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1. Most tier one firms offering high salaries require the associates to work a minimum of 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. I am talking about the minimum here, a lot of associates are made to work 12 hours/day or more, and often on Sundays too. This brings the minimum total working hours every month close to 250. Assuming a salary of 15 LPA that most tier one firms offer (bonus etc. will vary, but rarely will A0s or A1s make more than this in the first couple of years on a regular basis), they are paid around 1.25 lakhs per month, i.e. for these 250 hours. This comes to approximately 500 rupees per hour. That's one fact.
2. The tier one firms (I know this for a fact for at least three of these firms and the others are probably following a similar practice to stay competitive) usually bill clients around 4000 rupees for 1 hour of A0/A1's work. Not all firms specifically show this in the bills, but the internal practice and balancing come to this generally. That's the second fact.
This means that for every hour the associate works, approximately 88% of the money that the client pays goes to the firm and remaining 12% to the associates. I will not make any specific comment on exploitation, or unfairness. People can come to their own conclusion from this.
Even if one disputes the billing part, the so-called high salary offered by law firms is also a myth as one can clearly see that it is boiling down to 500 rupees per hour. For the sake of perspective, most CLAT coaching centres pay senior law students more for taking classes these days.
I urge you, please don't disrespect the integrity of such a phenomenal profession. LI is an open platform, there may be some keen CLAT aspirants/Law students who may be discouraged to work hard because of such a behaviour. I'm really really sorry if I'm being a Karen here but you can't just call a profession that has given us so much as a nation 'Pathetic', not acceptable.
Anybody please answer this one as I still have sometime to make changes to my career path and I don't want to come here more than half a decade later and write things like 4.
The problem here isn't with the profession of law, per se. It's with the lack of culture within a certain sub-set of employers in the industry, i.e., some teams within Tier-1 firms. You may absolutely enjoy working on a complex merger or interpreting the latest RBI regulations, but if your partner and PA keep breathing down your neck like a dragon in heat, and don't allow you to have life outside of work, then where's the space to enjoy your work?
It wasn't a lack of choices, which is perhaps why the bitterness. Would rather have done something like medicine which is more dulfilling while paying well. Here (in the legal field) those two seem to be dichotomous goals more often that not.
(Please don't assume I'm saying that the inhuman treatment of the law firms are justifiable, it completely not but I'm trying to point out that you knew the stakes still you joined for the money. So, there is no point in ranting about the profession)
And avoid playing the victim card about being privileged or not, it obviously makes a difference but at the end honest work pays off!!
I don't really care tbh if I'm being a boomer or a karen if I'm able to withhold the integrity of my profession :)
If you're saying you knew the physical and mental toll law firm life takes on you, before you graduated - congratulations, you represent 1% of the population. 99% of us are not prepared for the massive slog that law firm life actually is - it's not comparable to what life as an intern is, and most of us choose to unwittingly glorify the Tier-1 firms while in law school. And I'm not just talking about the long working hours (which is a reality across most professional service industries) - I'm talking about the toxicity and the lack of humanity that most senior law firm professionals exhibit routinely.
In-house Counsel: show me a comparable list of corporates that hire at numbers similar to the large law firms, and pay as much. The reality is that outside of the top I-banks and FMCG companies, most in-house companies do not hire freshers or hire freshers for peanuts.
Honest work pays off: have you even seen the attrition numbers in the top law firms? It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that most of them are infact honest workers. They are just fed up with folks like you who think that they are playing the victim card.
You aren't holding the integrity of the profession - you're upholding the integrity (or the lack thereof) of the toxicity within law firms.
And when I said that honest work pays off, I wasn't referring to the corporate culture let alone, I wrote it in a generalized way that if you work hard in whichever field you're you'll reach great heights. Don't you think mentioning the high attrition rates is sort of an irony in this context? Granted I'm trying to argue that you should work hard and on the contrary people are quiting nvm. Why would someone has to mention that they're not privileged enough to do anything other than corporate work, does every single barrister or judge come from a privileged family? It is my argument for accusing him of playing the victim card.
I'll be honest, your writing is far more superior and even as a person I suppose you're a more experienced one but I don't want to mislead from my point that calling this profession 'pathetic' can't be justified. You may call that the corporate culture is pathetic, you may phrase it in a not-so-generalized way but law as a whole is what we have as a nation.
Quote: A large percentage of professionals are not slogging away voluntarily. Nobody (perhaps a few) enters law firms with the agenda to go home at 2am in the morning (and in some cases not go home at all). While a few brag about their working hours, they soon realise the unsustainability of such a lifestyle - but it becomes diffcult to quit (more on this below)
Try getting into office at 9am and leaving at 9pm. If you work in the kind of teams I've referred to in my earlier thread, you'd soon realize that these working hours are a pipe dream. Check out the other thread on this platform where a SA was pissed at his junior for not responding to messages post 9pm. That's the kind of culture most folks routinely deal with.
