office and their policy is zero vacation time allowed during the month of December. How would you like it if the power company allowed everyone to take off for the Christmas holidays? Many clients are accomodating about the schedule, but some have problems that have to be solved during that time. I agree with the person who said "grow up". If you worked in retail, you'd know no one gets off during that period.

Seriously, who makes requests? If you don't have anything requiring your presence at the office during that time, just don't come in. Who the hell would know, anyway, since all the partners are damn sure taking the week off.

If you have something due, you can't take the time off anyway.

On the other hand, it's nice to get credit for being the associate in the office that week. No one is in, there's little to do, you work really short days, and you BS with the staff most of the time, catching up on office gossip.

I know what would make everyone feel better....

You don't have to work Xmas (or Sundays) if you work for Chick-Fil-A!!

they wouldn't have this problem if they hired more Jewish lawyers.

I refuse to believe that any one who cannot see the difference between a law firm and a power company is a "Biglaw Partner."

I really don't see how this is a big deal either. You can't run an office if everyone is gone and the firm still needs to respond to any pressing client matters that come up on the 26th of December.

"Seriously, who makes requests? If you don't have anything requiring your presence at the office during that time, just don't come in. Who the hell would know, anyway, since all the partners are damn sure taking the week off.

If you have something due, you can't take the time off anyway."

Completely agree. Besides, that is why I have a laptop and a blackberry. If something comes up, they know how to reach me.

Are you saying Jews don't like vacation? While Christmas is a big draw for families, the week in between Christmas and New Years is a great vacation week for everyone because things slow down. Chanukah is Jan 4th through the 12th...is Fried Frank going to shut down?

Stop being ignorant.

Make your tickets refundable?

That's a little ridiculous. I think most firms will reimburse for the cost of your travel if you have to cancel your travel plans for work. A $400 ticket is a drop in the bucket.

However, forcing associates to pay $1200 (domestic) or $3000 (international) for a refundable flight when a non-refundable flight costs, at the most, $400 domestic, $1200 international...

Wow! That's harsh. The closest thing my firm (BigLaw NYC) ever came to that was asking that we get our Thanksgiving week requests in early so that they would know what coverage was available - but as far as I know, nobody was actually told they couldn't take off. More than anything, I don't think my firm would want to cause any problems by restricting vacation time around a legitimate religious holiday. I understand being hardasses about the 27th and 28th, but I find it hard to imagine that they're really going to tell peple they can't take the 24th (a big deal for most christians) and the 26th off.

Does anyone know if this is usual for White and Case, or is it just that the placement of the holiday makes it very tempting to take the 27 & 28th (and even the 31st) off to get a huge vacation with the minimal number of actual vacation days, resulting in more than the usual number of people requesting these days off?

It might be the case that not everyone can be on vacation at the same time, but that stuff should be handled on an individual basis. You have to be stupid to send an e-mail like that and not think that it will you look stupid and get out and end up on blogs. Sure, you have run your business and be able to staff deals when they are hot during that time, but to get yourself in the situation where you are incurring the wrath of your people before you even know whether you have to screw them during that period or not is just stupid. It's like telling your wife that you may cheat on her in three months.

Well said, 11:34. Legal services vs. life/society-sustaining services like electricity? I realize most biglaw partners have traded in their souls for equity status, but give me a break.

If I wanted to work the day before and after Christmas, I would've settled for employment at McDonalds and saved myself the 150k of debt.

Piercie Shafton has never had a biglaw job. When Lat worked at Wachtell he got to bill a half day (that's 12 hours) on Christmas eve and he liked it.

This email doesn't raise my blood pressure at all, and actually it's worded quite nicely.

I work at a Biglaw that is a far nicer place than W&C, but even we have to make sure that not everyone is out at the same time. This is especially true in August and at Christmas.

There's something that the law students, first years and non-corporate people need to understand: December is usually one of the toughest months of the year for transactional lawyers. As a corporate lawyer, I have many, many clients (most of whom I NEVER hear from in the other 11 months) that come out of the woodwork to get things done by the end of the year. This is in addition to the regular work that I have from clients who actually give us advance notice of projects. I always end up working far more in December than I ever thought, and more than I think I will have to on November 15th of the same year. And my life is easy comparatively, because I know many corporate lawyers who've done 300-hour Decembers.

December in the law firm world is not like it was in school or in the rest of the world. Business doesn't stop for Christmas, and even though your clients won't be in the office, they also will still expect all of the crazy deals and fiscal year end projects they dreamed up to be completed by 12/31. And your family, of course, doesn't understand. If it was a week day, I've worked December 26th every year I've been a lawyer, though luckily, not Christmas. I work the week between Christmas and New Year's, leaving early or working from home as I'm able, because the office is empty, and I take my extra time in January.

This email was firmly, but politely worded, and I believe it to be true, because the man is a corporate partner.

My (big law) firm has always been practically dead at Christmas. Clients and court employees are also on vacation, so there was never really a need to worry about too many people taking off. I wonder if there is a litigation/corporate divide here.

This doesn't even affect me.

FYI CURRENT 2Ls:

When we start at big firms, for the first three years, Christmas will be on Friday, Sat, Sun. It will be easy to get the time off. And I don't plan on being around til 4th year.

Exactly 11:34 and 11:41 - when you go to work for the Gap you know that the Winter holidays are the big business and at ConEd you know that it's a 24/7 business by necessity. And to whoever brought up the post office - sure they can't take time off in December - but that's because that's their busy period. As government employees they get lots of extra holidays off that as a BigLaw associate you'd never take off, and it's not like they work 60-80 hour weeks all year round.

The truth is lots of BigLaw clients aren't going to be very active during this week, courts shut down, and really only emergencies are going to be an issue. As an earlier poster said, that's why I have a laptop and a blackberry.

No, what I was saying is Jews would be more willing to take a week other than christmas off. Like Chanukah, which is in the same time period but on a different week.

The reality is you HAVE to limit vacations in December for many practice groups. It's not fair to be extremely busy and having associates hop scotch on to vacation. It makes that associates' colleagues miserable.

Yet another exhibit for what is wrong with major law firms. Someday it is going to dawn on firms that family and personal life shouldn't be continually compromised. My goodness, the world won't come to an end if a skeletal crew of lawyers and staff are around for the last week of December. Sadly, the same type of communiques get distributed from our Managing Partner and Practice Leaders too.

11:53 AM -

All of us lawyers are laughing at your naivety.

This doesn't affect you because Christmas falls on a weekend your first 3 years?

You are seriously deluded if you think that biglaw associates (or any associates for that matter) don't work on weekends or holiday weekends. That's the time when all of the partners definitely leave; so if anything needs to get done it's your junior associate ass that's there doing it.

I'd put the smart money on you being in the office at least two out of those three weekends.

W&C like most BIGLAW firms is probably giving monday and tuesday (x-mas eve and x-mas day) off as holidays and everyone asked for the rest of the week off b/c that would spill over into new year's eve and new year's day the next monday and tuesday (also holidays at most BIGLAW firms).... a 10-day holiday and the price of 3 vacation days.

not a big surprise they need to coordinate.

Since I started in biglaw IP Lit 2 years ago, December has been the heaviest month each year.

This email is perfectly reasonable

12:05 that was my thinking exactly - there's probably a lot more requests this year from everybody (Jewish, Christian, Buddhist) than in years where it doesn't work out quite so nicely. I'd be really interested in some follow up from the W&C people about how this plays out - especially as relates to people being allowed to actually utilize the holiday days on the 24 & 25 (and maybe one vacation day on the 26).

@12.03 -- "My goodness, the world won't come to an end if a skeletal crew of lawyers and staff are around for the last week of December."

The world won't come to an end, but how do you propose answering clients with clients that need work to get done before year end, generally because adverse tax consequences will result if the deal pushes through to the following year? "Sadly, we didn't plan ahead and don't have enough staffing to help you now, but call us after New Years and we'll be good to go..." Unfortunately, that really won't cut it, especially in the world where firms are charging $500-1,000/hour for lawyers' time (and paying junior attorneys $160K+). This sounds like the "law students building a better legal profession" mantra -- pay me absurd amounts, and demand little in return...

At our BigLaw firm, we sue the pants off Santa Claus.

