Featured Job Survey Results: Billable Hours By City
(Or: Do New Yorkers really work harder?)
So far, we’ve received exactly 1,400 responses to last week’s survey on hours and bonuses. You can see how bonuses broke down for the Classes of 2005 and 2006, based on hours, in the results to yesterday’s Lawyer of the Year survey.
But how did billable hours break down by city?
There’s been a lot of discussion in responses to our previous surveys about whether New Yorkers really work as hard as other cities, especially given the Christmas and New Year’s efforts of their California brethren.
Find out how New Yorkers really stack up, after the jump.
As it turns out, New Yorkers really are working harder than associates in Atlanta and Texas, but so are associates just about everywhere else. When it comes to associates billing 2400 hours or more, there’s not a huge amount of difference between New York and D.C., and Boston, L.A. and San Francisco aren’t exactly slouches either.
Breakdowns for the number of hours spent on billable, pro bono, or administrative work were relatively constant across classes and locations. About 60% of associates had fewer than 50 pro bono hours, with another 18% in the 50 to 99 range, and the rest at 100 or more. About 40% of associates had fewer than 100 administrative hours, with another third in the 100 to 199 range. But there were a couple of exceptions: Texas and Chicago lagged the rest of the country in pro bono hours, New Yorkers were much less likely to spend time on non-billable work, and a surprisingly high percentage of associates in Atlanta lost at least 300 hours to non-billable time.
Hours By Location
| Less Than 1800 | 1800 to 1999 | 2000 to 2099 | 2100 to 2199 | 2200 to 2299 | 2300 to 2399 | 2400+ | |
| Atlanta | 24% | 28% | 14% | 18% | 6% | 4% | 6% |
| Bay Area | 7% | 27% | 24% | 12% | 10% | 11% | 9% |
| Boston | 20% | 22% | 24% | 11% | 4% | 7% | 11% |
| Chicago | 9% | 9% | 32% | 17% | 13% | 9% | 11% |
| Los Angeles | 7% | 15% | 25% | 17% | 16% | 10% | 10% |
| New York | 14% | 16% | 23% | 13% | 11% | 7% | 15% |
| Texas | 19% | 26% | 14% | 15% | 8% | 8% | 8% |
| Washington, D.C. | 9% | 23% | 23% | 13% | 8% | 10% | 14% |
| Other | 15% | 25% | 26% | 14% | 8% | 4% | 9% |
(50) Comments
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i did not read the post, but i know in my gut new york lawyers do work harder than anyone anywhere else
Lat needs to check his math. By these numbers, significantly more LA associates are working 2100+ hours than NY associates.
I know in my ass that we here in L.A. work harder than anyone else.
I feel in my nipples that N.Y. does work hard too though.
Looks like Boston is the place to be! Good hours, good chowder.
I have not been a fan of these surveys so far, and the results usually seem flawed - but the results for this one are really interesting, and are varied enough that they do not seem skewed.
That said, where are all the NYC'ers on this site who say that 2400 is the norm? Who are these 50%+ who responded who say they bill below 2099 in NYC??? Is this possible?
Another thought - perhaps this should have been restricted to lawyers in firms of 100+ attys?
"New Yorkers were much less likely to spend time on non-billable work, and a surprisingly high percentage of associates in Atlanta lost at least 300 hours to non-billable time."
That's because NYers are more "generous" when it comes to what they consider billable time.
I know from the hair standing up on my testicles that we work harder here in LA.
How does Boston get put up in the big leagues? Significantly more lawyers working less than 2,000 hours than any other hard working cities mentioned, plus Chicago, in fact, it's almost as bad as Texas. And it is the only one of the hard working cities that doesn't have at least 20% of respondents working at least 2,300 hours. I'd actually tier it more like this:
New York, DC, Chicago
LA, Bay Area
Boston, Texas
Atlanta
2:24, if the hair on your testicles has enough energy to stand up, then you're not working 2400+ hours. You're just very well air-conditioned.
And once the COL index of 97 for the ATL is factored in against NYC's 198, Atlanta lawyers more than NYC with half the work
2:24, I assume you mean NY, DC, Chicago, LA, and Bay Area all on the same line.
I'd like a survey detailing who works more hours: attorneys doing sophisticated cross-border transactional work or complex bet-the-company litigation.
I'm in Philly and I work harder than anyone in NYC or Beantown. Why? Because the women in Philly are FUGLY.
Option #1
Bill my arse off and earn a major bonus?
Option #2
Waste time and money at bars on the trolls and skanks in this God forsaken city?
The people billing 2400+ don't have time for this site
I'm in NY, billing about 2000. Why in the name of all that is holy would anyone want to bill 2400+? I don't see enough of my wife, dog, friends and gym as it is.
Boston-"good hours, good chowder" and an amazingly high tax bracket to take a huge chunk of your earnings. I'll need more than a good bowl of soup to ever work in that s-hole.
Did I mention the people suck and the girls are ugly?
Lat -
How about a fluff piece on the most attractive city for attorneys.