Quote: The fact that you think a 2-3 lac deficit is acceptable to most people shows why the earlier comment on privilege makes sense. If you are the sole (or one of the primary) breadwinner(s) of your family, that kind of money makes a huge difference. If you come from privilege, I don't really expect you to understand but don't pass off your myopic opinion as mainstream advice.
Moreover, for reasons mentioned earlier, switching to a comparable in-house role isn't always easy. Pay cuts aside, there are multiple considerations such as the nature of the role, your personal growth, as well as the demand to supply ratio. Think of it this way. For every 10 law firm professionals, there are perhaps 3-4 decent in-house roles. Where do the other 6 go? They stay put in their current roles or move to smaller firms (again with a pay cut in current or future earnings), because the alternative is to give up working all together.
Quote: I don't understand your point here. How is it ironical in any sense?
Quote: Try making it as an independent lawyer with a decent income in less than 5-7 years, without any contacts or family support. You simply cannot. The system is rigged against such folks.
Cracking the judiciary exams to become a judge isn't a piece of cake either, and costs quite a bit of money for coaching fees, accomodation if you're living in a hub like Delhi, and accounting for income lost while preparing for these exams.
Larger point being, your choices are directly linked to the privilege you come from. If my family can't afford for me to spend months or years making it as a judge or a lawyer, I will be constrained to choose the option that's best for them. If the choice is between setting food on the table now v. waiting for 7 years to make it as an independent lawyer (no guarantees there), what do you think a person would choose? Is it still a volunrary choice?
Quote: Point well taken, but don't get so romantic about the law. It's not 'all we have as a nation'. If it was, then you wouldn't see the Munawar Faruquis of India being silenced, for instance.
Cheers.
Sidenote- why do the most obnoxiously un empathetic people always whine about the victim card haha, when people like them are the ones who feel personally attacked by the critiques of a system?
If No. 2 is true for your firm, you are not in a tier 1. They lied to you
So if one wants to switch, perhaps MBA is a good option given that many tech folks/CAs use this route to catapult themselves into alternative careers.
Law Firms need you for 250 hours, and so they pay accordingly. They give you the opportunity through volume. What's worse than being busy for 14 hours? Being busy in figuring out how to use the 14 hours.
Not justifying law firms, but bringing in some perspective here.
It only means that there is a huge scope to break into and create more new law firms, without which T1 will always be able to play the volume game.
I think there are a lot of considerations you aren’t taking into account. Let me preface by saying I don’t think this job is for everyone, and for sure there’s a lot of jobs that might pay a better hourly rate with lesser hours.
However, what you should also take into account is the long-term consequence of being in a starting high-income job with great growth prospects.
In your CLAT teacher example, what you missed out on is the limit to the earning, usually capped by the fewer hours that the coaching Center is open for. Assuming you get paid the same amount, 500 Rs. and you work for 6 days a week, teaching 5 hours a day, you would earn 72000 Rs. in a month. (This isn't usually how much people work or earn on a regular basis IMO.)
By contrast, a T-1 lawyer will earn 1.2L in a month due to the longer work hours expected. Therefore in net, the lawyer makes 48000 Rs more each month.
Assume that the lawyer and the CLAT teacher have similar base expenses of 40000 per month. Therefore after expenses, the earnings would be Rs. 32000 for the teacher and 80000 for the lawyer. Further, each person will spend some money on small luxuries and hobbies. In a best-case scenario, both these people save the entire extra money apart from taxes (Not calculating this since it would be too much for LI, but s.44ADA is also a big benefit for lawyers). But since most people also do indulge in small luxuries, my assumption would be that since the lawyer has much less free time, this will lead to him saving more money after spending on luxuries. This difference in spending and net earnings, when invested over time in low-cost funds would give staggering returns due to compound interest, whereas the lower absolute amount for teachers will fail to produce the same amount.
As an example, assume 20,000 Rs. per month as luxury spending for both the lawyer and the teacher, and the rest as savings invested. 60,000 Rs. invested at age 23, at a compound interest rate of 11% (after inflation in the stock market) would at the age of 50 be somewhere around 99L Rs. compared to just 16L for the same time for 10,000 Rs. So in the long run, you actually earn 83L more in the first year, if you can invest and stay invested till retirement.