Exactly, I think everyone on here 'outraged' is a law student or litigator. December is always the busiest month for transactional attorneys. It's pretty much an unwritten rule at my firm to not plan vacation then. If your deal closes early or gets pushed, then obviously you're able to take time off but the way the calendar looks this year I expect many closing dates to be 12/28/07 which will make for a shitty christmas indeed.

If I'm the guy who didn't request vaca that week I'm Mr Grinch's biggest fan.

If not for this email I work until 4am christmas day, put in a few hours from home christmas evening and show up early on the 26th.

Associates, on the whole, are the biggest beneficiaries of this sensible request.

My firm does this in a less official, word of mouth sort of manner, to just gently discourage it.

Anyways, the whole year end thing is overblown. So many deals get pushed off nowadays, and most clients are more concerned with the end of their fiscal year than the calendar year. Courts are closed, clients are on vactaion, etc. That a firm would go out of its way to make a big deal about it is sort of a joke.

12:28 - that doesn't even make sense....

"On the other hand, it's nice to get credit for being the associate in the office that week. No one is in, there's little to do, you work really short days, and you BS with the staff most of the time, catching up on office gossip."

I am a 2L so this may seem like a dumb Q to the attys reading this, but - what's the point of going into the office if you can't bill your time. It seems to me that being in the office so you can "BS with the staff" is the worst of both worlds - you aren't adding hours to your min req (bonus) and you aren't spending time with the Fam. So what's the point? In general, I understand that some Firms have both an hours worked and an hours billed req, but if/when it's me, I'd rather bill every second I can while at work doing billable work so that I can minimize the time I need to be there.

12:31: The way I look at it is that there are lots of days I have to show up where I don't end up billing that much (for whatever reason). During the holiday season, if you have a low-billing day you at least get some goodwill credit for being there just in case something comes up. Also, if you don't have a minimum you basically get a full day's worth of presence-credit (meaning you don't take a vacation day) but only really put in about 1/4 of the effort.

I do think that the holiday season schedule favors the local. My extended family and my in-laws are pretty close to NYC, so I don't need a stretch of uninterrupted days off. I try to keep that in mind when I'm working with people whose parents/in-laws/etc. live far away.

Well, Lazy at the office...? that's why 2Ls are douches. You want to get away from people asking you retard questions about work (the Fam) and BS-ing with staff (in taste and moderation) is how the people you spend more time with than, say, the Fam, get to know you...and like you...and heap more work on you...and give you bonuses that you can piss taking your whiny kids to the grand canyon.

12:38 - as someone who has to travel to celebrate the holidays with my family (so has to take off at least some of the 23rd as well as the 26th) I thank you for your unselfish attitude - if only more people had that attitude there wouldn't be the need for emails such as this to go out. I hope that your good attitude is rewarded when you request vacation time at other times of the year.

In my experience as a litigator, both in a big law firm and in the government, the holiday period is usually pretty quiet and it is easy to take time off - your judges and opposing counsel are usually taking vacation, it is easy to get reasonable extensions of time on filings, and things in general just slow down. The end of the year usually is not particularly significant in litigation.

On the other hand, it does make sense that December is a busy month for transactional lawyers whose clients want things wrapped up by the end of the calendar year.

Interestingly, in the government, the burden around the holidays is greater for senior management. Regular attorneys can take vacation pretty much whenever they want (as long as they don't have something due in court), but senior management have to coordinate their vacation days carefully to make sure there is always someone in the office who has authority to sign off on court filings, authorize certain actions, etc.

This is fake.
I'm an associate at W&C and we do not put in "requests". There would be no way for anyone to know how many associates are out at one time at the firm. The only way this email makes sense is if its addressed to a few associates that are working on a particular project.

Bah hah. . . you have to be a senior attorney to sign off on court filings? Who knew? I guess I'm senior and have been senior since I was a first year.

Big deal. This year, our firm closes early on the Friday before Xmas for a big holiday luncheon/recognition event, then we're closed Xmas Eve and Xmas Day. Then we close all day New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

So that's 4 1/2 work days off during the holiday period, not bad. If I can't make it working the three days between 12/26 and 12/28, I don't belong in the law.

Sheesh - if you're working at W&C, stay home this year instead of flying to Aruba or wherever the hell you want to go.

12:30, this is 12:28 - sorry if I moved too fast for you. The more associates that are out the more work there is for each remaining associate. Understand?

looks real. the worst part is Neal is one of the nicest partners there. he just happens to be the administrative partner, so he has to be the bad guy on this one.

If it was addressed to only a few associates, then the use of the word unprecedented doesn't really fit.

12:42 - your life sounds great. I hope one day I can be like you....

Who takes off Chanuka anyway?

12:28/12:556 - if you're the guy who didn't request vacation for that week, I think you're probably the slow one

Neal Grenley is in M&A, maybe it was sent only to M&A associates. I didn't receive this email and/or memo and in all my years at W&C, I have never received a memo like this.

I know enough about how to (not?) take time off at Skadden but it would be nice to get some info on what winter holidays are like at Skadden... Any Skadden associates?

The biggest problem I've had at Christmas isn't my own clients or partners, but opposing counsel being jackasses. Last year, right before 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, they dropped stuff on us that would require us to work over those holidays. We negotiated them away or went in ex parte. Clients are sympathetic--at least in litigation (I should be more honest and say that in house counsel are lazy and want their vacations)--but the simple fact is that most attorneys are assholes who don't think twice about trying to ruin other people's lives.

If we had more civility in our profession, this wouldn't happen. If I ever bribe my way to being a judge, I'd have a local rule saying that anything filed that requires a response within 10 days after a major holiday automatically gets a 20 day extension.

Not a big deal. I worked for 65 straight weeks without a day off, including either saturday or sunday every weekend.

I worked for a partner at my last job that hadn't taken a vacation in 5 years.

LAT - can you alert us in advance when you have "idiot day" scheduled? I just wasted .2 on this drivel.

Yet another reason to be a litigator rather than a corporate tool. Unless you've got a total asshole judge and/or opposing counsel who have rammed through a horrible schedule, you won't have stuff actually due during this period. This shit only seriously affects transactional attorneys who have to do all their monkey work before year end so their lazy, vacationing clients can make an extra hundred million (why didn't you business-minded people go to business school again?).

As others have noted, Neal Grenley is probably the nicest partner in W&C's M&A group.

If you're surprised that a law firm would ask for associates' patience and understanding in ATTENDING TO CLIENTS' NEEDS, you're a fucking idiot. The memo doesn't say "don't take vacation" or anything like that - it says clients come first, so be prepared and work with the administration so clients are attended to, then, after that, they'll do what they can for everyone else.

You realize the law is a service profession, right? You're not making (or going to be making, judging from some of the astonishingly ignorant, self-righteous comments) widgets; you're providing a fungible service. Especially all you overly entitled junior associates and law students.

Don't get me wrong, I did my time in Biglaw, but I never lost sight of the fact that the clients come first. Which is probably why I excelled and the rest of you will be bitter washups three years out.

I'm a litigation associate at W&C. This letter may or may not be real. Certainly, nothing like this would ever be circulated in litigation -- as a previous poster noted, things are quiet in litigation during the holidays. But if you click on the link in the letter, you'll see that Mr. Grenly is administrative partner for the M&A section.

The difference on this point reinforces the notion that QoL (and much more) at biglaw firms is practice specific.

This is the whole problem with associates demanding to be treated with "respect." Why can't you respect the client and your co-workers? The world does not revolve around you.

The type of whining I see on here is why so many partners treat associates with so little respect and begrudge them any raises. These people don't deserve anything.

@12:52 you're a senior idiot.

Read the whole post before patting yourself on the back. The commenter was saying that was what policy was at his government job. Moron.

This would not be *that* bad as long as you can bank/get paid out for unused vacation time year-to-year...my firm (not biglaw) refuses to allow you to bank what little vacation time we get from year to year and won't pay you out for unused vacation time if you leave. Great for morale, let me tell you....

Fried Frank did the same thing, but worse. The head of a corporate sub-group sent out an email about 2 weeks ago saying that all vacations that he had approved are now unapproved. Additionally, if you feel the need to take off around the last 2 weeks of December, you have to re-send him an email listing compelling reasons. He still has not responded to those who sent him these emails.