My vote is for NYC
This is a poor time to make a comparison by city. NYC's corporate work has dried up compared to previous years because of the subprime crisis causing billables to be lower than normal. I'd like to see a breakdown by practice group.
I used to work at A&B (in a satellite office) and I'm not surprised to hear the 300+ non-billable statistic at all. A&B is terrible about expecting people to devote several hundred hours of time to non-billable endeavors, on top of billable ones. Some of those hours are boosted by the firm's general rule of recording time that would be considered irrelevant and unnecessary at any other firm (e.g., firm social events, group associate lunches, etc.). It's like they want to know what you are doing every minute of the day.
I like the clock graphic
Why group 1800-1999? Many firms have hours cutoffs between 1900 and 1950, which would therefore seem to make separate columns for 1800-1899 and 1900-1999 analytically useful. Also, it helps to more fairly represent what's really going on, given that everything else is divided into 100-hour blocks.
This is a self-selected sample, people. The lawyers billing large amounts of hours are not diddling around on a blog answering a survey.
Why group 1800-1999? Many firms have hours cutoffs between 1900 and 1950, which would therefore seem to make separate columns for 1800-1899 and 1900-1999 analytically useful. Also, it helps to more fairly represent what's really going on, given that everything else is divided into 100-hour blocks.
For any of you outside of TX--your life must suck
What constitutes the "other" category?
2:55:
It does. I live in Atlanta, work NYC hours, and get paid on a Kansas City payscale. Thanks for asking.
I wonder what impact the credit crunch had on this. I work in structured finance in NY at a firm that isn't firing people (or gently letting them go) and I was on track to bill 2900 hours in August. I ended up with around 2200.
I work in TX, have great hours, get paid NY $, and have a life
This may be a stupid question, but what does it mean to "bill 2400"? Is that pure billable hours only (excluding all non-billable events, such as recruiting)? Does it include or exclude pro bono? I would imagine that the answers probably vary among firms (and even how people have interpreted the questions within a firm), making this survey inaccurate...
3:00 - Miami, Philly, Minneapolis, Denver, San Diego, Seattle
3:04(2) - of course this survey is flawed--everything on ATL is (except (generally) the only info we care about--salary/bonus info)
Lat has to think of something so we click on surveys--for each person that clicks and participates in a survey, Lat gets paid $$
Dude.
So Angelenos are more likely than New Yorkers to bill 2000-2399 hours, and New Yorkers are more likely than Angelenos to bill less than 2000?
I do not want to see any more complaining from the NY bitches on this site. LA beats you out for complaining rights. We win.
I wonder if Latty Boy ever feels crappy-as-hell that he left Wachtell with its incredible salaries and concomitant prestige to publish useless surveys and generally run ATL??
p.s. Yeah I said "concomitant;" morons, go look it up...
3:04: Good question. Many of my friends at non-hours-based-comp firms use "bill" and "work" interchangeably.
Don't feel sorry for people not living in Texas. Remember, you live in Texas. We therefore feel sorry for you. No amount of money could force me to live in that gun-toting s-hole.
Don't feel sorry for people not living in Texas. Remember, you live in Texas. We therefore feel sorry for you. No amount of money could force me to live in that gun-toting s-hole.
I think the results, at least for NY, are fairly accurate. Among my peers at NY Biglaw, these numbers seem about right.
Lawyers are lazy. When I was in law school I worked 2200 hours a year and went to school full time (12 hours a semester). Now that I am done with school and just have a single job as a BigLaw attorney, billing 2200 hours is a walk in the park.
5:47: glad to know you're a sour workaholic AND full of yourself!
You need two additional line on that thing: WLRK Hours
2400 I hit in September.
This chart needs an additional segment that discloses how many people from each market actually took the survey.
5:47, aside from the other d-bag aspects of your post, I don't know what kind of job you had in law school, but there's a big difference between billing hours and working the same number of hours, in my opinion. I worked while I was in law school too and wasn't surfing the internet all day, but it was still very different from working as a full-time associate in BigLaw.
DC still remains the hardest legal market in which to secure a biglaw job (of the so-called elite legal markets) because of its small size relative to NYC, its relatively low attrition, its east coast location, and the fact that SCOTUS, DC Cir, DDC and many other federal clerks (Bristow fellows, DOJ Honors, etc.) stay in or migrate to DC.
What does this have to do with the survey? Nothing. I just wanted DC to get some props too.
JT billed 4800 hours...in a day.
Atlanta to $35K because thats how much lazy rednecks deserve...
I make almost as much money as you guys make, and I billed ZERO hours last year.
Man, I sure am glad I went in house.
The differences are statistically insignificant given the size of the sample.
The differences are statistically insignificant given the size of the sample.
All this talk about this place is an S-hole and that place is an S-Hole.
The whole east coast is an S-Hole. I would rather live in Texas where the women are hotter and the weather more agreeable than the entire east coast.
East Coast =expensive, cold, ugliest women in the country.
California = expensive, better weather, hotter women.
Why does everyone care about hours written down? Any idiot can write down that they work 2200 hours. The people that talk the most about their hours are the people that bullsh*t the most on their time entries.