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They pay you to help them provide those services, or in some case completely provide those services to those clients. When they take your cost and other costs and compare it with the fee, they hope to make a profit.
How the business is cast is that even the partners are included as business costs. This means everyone's target is usually their cost + team cost + share of overheads + profit target. Depending on how lucky you are, you may end up working for three kinds of partners:
A. The Rainmaker: This partner has a big book of their own and uses the resources to actually help get the job done and not just play arbitrage. This partner's team will have some highly talented people so your learning will be fantastic. This partner is also someone who will eventually need to drop clients as their practice expands. So if you're in their team, they will help you with book building in case you succeed in making partner. But on the flip side, the team culture will be super toxic as everything turns on one personality. There will be things like personal loyalty requirements, working late hours without actual reason. Since this partner pays well, they will expect you to be personally loyal, so in case they move, they will expect you to join them. But you will get a good bonus and you will make good money.
B. The Cutter: This partner's book is largely comprised of work referred by the other partners which will be in their area of domain expertise. They don't fully understand that they also now are a part of the Business and therefore are wary of taking any creative or bold new moves. So what they do is run a ship that is lean and where the costs are kept to a minimum. They hope to meet their target solely or majorly with cross referenced work. Unlike with the Rainmakers, this team is one where the partner is an expert in their domain. There will be close interaction and direct learnings. The hours will be hell, but they will be meaningful late hours cause there will be actual work to do. It won't be waiting up for something to be reviewed etc. They will treat you as one of their team and make you work directly with them in cases if it means getting the job done on time. The team culture will be toxic as there will be more than one personality who has a cult. This is cause the Cutter cannot on their own have a personality that dominates. This has its ups and downs but also means perhaps playing a more exhausting from of politics than with other teams. Eventually the Cutter builds a book, not a big one but a book and you may make partner too. But you won't have the skills to do it anyway except the cross referenced way and you will always feel insecure about targets.
C. The Stud: This partner exists only because they have a way of networking with people and doing business development at an unheard of scale. Because of this, firms which have Studs, often exempt them from actually have to practice any law at all. They will just need sufficient legal information to have a conversation with someone who has a legal problem. Their goal is securing the mandate and their business model is outsourcing performance to other partners. They do either having large teams with leadership hires (salaried partners/ Principals) who handle the legal end of things or referring work to other partners but taking a cut of the billings by topping up the internal invoice. Joining this team is like actually joining a firm within a firm. You will get to learn a lot of about lot of areas of law but no one area in actual depth. This allows you to become a generalist and eventually pivot into a practice area you find enjoyable. The pay in this team will be good. Bonuses won't be the best except for really senior people. The team culture will be super vulnerable to nepotism, egos, high stress and an element of hero worship. Hours will be insane as you cater to the ego of one person almost all the time. But in a few years you can leave and join another team or even another firm and they will take you.
The rule of thumb is three. Your Retainer x 3 = your minimum billing target. Anything higher than you may get a bonus. Anything lower, then you're probably looking at the sack. Some firms have it higher with x4 to x5. But if you are in a decent ship x3 will be minimum. This is not a revenue target. This is a billing target and it applies to everyone including an A0. The work you do it is billed for, and you're normally paid 1/5th that price per hour. So do the math, your hourlies are insane.
Every major firm you go to will probably be like this. Plan for it and then see how you want to steer your endgame. Don't expect a starry eyed surprise, there is no DJ.
Given the above my only advise to you is:
Please fill in your timesheets daily.
For breakeven: 12 Hours of BILLABLE work monthly
For 3x: 36 hours of BILLABLE work monthly which less than 2 hours of BILLABLE work per day in a month with 20 working days. Even if a firm is able to bill 25% of the time that an A0 puts, a maximum of 8 hours of work every day is required .
Where is the toxicity coming from, then?
•Inefficient SAs and PAs who know zilch about delegation of work and communication with a junior.
•Incompetent Partners who fail to get marquee clients who pay on time and at a decent rate. ( If the work billed by an A0 is not realized by the firm it doesn't contribute to the target and hence more work)
As an associate moves up the ladder the retainer would increase but so would the percentage of actual work that may be billed ( For A0 it may be 25% for A1 it may be 50%) and the calculation of work required from any associate woul remain largely the same.
Where is the toxicity coming from??????????