12:38, I second 12:44's thanks for your attitude. I'm on the west coast, single and childless, and my family is in a flyover state. I might literally go postal if I was told I absolutely had to be in town for Christmas. It might not be a big deal for partners who can go home to their warm homes with their wives and kids and presents and trees and big Christmas dinner, and put in a few hours at the office in between -- but saying "no Christmas" for some of us is dooming us to a boring and LONELY holiday.

If I was told I had to work Christmas or be fired, I'd take the accrued vacation pay and find a new job. Of course, granted, I'm a litigator. If working corporate meant no Christmas, I would switch departments.

I think it's worth noting that close to half the lawyers in my office (including several partners) are Jewish and most of them did not come in Yom Kippur. And guess what? The rest of us survived just fine. No clients died and no judges issued sanctions for people, you know, observing the religious holidays they hold most dear.

And although we have fiduciary duties to our clients, those duties do NOT include rolling over and putting them before ourselves in absolutely every single thing in the universe. I don't think the law even requires PARENTS to go that far (although morality likely does). The way this email is phrased -- calling the needs of the *firm* and clients "paramount" -- is a perfect example of why I won't be doing this much longer. What is wrong with people that they think business is more important than life? This isn't capitalism. This is anti-humanism.

" "Sadly, we didn't plan ahead and don't have enough staffing to help you now, but call us after New Years and we'll be good to go..." Unfortunately, that really won't cut it, especially in the world where firms are charging $500-1,000/hour for lawyers' time (and paying junior attorneys $160K+). This sounds like the "law students building a better legal profession" mantra -- pay me absurd amounts, and demand little in return... "

As opposed to "This deal has been coming down the pipe for months, sorry we waited until Dec. 26 to let you know we need it hammered out before Jan. 1"?

What's good for the goose, I always say.

Firms already put us on call 24/7 with those infernal Treos/Blackberries (inventions of the devil!). If having access to the stupid buzzing device and a computer is not enough over the holidays, then I don't want to carry it around the rest of the year either.

2:14: "The way this email is phrased -- calling the needs of the *firm* and clients "paramount" -- is a perfect example of why I won't be doing this much longer."

Absolutely.

From my friend in W&C Miami:

Subject: Holiday Vacation Days - From Jerry Uzzi

It is that time of year again when we must address the unfortunate tension between everyone's desire to maximize use of vacation days around the holidays, whether to be with family or otherwise, and the need to maintain a fully staffed department. This tension is exacerbated in Miami as the price that many of you pay for living in the tropics is that your families live more than driving distance away. To ensure that (i) we don't create a "race to the book," and (ii) the department remains fully staffed in an equitable manner, all associates who plan to be out of town on any of the upcoming holiday weekends (i.e., Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's) are required to have such plans pre-approved. While each request will be evaluated on a case by case basis, to permit everyone the opportunity to be with family at least one of the holidays, please understand that at least until we get a handle on the group's collective desires to be out of town during the holidays, it will be difficult for us to pre-approve travel plans for more than a single holiday weekend per associate absent special circumstances. Please further understand that all travel requests will still remain subject to the standard rules regarding the need to ensure that all deals remain covered. Thus, I encourage you to discuss your plans with your deal colleagues in advance of making any requests. You are free to ask to be out of town for more than one holiday weekend, but if you do, I ask that you prioritize your request and let us know your degree of flexibility so that we may accommodate everyone's principal desire to the fullest extent possible.

While I will not impose a restriction on resident Miamians from requesting and being granted holiday travel, I do ask that anyone who does not need to travel to be with family on the holidays be sensitive to the needs of those who do. In this regard, whether or not you are a native, I also encourage you to let us know if you plan to remain in town and available any of the holiday weekends so that we might be able in advance to approve the requests of others to be out of town on multiple weekends. I am confident your colleagues will appreciate your generosity.

Finally, our stated difficulty in being able to approve at this time being out of town more than one holiday weekend does not mean that you necessarily will be unable to be out of town each weekend if you so desire. It is merely a limitation on what we can relatively bullet proof you for this far in advance so that you can begin to make your desired travel plans now without risk of having to cancel. Thus, as we get closer to each holiday weekend, we will continue to assess particular deal needs and the needs of the department as a whole, and we will do our best to accommodate all travel requests. Also, for the sake of clarity, you do not need to have your holiday travel plans pre-approved to the extent that such plans are limited to the days that the office is closed and for which you are able to and prepared to be readily available if need be, e.g.,you plan to be reasonable driving distance away from our office.

I apologize for the imposition, but if we follow these rules, I trust that everyone will be accommodated at least to some extent in an equitable manner.

Jerry

Fake, fake, fake. What firm takes requests for vacation? What firm cares when you take vacation, especially with the Blackberry? This is a law firm, not a Wal-Mart. Fake, fake, fake.

1:22 - Only a loser would work those kinds of hours?

HTH.

GS here again.

Meant to say, "Only a loser would work those kinds of hours." The head-spinning confusion induced by wondering why someone would work 65 weeks straight without even a full weekend off must have caused the inadvertent question mark.

@2:14 if you think "fiduciary duties" are the floor for your responsibilities, don't let the door hit you on the way out. The memo doesn't say you have to bend over. It says the group wants to manage SUPPLY so it can meet the expected DEMAND. And if you're not willing to be inconvenienced (in a degree corresponding to the actual value you provide relative to the amount you're paid) for your clients, you're in the wrong business.

You obviously just. don't. get. it. Byeee!

You don't think the clients' needs are paramount and that you should work whatever hours suit them the best? Then get the hell out of BigLaw.

You get paid $160k as a first year and the clients get charged $500/hour for a reason. If you don't want to be at the beck and call of the partners and the clients, then take some lower-paying job at a small firm. But expecting champagne benefits while working small fry hours makes you look like a spoiled, ignorant brat.

In the M&A department of W&C, you usually have to ask for permission to take Saturday and Sunday off. So you can probably forget requesting vacation time around Christmas unless your deal closes right before it.

Why do lawyers allow themselves to be inconvenienced by their clients more than doctors allow themselves to be inconvenienced by their patients?

If a patient contacts a doctor after hours, and it's not life and death, the doctor dispatches some quick advice and/or tells the patient to make an appointment during regular hours.

But if a client contacts a lawyer after hours (and it's never life and death with big firm lawyer work), the lawyer falls all over himself trying to get the client an immediate answer.

I understand that a doctor can always advise a persistent patient to go to the ER, and there's no such thing as a legal ER.

But I think it has more to do with the types of personalities that go into each profession. Doctors tend to be self-assured types with high levels of confidence and self-esteem; they think they're better than most people, so they don't let anyone walk all over them. Lawyers, on the other hand, are typically self-hating, risk-averse people-pleasers with no confidence or dignity and little self-esteem.

Discuss.

Isn't "Christmas" politically incorect btw?

3:09, sweetie, do you know the difference between a "floor" and a "ceiling"? Because using "floor" the way you used it just. doesn't. make. sense.

I certainly hope you weren't an English major!

And there is a difference between fiduciary obligations and being told in no uncertain terms that you can't celebrate a religious holiday with your family. That is crossing a line. There is something wrong with our society and with anyone who honestly does not understand this.

I don't need 160k starting. I'd be happy to take a significant amount less if it meant that asshole partners and clients would stop thinking they get to OWN me just for paying a high wage. Problem is, that is not a realistic option unless I want to take shit work. Which is NOT why I spent over 100k on a top five law school.

What is wrong with you people??? What is wrong with this country??? Yes, 160k is a lot of money, but we're not exactly SWIMMING in wealth. Anyone with half a brain whose math doesn't completely suck can easily find stats and calculate for inflation to discover that -- gasp! -- adjusted for inflation, associates 20 years ago made only slightly less than we make now, but with much more reasonable hours expectations (average in the late 80s was 1800-1900 I believe), AND with the realistic promise of making partner someday. Also, partners back then were not making 10-20 times associates' starting salaries. The ratio was closer to 5:1. So if anyone should be giving up their holidays because they make "so much" money it is the partners, not the associates.

