When is biglaw capping billable hours to ensure associates' well-being, as recommended by the New York State Bar Association? Until when are we going to ignore evidence based recommendation to ensure profits? For a more human work environment that values people with something other than money.

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When they stop paying us so much.

likefunny

You should consult your old Barbri outline and look up “bargained for exchange.”

There are plenty of attorney jobs that require fewer hours and have more WLB. Don’t act shocked that the area of law that pays you 3x the median household pay requires working more than 9-5…

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Isn’t it more like 4-5x?

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No one is forcing you to work in BigLaw.

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Equally applicable to medical residents and yet the AMA stepped in to fix a horrible system

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Huh? We're in a client service, for-profit industry. The answer to your question is...not soon.

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As evidenced by most of the responses so far, it won't happen until there's a greater mindset change, which I don't see happening anytime soon in our overly capitalistic society. Especially considering how much slower legal tends to move compared to other industries.

I am optimistic a shift will come, though. Maybe it will be client-driven like most things in big law.

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What do you think?

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My partner’s new boat isn’t going to pay for itself. They ain’t capping shit.

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"Evidence based" is such a nonsense term as used here. There's plenty of "evidence" working less is good for mental health. There's also "evidence" it would cost money lol. You cant just dismiss tradeoffs by appealing to studies, this is such a lazy post covid form of argumentation.

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Never. As in not ever.

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Yeah too many corporate simps as evidenced by the comments for that to ever happen here. Although, at least in my firm, first years are taking no prisoners. They truly dgaf.

I agree that we could produce higher quality work if we didn’t have to work so much though. They’d rather wring the shittiest work possible out of us than make this a livable job and get good work.

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yeah a lot of that gets written off anyways and we don’t see nearly as much as they charge for us. it’s exploitative, no matter how much they’re paying us (which hasn’t changed significantly in the past 20 years except to slightly less than keep up with inflation)

We have been having conversations about this at the high management level. About half management thinks it’s great, about half won’t consider it. I don’t see it getting adopted any time soon because there is such a huge divide. Likely not soon as we are going into a down economy. There are ways of structuring the practice to make this possible, much like hospitals who also provide 24/7 service but do it with on call and shifts and tight knit teams who brief one another. It would require an overhaul of management practices.

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Exactly and that has been a key part of these conversations- We need to get the whole partnership on board with the change or it’s not going to happen

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This is one of the ironies of the practice in big law firms. It prides itself on things like fighting for peoples' rights and seeking justice, yet it exploits associates by overworking them, putting profits ahead of mental and physical health of employees, and overpromising on the benefits of taking a job at the firm. I'm not saying any of these things are unique to biglaw or that the associates don't get some benefits in return. I am saying that the industry could be more circumspect; but absent financial pressure to do so, I don't think significant changes will occur in the short term, if ever.

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Don’t see it happening for a lot of reasons but in any event average associate hours are trending down every year.

Too busy billing to walk anywhere tbh

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