Featured Job Survey Results: Got Work?
In yesterday's Featured Job Survey, brought to you by ATL and Lateral Link, we asked you whether your firms had enough work to go around. The two questions posed were (1) whether business is slow for you and (2) whether you're afraid of losing your job.
Almost 1,300 of you responded to the survey (which is, by the way, a number 100 times greater than the handful of cantankerous commenters who objected). Here are the overall results:
More detailed results, broken down by a number of categories, appear after the jump.
More detailed results appear below. A few hundred respondents were kind enough to provide school or firm names, but only four schools had more than 20 responses (Harvard, Georgetown, NYU and Columbia), and only four firms had more than 10 responses (Skadden, Sidley, Kirkland, and Latham). As a result, these survey results should not be regarded as scientific or reliable in any way; we provide them for entertainment purposes only.
Some observations:
* Nerds rule. Patent and tax attorneys are pretty comfortable, and real estate and structured finance attorneys are pretty scared.
* The law school data, while suspect due to the low response rate, is somewhat amusing. Harvard grads are the most afraid of layoffs; Georgetown grads are the most secure. Columbia grads are busier than everybody else; NYU grads are the most likely not to make their hours.
* The law firm vs. law firm data is also highly dubious, again due to the low response rate (fewer than twenty responses per firm). The upshot is that very few Biglaw associates are afraid of losing their jobs. But maybe that's because the four firms for which we had more than 10 responses -- Kirkland, Latham, Sidley, and Skadden -- are some of the biggest and most successful law firms around.
IS WORK SLOW?
ARE YOU AFRAID OF LOSING YOUR JOB?
Earlier: Featured Job Survey: Got Work?
(30) Comments
all I want to know is did OMM match and will other Cali firms follow
hi
Hah, so this tells us what we already knew - people at Kirkland are d-bags.
seems like someone's jealous s/he didn't get a job at Kirkland...
Hmmm, I wonder if the people who are reading ATL at work and taking the time to fill out a survey are an accurate sample for a survey on how busy people are.....
Hmmm, I wonder if the people who are reading ATL at work and taking the time to fill out a survey are an accurate sample for a survey on how busy people are.....
what?!!? not enough responses from mound cotton and stern and montana? i though abovethelaw readers were classy
you use MSPaint to save those images? my eyes!
Great time to get into structured finance
Lat should provide a list of respondents, their ip addresses and individual responses. It would be helpful so that firms know who needs more work.
This proves it: business is booming enough to give me a raise!
NY to 190K!
I'm with comment #2, where's that announcement we were promised...at least some speculation on whether it was made, whether the promise of an announcement was a lie, or what a possible announcement might mean for the other two of the big three.
Lawyers are always scared. That is why they work so hard.
From a litigation consultant: Just because you can make 30 graphs doesn't mean you should. It leads to information overload. Same info could have been cut more effectively using five charts and it wouldn't have bored all your readers. Also, get rid of the shadows and grey backgrounds. It just looks tacky.
Can we get a breakdown of "other transactional"? How is M&A doing for example?
Today we're all Loyola 2Ls, except we worry about losing our job, rather than delude ourselves regarding the possibility of getting a job.
Did the survey software prevent multiple voting that might lead to skewed results?
proof that IP work is top tier and profitable. Suck on that.
seriously, still no official thread on OMM? What are you waiting for?
Flip the bars with the categories--will make it much easier to interpret the data.
I work Bankruptcy. We've never been busier in my 5 years here.
10:03, where are you?
I'm a fourth year in capital markets at a V10 firm and we are very slow (esp. the high yield specialists), though the teams with a more international (esp. Asia and Brazil) focus are still very busy and I've gotten sucked into a few of their deals. No one is worried about job security, though I'd say more than half of the associates in my group won't hit 2000 hours this year.
I just made bonus yesterday! Sweet, it's all gravy from here on in.
Not hiring Sidley...too many people slow, but still making their hours concerns me about cooking the books.
10:54, speak in the language of Yoda do not I; what in the world are you saying?
10:54, did you get dinged by Sidley? Somehow I doubt you're a person that makes firm selection decisions. In my group, a significant proportion of associates beat their hours by hundreds during the boom, so a slowdown from 2300 or 2400 to 2100 would be "slow, but I'll still make my hours." I'd be much more concerned about books-cooking at firms where people think their jobs are actually in the balance...
Interesting stuff. Lat, please do this poll periodically--eventual year-over-year comparisons would be useful.
I second 11:39...
Conclusive proof that Georgetown ensures the greatest job security out of all the law schools.
Wawaweewa!