Seriously, you greedy asshole partners need to stop trolling ATL and wake up and realize that we are worth every penny that you pay us, and if you don't start fucking appreciating us you'll see even worse attrition than you already have. And watch your PPP crumble before your pathetic little eyes.

don't see why anyone would think it's not real. at my firm we have to request time off and in general the policy is that you're only allowed to take off week of Christmas every other year. i assumed it was typical at biglaw to restrict who does and does not get to take off end of the year. also, new year's eve is not a holiday for most places.

mub - I think most ppl would agree that being a doctor is a much better profession than being a lawyer. The money is better, the prestige is better, and once you get past school and residency, the hours are generally better (certain practices excluded). The bottom line, however, is that most lawyers couldn't have become doctors if they had tried. Apart from the personality differences, being a doctor is way more intellectually challenging than anything a lawyer does. In my experience, the smartest kids almost never go to law school.

You quantify "smartest" how? I know med students - they're very bright. They do a whole lot of memorization. Law students on the other hand memorize little and argue more. Different kinds of smarts.

@3:29 - great point. After only about six years of working 20 hours per day, doctors work a lot less than lawyers.

I hope you were including yourself in the "not smart enough to go to med school" catagory.

I don't know that being a doctor is more intellectually challenging. I've seen plenty of really dumb doctors.

Doctors are on call just as much. They have to cancel dinner plans and be available on the phone all the time.

The problem with big law is that in order to justify high fees, partners have to promise great levels of service to the clients. Which means doing anything they possibly ask for, whenever possible. If they don't deliver, the client will go somewhere else.

mub-

dead-on assessment. heaven forbid lawyers actually assert themselves to anyone else, but other lawyers. Look at the posts on ATL to see how well lawyers actually interact with others.

At the end of the day, a lawyer will always be someone else's lackey.

re: doctors

Because there is a direct connection between lawyers and clients --
lawyers bill by the hour and clients pay by the hour, with no direct
contact needed. As such, clients demand high-level services for their
money, including off-hour services, while lawyers are eager to rack up
billable hours and unwilling to piss off clients. IOW, there is a
customer service relationship.

This relationship is impeded in medicine by the middle-man of insurance.
Doctors are not directly accountable to patients, and many patients have
very limited freedom of choice when it comes to health care as they are
tied into specific plans.

mub, you're right that doctors think much more of themselves than lawyers do. Interestingly enough, they also tend to think they know more than lawyers. (I imagine 3:29 is probably a particularly self-absorbed doctor).

I have had doctors tell me that they think being a junior lawyer is harder than being an intern/resident. Not because the hours are necessarily numerically longer, but because we NEVER leave our jobs. Apparently when doctors go home after a 36-hour shift, they're actually going home and leaving work at the hospital/office/wherever. When lawyers go home we watch our blackberries for "important" emails.

As for a legal ER, guess what? We don't need one! In terms of what can be done for someone LEGALLY, there is no such thing as a weekend or evening emergency. There may be something that needs to be done by the next business day that requires overnight/weekend work, but you will never, ever, EVER have someone whose life can be saved if you do something heroic at 2 a.m. Nothing happens in the law at 2 a.m. Ever. Period.*

I mean, how disgustingly self-important of law/business to think it merits emails and phone calls in the middle of the night. If you're talking about an innocent person on death row, that's one thing. But most of us don't actually do anything good or socially beneficial like that. We just help rich companies evade their taxes by stretching the limits of the tax code, or help them defeat lawsuits when the people they've screwed over get the balls to sue them over it. I am not giving up my vacation to ensure some fat CEO doesn't have to settle for a 45 million salary this year instead of 46 million. If he agrees to donate half his salary toward humanitarian efforts in Sudan, I'll consider it. Otherwise, these sorts of demands are objectively unreasonable.

* Granted, you may have clients in foreign countries, but chances are if you're practicing in America, you're primarily working in American courts, and therefore working on American court/business hours.

In DC there are lots of people I know who work jobs (like on Cap Hill, campaigns, nonprofit event planning, etc.) where they are at the beck and call of their boss, have to work late nights or weekends, holidays, etc., for a lot less pay. These people stare at me like I'm nuts when I complain about my work/life balance when I'm making 160k starting and they're working bad hours for 30-60k. If I wasn't practicing law at a biglaw firm, I'm sure I'd be working 50-100 hours a week on a campaign or Cap Hill so I really can't complain.

Doctors - school for 4 years, internship/residency - 5-6 years (working some pretty big hours). School = 2x cost of law school. Then if they want to go into the prestigious (high-paying) practices, add a couple years for a fellowship. All during which they're paid maybe 1/3 of a first year biglaw associate and student loans are accruing interest. And, just like the law, not everyone gets (or wants) those high payoffs. For the doctor who wants to practice family medicine there is a tradeoff. Not everyone gets a biglaw job, and not everyone gets to be a neurosurgeon. I have all the respect in the world for doctors, but it that doesn't translate to people choosing law school simply because they can't make it in med school.

I'd rather spend 6-8 years working 15-20 hrs per day so I could spend the next 30 years working 6-7 hrs a day 4-5 days a week than I would spend 3 years of working 10 hrs a day so I could spend the next 30 years working 10+ hours a day 6-7 days a week.

Especially since it would mean making sooo much more money, having people respect, rather than revile, me, and not eating shit on a regular basis.

3:38 -- doctors are NOT on call as much as lawyers. My father is a doctor and he has ONE on-call weekend per month, and rotates holidays so everyone gets the most important holidays (to them) free. As a lawyer, I am on call all day, every day. I'd take his schedule over mine in a heartbeat.

My firm implemented a similar policy for the first time last year - at least with respect to one of the transactional practices that is regularly busy in December. We had a case of certain individuals taking for granted that they could use time off on and around all of the major holidays - which resulted in one group of associates regularly getting to enjoy the holidays, while another group of associates regularly got screwed at the holidays. While the policy raised some eyebrows at first, a bunch of the guys appreciated that the boss was looking out for us and reigning in some prima donnas.

Ah, doctors vs. lawyers....is this the work of the Internet Badass?

Probably won't work as well as it did on the old PR board--what with less pre-med and med-school types trolling. But should be worth watching--nothing sets a lawyer into a tizzy more than telling him he's not as good as a doctor (or worse--he couldn't have even been a doctor had he tried).

While December billing may be heaviest for transactional lawyers, that certainly isnt the case for PI plaintiff/defense lawyers. The plaintiff's lawyers just don't show up/give a crap/schedule anything and accordingly, us defense folks can just fill in our routine maintenance at our pace when we want. At my firm billing for December usually drops 25-35% across the board and the entire office usually closes for at least 3-4 days if not the entire week around Christmas (of course deadlines may occaisionally require a day or two of work out of the seven, most of which can be done at home). It just reinforces the fact that, while I may only make 2/3's what someone at BigLaw does, I definitely make at least as much per hour, if not more.

re: 2:14 and 3:26

Anyone who thinks 160 is "just ok" has never had a normal job and probably no life experience with anything below upper middle class. I don't begrudge people whose parents put them from college to a top five school (I've been there and am paying for that myself at a firm), but get a grip. Look at some stats yourself and see what percentile your income puts you in. Last I looked, our salary is top 5% for FAMILIES, top 2% if you're single. Whine, whine, whine, bitch, bitch, bitch. Most people DREAM of a "six-figure salary," which as we know here doesn't make your problems magically go away, but it's a damn sight better than most people will ever do. Reality check for Christ's sake...

Re: 3:55

Amen. This is all part of the same NY to 190, my law school is in the real T1, I'll never be happy with whatever I have no matter how much that is mentality that permeates this board, many law firms, and much of the world in general. It doesn't matter what you give these people, it will NEVER be right/enough.

Celebrating Christmas as religious holiday takes 36 hours, max. You could work half a day on the 24th, go to evening services and then take Christmas day off and be back at your desk on the 26th having fulfilled you religious obligations.

If you are making the big bucks far from your family, then buy them plane tickets to visit you.

The religious holiday excuse does not justify 10 days off.

Comments clusterf***

What about Festivus?

Is this really that big of a deal? I know people who work at places like Disney World who can't automatically take Christmas and the surrounding days off. This also happens in industries where the dates when you can take vacation may be determined by seniority.

3:55, it's too bad your parents didn't pay to teach you to read.

If you DID know how to read, you would have seen that I said 160k was "a lot" of money and that I didn't need it, and that I would gladly trade a chunk of it in to have a better life.

I'm sure you have seen other people bitch that 160k isn't enough, but don't but words in my mouth, asshole.

