Biglaw, Money, Reader Polls, Skaddenfreude

ATL Reader Poll: It's All About the Billables, Baby

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Last week we opened up a reader poll concerning billable hours. We’ll keep it open until 5 PM today. You can check it out, and cast your vote, by clicking here.
A number of you had various quibbles with the poll — the wording of the question, the methodology, etc. Such is to be expected from an audience of lawyers. But we do admit our earlier poll was more complicated than necessary. (Also, it was rather narrowly targeted, limited to lawyers on the new “Simpson Thacher” payscale.)
Here are two more general polls for your consideration. One is for those of you at large law firms (defined as 100+ lawyers firmwide), and the second is for those of you who are not at Biglaw shops. Some quick notes:

1. These polls are highly unscientific, vague, etc. (and we’re sure that after we put them up, a number of you will come up with refinements to them). But just humor us and take them — they’re just for entertainment purposes, really.

2. In the second poll, for non-Biglaw lawyers, if you work in an office where you’re not required to bill hours — e.g., government — just provide what you regard as the rough equivalent of billables. (We are not going to get into such fine points as whether a particular meeting in your office is more like a billable meeting with clients or a non-billable, internal administrative meeting.)

3. If you didn’t work for the entire year in 2006 — e.g., you’re a first-year who arrived in the fall — just annualize your billables. Or come up with a rough estimate of what you would have billed had you been there for the whole year.

We are overlooking all sorts of little niceties. But we don’t care; we don’t want to complicate matters. These polls, while crude, will shed light on the questions we’re really trying to get at:

1. Do Biglaw attorneys work harder than non-Biglaw attorneys?

2. If so, how much harder do they work (and is it worth the extra money)?

THANKS!!!
Note: To see the results of these polls WITHOUT voting, click here (for the Biglaw poll) and here (for the non-Biglaw poll).
Earlier: Prior ATL reader polls (scroll down)

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