Secondly, lawyers at T1 firms get a continuous increase in their pay year on year (Not taking into account the increased pay by jumping firms). A smart lawyer could easily minimize lifestyle inflation and keep spending constant (or increase minimally) and thus earn an even greater net earning. All of this would again be invested and start compounding. Over time the combination of less free time, a very high absolute pay at the end of the month, and the ability to get increased pay opportunities for the first 8-11 years based on job performance itself would make a very very large difference.
These factors are what makes such a high-paying Job in absolute terms very rewarding in a delayed gratification economy (Where investing today will reap you a lot of rewards at a later date).
I guess what I’m trying to say would be that while the hourly rate might be the same, the net effects of the long hours and the growth prospects, will over time if managed properly, reap financial fruits which aren’t possible through most other jobs.
P.S. All of this is obviously contingent on good financial habits and purposeful spending. Also, obviously whether the long hours, mental stress, and substantial compromises on a personal front justify this earning is a personal choice depending on your vision of a good life.
When you proclaim 1:8 being unfair - you've decided to discount all the things you take for granted as free. The secretaries, IT guys and BOBs who are available round the clock also deserve to earn their families their bread. In addition, while you only need to shoot an email saying we should get a new software or a contract management tool - these are expensive and needs to be paid for. So also is the rent in that swanky office you proudly got your family to see, not to forget stay late at because A/C or WiFi at home isn't great.
While employees are important- they sure AF aren't the only cost being borne by the firm.
Hope you leave the logic and computation of any figures to the clients / financial advisors - and not merely because it isn't a lawyer's job to comment / review those.
1. Juniors don't know the law the way it is practiced. Surely, they may know the sections and statutes, but not how it manifests in contracts, deals and courtrooms. As a result they have to spend a lot more time in doing any work. A senior might do a draft in half an hour. A junior might take 4 hours to do the same thing. So a junior billing 500 per hour is actually costing 2000, and a senior billing 6000 per hour is actually billing 3000 only for the same work. Not much difference now. Eh?
2. Seniors before them/partners have learned the law, spent time practicing, developed the understanding, then developed the agreements, materials and house resources on the shoulders of which the juniors work. Juniors do not have to spend time on developing and gathering the resources. They get it as part of the house' resource banks, which shortens their paths to progress.
3. The juniors do not have to spend time hunting for work. Think about it this way. A junior getting 100% of the monetary value of the work is also going to be spending time and resources hunting for work. A law firm saves that as it produces benefits specializations - i.e., a junior ends up using full 250 hours of his potential in billable work, which wouldn't be the case otherwise. Suppose a junior spending 125 hours of doing billable work and 125 hours in hunting for work. Does not look as rosy now. Eh?
4. Juniors ride on the goodwill of the firm and partners. Goodwill is a real thing. It may not be apparent to juniors and all who have been spoon fed from their parents, their schools and their colleges. No client would give juniors any work unless there is some senior leader/partner involved in the pipeline. That's goodwill which is earned over years of doing good work. Juniors bypass that process and are able to do billable work from day one at the firm because of their leader/partner's goodwill. So they need to pay off for that goodwill from the monetary value of their work. Think of it as a franchise license cost.
5. Junior's work is filtered and supervised by seniors, which provides them with a fail-safe against juniors damaging their reputation. Even a scratch on one's reputation can prove fatal, but juniors are saved from such scratches as the senior's experience helps cushion junior's mistakes while the latter gets a safe space to hone and develop their skills and experience.
^ All of the above are intangibles which don't become apparent to those eager to rebel without any rhyme or a reason. Don't go with half-baked ideas into your legal career and end up hurting yourself without so much as moving even one stone in anyone's life.
- Any place can be toxic, it all depends on the people. Sure, some law forms are known toxic. But so are some Corporates too- ICICI, GE, etc., were slave masters and work-life balance was unheard of.
- It's a tough call at your age to balance work and Life. I have cursed (looks like nothing has happened to the opposite party though !!!) a million times, when sales folks send something on a friday night (or worse on saturday/sunday) and expect that you respond immediately.
- I know lots of people, who continue to get brow beaten in In-house/Law firms, as the pay cheque is important. We should respect their decision and let them choose when and how to lead their lives.
- Litigation is exhilarating only if the month end bills are not a bother, but the challenges in lit are not to be taken lightly. Clients are notoriously tough when it come to paying fees, the less said about the court system- the better. Counsels sometimes have to wait for a whole day as the list may not move at all owing to some big matter taking up the whole day. Imagine doing nothing for a whole day, when you have to be ready to argue at a few minutes notice.
So all in all, no place is kind or welcoming... it all depends on what you bring to the table. You will need to make choices- and at times the results can be disappointing, but that is life.
All the best folks.
From Oldie.