(Also, surely you must know that 160k, as large a sum as it is, does not make one wealthy in the sorts of cities in which it's paid, particularly when you take loans and the like into account. That this amount puts us in the top 5% income bracket is more a statement of the astonishingly horrific gap that has opened up between the rich and the poor in this country. When 40% of households bring in less than 50k (borderline poverty if you live in SF/LA/NY), the richest people make hundreds of millions, and the middle class makes up 5-10% of the population, there is a SERIOUS problem)

3:55/4:06 -- partners trying to prey on associates' natural insecurities in order to scare associates into undervaluing themselves.

Babies, you just TRY making your millions without us little peons you so despise. 160k is pennies to you idiots. Stop whining and go hug your five Porsches.

So, although an unprecedented number of "lawyers" have requested time off, they say they will do what they can to accommodate "associates" -- does this mean partners are getting the shaft (i.e., they won't even bother trying to accommodate the partners), or that associates are getting screwed over (i.e., if a partner wants time off, there's no "try" about it)?

re: 4:48

You bitched about the amount of money relative to the amount of work, you bitched about having to suck up firm life in order to get good work and (maybe) pay off loans (not sure who financed your education). Now you're bitching about it relative to the city you live in. I mean, really, my point is that you're whining over something that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things, relative especially to how most people live. I was in the military and they OWNED my ass for around $15,000 a year. So I have zero sympathy for people who complain about the hours at law firms, no matter what brings them there. I'm not saying I love it, but I know I don't have it bad and don't complain about it.

Thanks for the name-calling too. That gives me an even clearer impression of who I'm dealing with.

I won't even waste my time with your second-rate, Spartacus League economic analysis...

re: 4:53

I'm a junior associate. But if I was a partner, that would mean that I have paid my dues, which most people here are just starting to do, so I think it's a bit childish to think that partners don't have anything legitimate to say about these things. I'm fine with my salary, but if other cities make 160, I think NY should go up to 200 or more.

only goes to show you white & case is a sweatshop

Well, I haven't yet started at my firm, but I've already purchased my plane tickets home for Christmas. The tickets were already impossibly expensive -- even purchased in advance and at a nonrefundable fare. I don't mind working out of the office, but I'm going to be a very depressed camper in a new city without any family if my firm cancels my trip home for the holidays.

5:57 welcome to the big leagues. Summer Associate-ville was only a short stop on the hell express.

Whether this policy is reasonable depends on your practice group. Lawyers in the estate planning, employee benefits, and income tax departments should certainly expect to be working hard the last couple of weeks of the year -- the tax code departments are always busy, or at least potentially busy, at year end. Similarly, members of the corporate department may have deals that, for tax reasons, have to close by year end, and therefore cannot go on vacation between Christmas and New Year's. Those of us in the litigation department, however, can expect our practices to be completely dead between Christmas and New Year's, except in the most unusual of circumstances. We don't know which associates got this email (if it's real at all), so I suggest everybody chill out.

Looks real to me. Got a number of very similar emails when I worked at Davis Polk & Wardwell. Christmas requests effectively had to be made the summer before, and if you got last Christmas off, you could forget the upcoming one. Of course, I worked a number of Christmas weeks and not a damn thing ever happened, but...

re: 4:53

I too am a junior associate, though not at BigLaw and not in any major city. I make pretty much top of market where I am (which, while pushing 6 figures lower than NYC still equates to 120% the salary figuring COL and 300% the salary figuring QOL). I'll be lucky to make half a million a year as a senior partner, but that will happen in 10 years too.

All that being said, the bottom line is I'm happy with my life. I could make less and still be happy. I won't complain when I raise my rates and salary in January either. It wouldn't matter to you though whether you were making ~125k as (an admittedly well above average) SmallLaw associate like me, 250k as an associate in NYC in a BigLaw shop, or 2 million as a BigLaw partner, you would still be unhappy with your life.

3:55, someone who made partner ten years ago paid VERY different dues than someone starting out and trying to make partner nowadays. Yes, they worked hard, but 1) they had a more realistic chance at making partner, and 2) it was only the partner-bound people who were expected to work that hard, whereas today it is EVERY associate. I never suggested partners don't have anything legitimate to say, but as a mid-level I have heard ENOUGH bitching from partners about how much they "have" to pay the associates. Whine whine whine. They have million-dollar houses plus vacation houses plus fancy sports cars, all of which they can afford because of how much I work MY ass off, and they're begrudging me enough money to pay off my loans and save up a small pot of money in the hopes of someday making a downpayment on a humble little condo? I don't even want to talk about how much my firm griped about moving to 160. They were such whiny little bitches, they make me sick to my stomach.

What other cities make has nothing to do with your salary. You made the choice to live somewhere expensive, as did I (which is a big part of why I'm considering a move to a more reasonable city). Anyway, NY pays much better bonuses than most CA/Chi/Boston/TX firms. Although I will grant the TX thing is a little nutty (bc their COL is SOOOOO cheap), but then again you have to live in Texas.

And, um, didn't you just tell off the other poster for talking about what city HE lived in? Really, if you are going to pretend to be an associate you should keep your story straight, at the very least when, you know, one of your posts is right on top of the other.

4:06 -- so I'm not allowed to point out it's a crappy system, just because I'm in it? That's dumb.

As I noted above, I'm considering moving to a different city because I hate biglaw so much. Whatever I end up doing, I will still hate biglaw because it is evil, and I will still hate biglaw partners because they are by and large selfish and short-sighted. I'm allowed to think this, and it doesn't mean I'm a miserable person.

re: 6:17

Fair enough, law firms are pyramid schemes. I think relative to partner profits associates should probably be paid more and that partners should not begrudge associates for it. That being said, they've being doing what we're all bitching about for at least a good decade longer than we have, so I'm happy for them that they have their big houses and numerous cars. That's their reward for sticking it out and busting their ass.

I wasn't aware that you were allowed to slack off in the old days if you weren't going for partner. My bad.

Thanks for pointing out to me that I chose where to live and work. That's helpful... Ok, you think cost of living isn't a reasonable consideration. I fail to see why, but to each his own.

I think one can analyze and judge these things without acting like some economically oppressed victim, which is what I perceived the other poster to be doing, among most other people making comments. Its the "outrage" that bothers me...

I am at the firm and yes we received that email last week, I believe. It was not surprising given that this is the way EVERY firm is, at least as my experience and those of my peers indicates.

Great. Now I am worried about not being able to leave town for Christmas. I'll be in litigation and I don't have a problem with working remotely while at home; I'll even gladly put in hours on Christmas day if that's what it takes. But I will go crazy if I can't go home over Christmas. I'm single and living in a city where I know very few people, and my family is a cross-country plane ride away. Christmas is the one time a year when my large and extended family is able to get together. My tickets home for the holidays, nonrefundable and purchased in advance, were over $500 when I bought them a month ago. They now price out at almost $1000 with many of the flights already sold out. I understand that client service is what we lawyers do, and that clients' needs don't stop just because it's Christmas. But, I am really crossing my fingers that my firm will be willing to use all of that wonderful technology they've got to set me up to work remotely. If I have to skip coming home for the holidays, I will be sad, depressed, and lonely in a new city without family or friends. A $160,000 salary (which I am otherwise very thankful for) won't make that depression go away.

Are firms willing to let junior litigation associates who live far away travel home for the holidays if they are willing to work remotely? I'm planning on taking a week off but would return between Christmas and New Years. I am not taking any time off over Thanksgiving. If this much time off over Christmas is not feasible, do firms generally pay the price to change tickets for already-purchased tickets?

3:55: "Thanks for pointing out to me that I chose where to live and work. That's helpful... Ok, you think cost of living isn't a reasonable consideration. I fail to see why, but to each his own."

Um... that's how you interpret "What other cities make has nothing to do with your salary. You made the choice to live somewhere expensive, as did I (which is a big part of why I'm considering a move to a more reasonable city)."

I think it is a reasonable consideration, and that's why I'm considering moving. As you will no doubt agree, though, law firms are not charities, and they're not going to pay you a penny more than you have to. So until New York associates start abandoning their firms en masse for Texas, the firms aren't going to factor cost of living in as you would like them to. If you want to bitch on that basis, you'll find good company with me, as I am always happy to bitch about how evil and unfair biglaw is, but I was under the impression that you didn't think it was reasonable to gripe about the inequities inherent in the system because we're all better off than people in the Sudan (which begs the question how you can say that and then with a straight face turn right around and complain that you aren't being paid almost 200k as a first-year).

