Would you rather: (1) stay in big law (V100), collect your checks, keep billing 1900+ annually, knowing you’ll likely only progress to non-equity partner but stable pipelines for work; or (2) transition to boutique firm with no billable requirements, no minimum salary, on a pure revenue split (half of collections), option for equity partner in 16 months?

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1. I’m risk averse.

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In my opinion- most people I know who were sold a boutique firms realized they have been scammed. Like many people said, not enough data but BL salary with 1900 hours is an easy choice.

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🎯

1900 isn't that bad imo, so would rather have that, but if I had some high level numbers for 2, I could be convinced. Not enough data.

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1. I'm trying to coast and collect til I can have my own firm.

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Depends whether you’re ready to be partner and build your own book of business, particularly given the boutique model is “eat what you kill”.

Agree that not enough data is given with your question, as we don’t know your goals or whether you have a decent book (or good prospects for building one). Depending on your practice area, consider the new model firms where there’s no “equity” but you keep 80% on your own collections plus about 30% on others’ work on your own clients. Then you avoid buy-in, eternal fight for more units and risk/liability of partnership with boutique partners (whose downsides you won’t really know til you’re already semi-stuck with them). If you stick with the formula-based, non-equity model, you can control your hours and — depending on your practice and ability to learn how to win within this model — your compensation.

That being said, probably over 90% of lawyers are so risk-averse, they cannot bring themselves to make this leap. It’s too bad, as if you believe in your work quality and that it stacks up fine against insanely expensive comparable work from BigLaw, you can do great in eat-what-you-kill. At my firm, we just did the numbers and the women make more than the men on average.

I think equity partner is overrated. You could well end up making less money and working more plus all the stress of having to bring in your own work. If you aren’t that concerned about the title/power within the firm, making good money with a steady workflow as a NEP/counsel is a decent gig imo.

Update: the big law firm is paying me well below market bc I got mommy tracked (210k base so way below and they’ll continue this path). The boutique option would actually pay more bc the revenue share is based on collections not originations so I could bill 100 hours a month and make more than the big law option. My book is small but growing and the boutique partners have multiple matters they want to push to me. Any changes to the above answers on these bases?

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