Biglaw, Money, Reader Polls, Skaddenfreude

ATL Poll Results: We Know How Much You Make. But How Hard Do You Work?

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Whoops! This reader poll has been closed for a while, but we forgot to report back to you about the results.
Here’s what we asked you, and how you voted:

And here’s a reminder of why we conducted the poll. A reader wrote to us:

Would you consider a poll asking how many hours people at the biglaw firms who just received salary comps are working? I’m at a second-tier biglaw firm (am law 100 with nyc, dc, cali offices + regional markets) that’s considering what to do with compensation.

The reluctance to matching [the $160K payscale] is expressed as “associates at those firms just bill more hours than our associates do.” An empirical — though not necessarily scientific — survey would be helpful to confirm or debunk that position.

Based on these results, the obvious observation is that the median respondent bills somewhere between 2100 and 2200 hours. So if your associates are billing out at standard Biglaw rates, and bill at least 2100 hours a year on average, it would seem that your firm can afford to be on the $160,000 pay scale.
Other thoughts? We aren’t particularly good at parsing statistics. So we look forward to reading your comments.
P.S. This poll is closed, but two other polls about billable hours remain open. You can vote in them by clicking here.
Earlier: ATL Reader Poll: We Know How Much You Make. But How Hard Do You Work?

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