Pointing out the troubling wealth disparity, by the way, hardly qualifies as "acting like some economically oppressed victim." Why do you care about outrage? Are we supposed to be all lovey with our firms? They're not lovey with us.

I never said people could slack off. I said they didn't have to put in soul-killing hours. Nice straw man, though.

It will never cease to amaze me how liberals (including even agnostics or outright atheists) who have no respect for the traditions of Christmas and no understanding of what Christmas is about nonetheless feel entitled to their two-week Christmas vacation every year. The fact of the matter is that even people who are sympathetic to the ACLU's position on the War Against Christmas often feel that a Christmas vacation is nice when it applies to them, not understanding (or deliberately ignoring) the fact that it is precisely these kind of political considerations that make it possible for a firm like White & Case to send out this email to begin with.

I would love to see a conservative Christian telling his employer that he will no longer read emails or take calls during the Shabbath, and see what kind of reaction he gets.

To be clear, I did not mean to disparage either conservative Christians for whom Christmas is an important tradition, or Orthodox Jews for whom following the Shabbath is important. I only meant to disparage the hypocrites who want to have their cake and eat it too.

Here's the problem with moving to a lower COL area: The markets in those regions at the lateral levels are often constricted, so you might not be able to get a job. It's not tough to lateral from one big city to another, but lateraling from a big city to a smaller market can be tough (contrary to what some might believe, Portland, Seattle, Texas, Chicago, etc, aren't rolling out the welcome mats for the fancy New Yorkers).

If you do somehow manage to land a spot -- because you've convinced them that you want to "move home" or a spouse is relocating, or some reason other than "I want more bang for my buck in a lower COL area" -- you'll realize that you are starting at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of building connections to partners, case teams, and clients.

The wiser move -- and one I wish I had figured out myself -- is to start out from the very beginning in one of these lower COL areas. 2Ls interviewing and deciding between offers should take note.

Give it a rest, Fed Soc. I'm a liberal and a Christian, and I take the religious aspects of Christmas VERY seriously. Also, the war on Christmas has already been fought and Christmas lost to the big corporations you federalists are so fond of, DECADES ago.

And who are you to assume that people who want to take Christmas vacation 1) are liberal and 2) don't actually celebrate Christmas??

Although, I do have to give you kudos for managing to concoct the most entertaining non sequitor I've seen all month. Yes, the liberals, who LOVE big business and are totally on board with American capitalism overtaking all else as the supreme religion of the land, are the ones responsible for the fact that rich businessmen want their lackeys working on the holidays. Yup, all part of the liberal left-wing agenda to turn Amerika over to the big corporations!!

And who the fuck gets two weeks at Christmas??? I'm lucky to get two weeks all YEAR.

4:53 - I fail to see how it is a "crappy system." Partners go out and recruit clients to pay absurd fees, recruit you out of a top-tier law school where they teach you nothing of any substantive value, teach you how to do the real work of the real world that the client will actually pay for, and then gives you a salary in the top 2% of nation.

For these services, he makes significantly more. Until you can demonstrate the ability to do same, you are paid, proportionately to what other service industries net vs. gross, a pretty good bit (around 25%). He meanwhile takes about the same. He does this with several associates, and ends up with a million+. All you have to do is find some clients to pay you (and some other associates) the same rate, and you too can have the same salary.

There is nothing unfair about this system. In fact, I would posit that it couldn't be patently more fair. The fact that you are too prestige-obsessed and short sighted to realize there are much easier and more profitable ways to practice law is simply your fault.

Effective lawyers at my ID/defense lit firm gross about 550-650k a year at reasonable rates (sub 300/hr) thanks to effective use of paralegals and support staff. Rather than take home 25% though, we take home 40+% thanks to drastically lower overhead (we pay clerks 20/hr, own a building and lease the additional space, have in-house tech).

Consequently, I actually make more than my fiance (at the local equivalent of BigLaw in same class), but yet work at least 10-15 hours a week less. Translate this to NYC salary, and, well, you fools are slaving away for nothing.

"prestige-obsessed"??

Lol. Spoken like someone who obviously doesn't know which firm I'm working at. "Prestige" is not a good word to describe why I am where I am. I am where I am due to a strange assortment of circumstances that there's really no point in getting into here.

Why do you posit both that the structure I'm working in could not be "patently more fair" when two paragraphs later you call me a fool for staying in my current position? That's not exactly logical and indicates that you in fact don't believe the arguments you're making.

At any rate, there is nothing remotely fair about being a firm lawyer in the US. We provide a marginally useful service at trumped-up rates that have resulted in making the profession miserable for those in it and those who have need of its services. For proliferating this blight on society we are paid more than the men and women in our country who do things that are *actually* useful. And the partners? Making that much money for helping corporations continue to gorge themselves to the detriment of 99% of society nets them more money than most people can shake a stick at. There's nothing remotely "fair" about this setup. It's disgusting.

I don't want or need to make 160k as a first-year associate (which is why, AGAIN, I am considering a move). I think it is absurd that first-years make that much, and it is EVEN WORSE that partners make such a ridiculous amount more than that. If the world were fair, lawyers would make the same as, say, high school teachers. And the low pay would probably result in better, more moral work, and cheaper tuition. It is overtrumped salaries like law partners', and especially those of the CEOs they work for, that have resulted in the prohibatively high cost of living. Lawyers have helped their clients draw hapless lower-wage-earners into debt slavery from which they will never recover. When you have this much of a wealth disparity, and when the disproportionality cuts along lines that make no moral sense, "fairness" went out the window long ago.

The law CAN be valuable. It CAN add to society rather than become a leech on its resources. But it has been twisted and corrupted by the current law firm model. When the law became more about money than about justice, it stopped serving the noble purpose it was meant for.

My problem is not that I don't make enough money. I do. If I made the same salary, inflation-adjusted, for the rest of my life, without a single real raise, I would be beyond fine. The problem is I'd have to work in this miserable place to do it, and the thought sickens me. The problem is that the people who don't deserve to be rich OWN our society and trample down anyone who would try to get his or her hands on just a tiny piece of the pie. The problem is that the wealth disparity has made some cities so expensive that all but the highest-paid, debt-free wage-earners will NEVER have a shot at building any reasonable amount of equity.

But why should you care, right? You and your fiance are (apparently) making gobs between the two of you, why fight a system that you're perfectly content with?

Fed Soc, do you *actually* think there are no liberal, Christmas-celebrating Christians? If so, I would almost invite you to my church for Christmas Eve mass except that I'm worried you might make an ugly scene when you realized half the congregation (among whom are some of the most loving, God-fearing, Jesus-reflecting people I have met in my life -- and I've known many a hard-core religious Bible thumper) is gay.

8:57: Just go already. You're miserable and I'm bored reading you.

9:12, then why bother commenting? Clearly I'm not boring enough for you to stop reading and just go away yourself.

I used to be in litigation at W&C and can confirm that this would really be unprecedented in litigation. Last year, I was practically the only person around the week between Christmas and New Year's. The year before, I took off ten days in a row for the price of four. That said, I would not be shocked if this were sent to M&A. They had the worst schedules - sit at your desk doing nothing from 10 to 6, then work crazily until midnight or later. Fun!

We did not receive this email (or anything like it) in the DC office of White & Case.

The fact of the matter is that the law is a service-based industry. Associates get paid a very nice salary and bonus to take care of their clients, plain and simple. People who don't understand that fact and want to enter the legal profession need to get it through their heads quickly.

I grew up in the restaurant industry (another service-based industry) and believe me, my family shut the place down only two days of the year: Thanksgiving and Christmas (and closed early on New Year's Eve, but we would open New Year's morning). You'd better believe that we worked the day before and the day after Christmas. You cannot possibly justify closing down for more than that to the people who come in every day and pay your salary. Did it suck? Absolutely. Did it pay the bills and allow me to go to both a prestigious undergrad and law school? Yep, and two years from now I'll be working at a BigLaw firm in NYC, where I know that I will be working long hours, but again, the salary I'll be making will allow me to live a decent life in an insanely expensive city. I can't really ask for more than that and if I end up liking the work I'm doing, that's a bonus.

