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Partner: “we highly encourage you all to take vacation to avoid burnout.”
Also Partner: “I understand you’re on vacation but we really need help getting this deliverable to the client, this is great experience and if you don’t take it you’ll fall behind your peers.”
What’s vacation? 🧐. I’m familiar with working from hotels in remote locations but not this vacation of which you speak.
Thank you! Been saying this for ages, there’s no vacations if you have billable hour requirements.
Of course it’s not vacation, but it’s exactly how vacations should be treated at firms. Credit for the hours/week for X weeks of vacation you get, and it’s usable time.
Amen. Not to mention I do some work on every “vacation.”
Then your standard would simply go up by 80 hours.
Devil’s Advocate: it is not difficult to calculate at the beginning of the year how much you need to work per day when you subtract vacation days and firm holidays so you can have the opportunity to enjoy this time off. (Subject to: a toxic boss/work environment, or having a yearly billable requirement > 2000hrs)
AA1 - I agree that’s an aspect of the toxic environment from big law, but this systematic change would help alleviate some of that pressure. Law firms are throwing money at us to keep us happy. At a certain point they should realize many associates would prefer slightly better hours metrics and vacations over an addition few grand
I don’t have billable requirements but when I go on vacation nobody does my work for me. Maybe a simple appearance or depo that can’t be reschedule gets covered but otherwise nobody is doing my job while I’m gone. So I still have to work extra before and after the vacation and always do some work while away to keep things moving. Isn’t this the same? I think my point is that unless someone is brought in to literally replace you while you’re on vacation there’s no way around dealing with accumulated work caused by your vacation, billing requirements or not.
2000 hours is 50 40 hour weeks. Bill an average of 8/day, and just calculate how many days you're ahead each month.
Reality in our profession, however, is that vacation is a chance to bill 50-100% of your regular workday at a hotel or other location, then be able to go out somewhere new at night. That's the tradeoff for the giant salary and huge bonuses. Go down a level if you want work life balance.
I think the issue is the current reality of the profession needs to be checked. It’s counterintuitive to say someone should take vacation to avoid burnout while concurrently requiring/expecting they be available while on said mental break and requiring they work overload in advance or after the break to make up for the time off. This is precisely what leads to burnout and diminishing returns on the hours associated are putting in.
There’s one firm that I know of that does this: Knobbe Martens. It’s an IP firm based in California.
Preach
if your billable requirement is less than 2000 how is this an issue? Work might not stop, for sure but my requirement is 1800. I generally try to get 100-150 ahead in the first quarter and then I’m in control. Double down for a big bonus or cruise to 1800 with plenty of time off. It’s my choice.
Firms don’t set “requirements” of over 2000, but make it very* clear that to stay competitive with your peers and have any shot at partnership the expectation is 21-2400. I’ve worked at two top firms that make it clear this is the expectation if not the official policy. Clearly this discussion is centered around top firms with high billable requirements, not all am100 firms generally.
I once interviewed with a firm whose PTO policy was you can take as much PTO as you want . . . as long as you bill 2000 hours per year.
All*