For those people who are from the area where their law firm is, I don't see what the problem is. You work on New Year's Eve, leave the office a little early, take Christmas off, and are back to work the day after. No big deal. And hopefully you and the other associates who stick around over the holidays pick up the slack for someone whose family lives too far away from the firm for him/her to only take one day off at Christmas, and he/she repays the favor and covers for you when you decide to take some time off, say, in January or February.

Yeah, the QOL obviously could be better and I wish firms would at least be a little more accommodating of a person's social life. But on the other hand, as someone else noted upthread, you could be working on Capitol Hill for shit pay (I've done it) and still be working almost the same kind of hours that BigLaw lawyers do. I figure that if I burn out, there are always other options.

In the end, it all comes down to the fact that clients are paying your firm (and you) a lot of money to do their bidding. Yeah, I think it's kind of ridiculous that you have to be on call practically 24/7, but hey, that's the name of the game and people who go into BigLaw should have no illusions about it.

Am I mistaken, or aren't most of the people screaming for Christmas break those who DO have family far away, and therefore would be lonely and miserable if they had to spend Christmas in town?

If my family were in town, or even just a couple hours away, I'd be perfectly fine with being told that I should schedule a "real" vacation some other time, and will be needed in town during the holiday. But my family is halfway across the country, I have only distant relatives anywhere near me, and most of my friends have family close by (and therefore wouldn't be around to play lonely hearts club with me, making the holiday at least drunkenly bearable). So asking me to spend Christmas here would be a HUGE imposition on me, to the point where I would have to ask, in all seriousness, if my job depended on it before agreeing to stay.

Jesus Christ, you'd think spending Christmas away from your family was a station of the cross. You grow up, you move away, you see your family less. Deal. To even talk about throwing away a great paying job over it is the height of spoiled, stunted adolescence IMO. Re: Sudan comment above... Yes, You, it is a privilege to be able to have a job and live so well, one you'd be grateful for if you took a minute to think about how people live in most of the world, or even most of the country.

9:47 - I've seen, in person, an associate walk out of the Firm over being told to work Christmas. I didn't think the associate was not acting "grown up" or blowing up over nothing. For some people, the holidays are inviolable.

6:58: Okay, don't freak out. The absolute worst thing that can happen to you is that you alienate the partner you're working with or that you're considered less committed to your job because you went home for Christmas. You sound like a normal person who wants to see your family during the holidays. If you're like me and you don't give a rat's ass about your long-term prospects at your firm, say that you're happy to work from home as if it's some big favor to them (which it IS on Christmas Eve/Day) and leave it at that. Do NOT offer to stay or ask if you should stay. Let them demand that you stay during Christmas - I can pretty much guarantee that they won't have the balls to. They'll passively aggress your ass to death, but it's highly unlikely that you'll be flat-out asked to stay on the scene at Christmas. Be sure, though, to flaunt how often you're there leading up to the holidays. Don't get bullied - there's no way you'll get fired over it in BIGLAW.

i just accepted a job in a big city far away from my family. Guess I should have gone for the secondary market if I wanted to be home for Christmas...

9:47, I might not quit that day, but if I was told that I was not allowed to travel home for the holidays, I'd seriously consider looking for a new job before next winter. The holidays are the *one* time during the year that I get to see my family. We're scattered everywhere, so Christmas is pretty much it. It would break my heart, not to mention my parents' hearts, and those of my siblings, if I couldn't make it and were alone in my new city for Christmas. Yes, I lead a privileged and blessed life that my concern is whether I get to see my family once a year rather than whether I will be raped, tortured, starved, and then killed in the Sudan. I know this. Still, I am a better associate and more dedicated and willing to make other sacrifices for the firm and my clients where my feelings are taken into account for special occassions. And, in my case, that means going home for Christmas. I'm hoping my firm recognizes this and does their best to allow associates to go home for the holidays . . . .

Have worked for W&C for a long time, and with Neal (who is wonderful). This is absurd. Get over yourselves and work at a smaller firm if you don't like this vibe. Only problem is that this got out. It goes on, one way or another, at every other Biglaw firm, according to my friends who work at other such places.

10:14:

I'm not trying to be a dick, and I know it sucks, but sometimes life sucks and and you have to adjust, that's all I'm saying. I understand that people want to see their families, but I also understand that firms have to serve their clients. My dept. never has the holidays off (transactional work, tax year, etc.), but since I make more money than my family, I'm willing to fly them out for long weekends. Maybe you can split up a week here and there to see people. All I'm saying is that it's not horrendous or evil of the firms to put their client's needs first. We'd all want the same if we were the client, and we all signed up for this team. Maybe you can get out after a few years and find something more accommodating. I just don't think it's too horrible in the big picture sense. God, I sound like an HR person... Just for the record, I'm in & out as soon as I can be (which will be probably at least 5 years), but I know I'm gonna have to suck up a lot of things I don't like until I can get out.

I meant 10:14 #1, of course...

3.42pm wrote: "In DC there are lots of people I know who work jobs (like on Cap Hill, campaigns, nonprofit event planning, etc.) where they are at the beck and call of their boss, have to work late nights or weekends, holidays, etc., for a lot less pay."

I left BIGLAW for Capitol Hill. No, we don't work 9-5, but we work a lot less than in BIGLAW. The reason is that Capitol Hill runs much more efficiently than law firms; no one will stay for a meeting that lasts more than an hour or, at most and on rare occasions, two hours. And during recess, people are usually OK if you're not in the office.

9:47, Jesus Christ indeed. Where do you think he would like us to be on the day we observe his birth? Spending time with our family and loved ones as we celebrate God's gift to earth, or at work to make sure your client doesn't have to pay an extra 10k in taxes?

As for this: "We'd all want the same if we were the client, and we all signed up for this team."

You're simply dead wrong. Not all of us are so selfish and cold-hearted that we would ask our lawyers to spend Christmas alone and miserable just to save us a few bucks. I would NEVER ask someone to work for me on Christmas, aside from an emergency room doctor if I've been in an accident and will die if I'm not operated on immediately.

As for what is too horrible, it's a matter of perspective. For some of us, Christmas is sacrosanct. Particularly for us young associates -- who clearly MUST be spoiled brats since we worked our asses off and didn't jack around doing other shit while we were in our early twenties, and actually finished law school before we'd had time to meet anyone and start families of our own -- being told we cannot be with our families, that we cannot return to a safe haven wherein resides our very SANITY, simply because of a demanding client who couldn't be bothered to get his shit together, say, a WEEK before Christmas, is unacceptable. If you think we should feel guilty for not being Sudanese, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and move there yourself? Unless you never complain about anything? Like, say, people who care more about the holidays than you seem to?

I'm not trying to be a dick either, but you are imposing YOUR sense of what matters on US. For me personally, you can have Thanksgiving, you can have New Year's, you can have the Fourth of July, you can even have Easter. But Christmas? No. That's mine. You may feel differently. Fine. That doesn't make you better or more mature than us. It just means that you hold OTHER things as sacrosanct (or, if you don't, that you're a sad lackey who truly has no priorities before work, ever). Maybe your anniversary trip to Europe, which happens to fall on the same weekend half your office is out of town, and which your wife will be HEARTBROKEN if you have to cancel. Your anniversary isn't important to OTHER people in the office, so maybe your cohorts should tell YOU to look at the big picture. I mean, she's just a wife.

the more you actually don't wonder why.

I am pretty amused by the number of people who have posted with a "suck it up, do anything they ask, get out after 3 years" attitude...yet I wonder how many of them would actually STAY at these biglaw firms if their HR policies were a little more flexible about holidays, hours, etc. Ya think the firms might actually lose more dollars in attrition than they would in the alleged amount of business they would lose in having a little more humane vacation policy in place?

And as for the poster who claimed that the whole "world" operates this way, yeah, right....try to get any business done in Western Europe, Latin America, or other places in the rest of the predominantly "Christian" regions of the globe during the week between Christmas and New Year's...it just doesn't happen, because everyone is with their families. We in the states have this obsession with "face time" in the office, and we think it means we are more productive workers....not clear at all that this is the case.

4:53/8:07 - your last post made a lot of sense and I really think we aren't too different after all.

As for the patently fair/you're stupid for staying disparity though--it wasn't that you were stupid for staying in general, only for staying when you couldn't stand it. I still think it is fair.

And yea, we do well between us where we live. We have a 3500 square foot house in the "in" part of town on a mortgage we could make on one salary, we have 2 nice cars and one to take on the road for work, and are looking for a beach house in the next 2-3 years. Overall, I couldn't really be much happier (sans her folks living too close, us being too far from anything resembling the water since she won't fly on a small plane and an annoying partner who can't seem to understand that I have my own work to do and going on the road for him only annoys me).

12:04

HAHAHA!! I was trying to be nice... HAHAHA! I guess that's what I get!!

Get this...your job exists in a secular universe where time is money. If your poor little heart lies elsewhere, then so should your ass during the work week.

Sorry, but you seem to be the one who can't handle the sense of what matters in the company you volunteered to work for. Yeah, 10k in taxes is a lot to some people, so if I'm a client, the person/firm I'm paying untold tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for their labor just better make damn sure they save me those scraps. How twisted of me....

I've been to law school and I've worked full time for years before law school, distinctly NOT dicking around (as if going straight through makes you more of a "go-getter" somehow... he he), and allow me to be the one to break it to you that college and law school scarcely constitute working your ass off compared to a real job...as you're discovering. Working your ass off means working when *GASP* you DON'T WANT TO WORK... It means *horror* no guaranteed holiday breaks.

What makes me more mature isn't that I never complain or that I never have to compromise on things that matter to me for my job. It's that I don't feel unjustly put-upon when I have to suck it up. I have MANY priorities before work, including side projects that are very important to me. To get them done, I sacrifice sleep, and sometimes the job requires that I sacrifice them altogether for a time. And that sucks. But that's not the world being unfair to me, that's just normal, everyday, getting-through-my-shit life.

Also, you don't know the situation of these clients. Maybe they're waiting for someone else, like ONE OF THEIR CLIENTS, vendors, partners, government agency, or who-the-hell-ever to get THEIR shit together so they can close the deal. Sometimes they're slacking, sometimes they're just like us...waiting for someone else who may or may not have legitimate reasons for a delay in getting shit back to them.

I see the tenor of most of these comments... "My bosses are mean/don't pay me enough," "My clients are inconsiderate because they ask me to work when I REALLY don't want to," etc., etc. Hey, all of that sucks balls, but it's not unjust, THAT'S JUST LIFE. Deal with it or fix it, but don't pretend it's some terrible injustice. There is terrible injustice in the world, but working on Christmas ain't it...

So you're 25 years old, fresh out of law school, with no marketable skills, and you make $160,000/year. You're not worth it, really, so they have to work you ungodly hours so you can make up for in bulk what you lack in quality.

To 9:47, 10:26, and 12:29: This is 5:57, 6:58, and 10:14(1). I did not write 12:04. I worked several years between college and law school. I'm working for BigLaw now because I paid my way through school and have the mountains of debt to prove it. Like 12:04, however, I'm willing to give the firm my fourth of July, Thanksgiving, birthday. It's just Christmas is a special holiday for me and the *only* time I have to see my family because it is the only time we *all* get off to see one another. Suggesting that I fly them out to see me is a nice idea, but one that doesn't work for a very large family working multiple jobs in different industries in different parts of the country. (Yes, maybe I could fly them out on different weekends. But that's not the same as the energy and chemistry that comes from a big family being together at once, all in the same space.) And not to get too personal, but I don't know how many years I have left to do this, you know? I want to take advantage of these chances while I still have them.

I don't need a lecture on being willing to work hard or knowing that my clients come first. I know that I've traded in my weekends, evenings, and most holidays for BigLaw. Just hadn't realized that I was also trading in my one chance per year to be with family, too. I'm crossing my fingers that I'm wrong and worried over nothing.

Thanks to the advice from 10:11 re: how to approach this. I regret that wanting 8 total days off (including weekend, Christmas Eve, and Christmas itself) would make me seem like a slacker to the likely-locally-based partner I'll be working with. That raise to $160K seems to have come at a very high price.

7:46: You misunderstood what I was referring to by the War Against Christmas. This has nothing to do with the commercialization of the holiday, but rather with all the measures taken by ACLU supporters to remove all displays or mentions of Christmas (e.g., having public school students sing secular versions of Christmas carols; campaigning against nativity scenes; advocating the replacement of the word Christmas with "holiday", as in holiday tree, etc.; calling the police against children who sing Christmas carols on the street; boycotting stores that have Christmas displays; throwing "Solstice parties"; you name it). I don't think that it is farfetched to see company policies encouraging employees to see Christmas as just another random holiday as an extension of all of this.

You are correct that some corporations also take the wrong side in this, for example, by taking on company policies prohibiting employees from wishing Merry Christmas to customers. Even then, government agencies (e.g. UPS) are even more guilty of this than are corporations, and to the extent that corporations do this, surely you cannot deny that this is driven by the left.

Actually, Fed Soc, I knew exactly what you were talking about. I was just pointing out that it's stupid. Who cares what we CALL the holiday when corporate America has already stripped it of any meaning anyway?

lit v. corporate suckers

@3:26 ... you don't think the "floor" is the minimum amount of work you have to do? It may be the ceiling for you, but the point was it's not even the minimum for those who succeed. Your ignorance and lack of attention to detail are probably going to force you out of biglaw, if you even are there, before your laziness.

What kills me is all of this talk about the client. Please. When you're a junior associate, the client doesn't even know who the hell you are. This is more likely than not all about the partner not wanting to be the asshole who heads into the office the day after Christmas.

re: 9:58

As the partner shouldn't be, after doing it for years himself...

10:13: I'm not arguing that he or she should be (though I'm wary of dues-paying rhetoric from people who came of age when hours requirements were considerably lower), I'm just pointing out that it has very little to do with client needs.

10:25:

Totally non-argumentative: where are people coming up with this stuff that hours requirements used to be a lot lower? You mean Skadden etc. had better hours in the old days? I have a hard time imagining that... Do you all mean that the worst of the hours from the top few firms trickled down to the whole "biglaw" industry in a way that didn't exist before...? I guess I missed this class for some reason...

I have a friend that works for W&C, and this is completely true. In particular the memo posted at 2:33.

"If you worked in retail, you'd know no one gets off during that period."

...

... But....

...

... But we don't....

We don't work in retail....

... So why is this relevant?

re: 12:02

I assume the person said that to make the point that in their opinion working the holidays isn't such a hardship/tragedy/big deal.

10:25, THANK YOU. I get so sick of hearing partners complain about how hard they had to work. Yes, they worked hard, and it paid off for them. We pretty much KNOW it is not going to pay off for us, yet we are ALL expected to work as though we are being groomed for partnership.

10:13/10:36, below is the address for an article I found illuminating. The numbers are a bit old but the principle holds, I believe.

http://www.jdjungle.com/main.cfm?chID=0&schid=0&inc=INC_article.cfm&artid=51704&template=0

You're expected to work as if you're one of the top earning individuals in America and the world. Which you are. You don't make it there by 9-5ing it, folks. Your job is a payoff as it is.

4:55: People are asking for a major religious holiday to themselves, not for a 9-5 job.

Schulte Roth and Zabel ahs the very same policy. No vacation around Christmas.

Schulte Roth and Zabel ahs the very same policy. No vacation around Christmas.

I worked in the M&A Group at W&C for six-and-a-half years. There are a lot of jerk partners there but Neal is absolutely, 100% not one of them. I have complete confidence that he will go way, way, way above and beyond the call of duty in his capacity as the M&A Group's Administrative Partner to make sure that people who need to get home to their families will be able to make it. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Neal agreed to cover for somebody in a really tough spot if necessary. He's that good a guy.

I currently work at White & Case, and this is a hoax. White & Case considers December 24 to be a firm holiday this year, so an authentic firm memo would only have referred to Dec 26-28 as possible vacation days.

Further, the grammar and usage in the final paragraph is awful--such language would have been edited long before it was distributed.

Some W&C associates say the Grenley e-mail is real and some say it isn't, which suggests to me that it is real but did not go out to all associates. Can anyone who got the e-mail confirm?

Also, I concur with 8:59am - that second paragraph is a run-on sentence.

Worked my @$$ off to cover for attorneys taking off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Attorneys of different religions need to cover the office for each other so everyone gets a shot at enjoying their primary religious holidays. One more reason for diverse hiring.