The Cost Of Leaving Biglaw In Dollars

What price do you pay if you leave Biglaw -- and what price do you pay if you stay?

I quit my Biglaw job at Debevoise & Plimpton ten years ago this week. Technically, I went on “I’m burned out leave” and didn’t quit until the end of the year… but the checks stopped ten years ago this week, so that’s when I start counting it.

For your benefit, I did count it. I counted up every dollar I would have earned had I kept my job (assuming that I survived the carnage of 2009 but never made partner), minus the dollars I’ve made doing things like turning tricks, teaching for Kaplan, and working for Above the Law.

All else being equal, over the past ten years I’ve forgone $2,273,500 in salary and bonuses, before taxes.

Excuse me while I go throw up.

[Preservative Rationalization Self-Defense Mechanisms, coming online in 3, 2, 1….]

Of course, I didn’t “lose” nearly that much money. If I was feeling burnt out in 2005, there’s no way on God’s green Earth that I’d have stuck it out through 2015. Most likely, I would not have survived 2009. Even if I did, who knows what kind of epic flameout would have happened while I was struggling for partnership during those years when Biglaw wasn’t making any partners? Projecting my future earnings in Biglaw is like wishcasting how I’m going to spend my PowerBall winnings.

This kind of analysis is why people like Michael Simkovic, who argue that a law degree is worth a million dollars, are so wrong. Your career is going to take various twists and turns, your life is going to take various twists and turns. As Neo would say: you can’t conduct an economic analysis past the choices you don’t understand. A college junior about to take the LSAT is not signing up for the expected economic value of a million-dollar legal career any more than my kid is signing up to play shortstop for the Mets when he picks up a wiffle-ball bat. You can’t just look at the dollars, you have to also look at the chances you are going to hang in there long enough to get them.

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Another problem with the “forgone income” metric is that I’m only looking at the income side of the ledger. I haven’t added in the costs — or what people in Biglaw call the “Golden Handcuffs.” In 2003, I moved into a rent-controlled “starter apartment” on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. No doorman, no amenities, just a place to pass out in between stints at the office. Had I stayed in Biglaw, I certainly would have upgraded to a better place, especially after I got married. Instead of living in that craphole for eight years, we would have probably doubled or even tripled our rent during that time, just to keep up with what our income told us we could afford.

I also went through a few years where I didn’t buy any new clothes besides underwear and socks. You can get away with that as a lightly employed writer. Less so as a Biglaw attorney. I didn’t take many vacations, I don’t fly first class. I don’t gamble as much as I did when I was at Debevoise (you know it’s bad when the concierge at the Borgota says “oh your case must have settled” when you walk in). All of that adds up.

I’m not counting taxes, and while I get taxed heavily because my wife still makes a decent amount of money, we would have been in the top tax bracket all these years had I decided to stay at the firm.

And, oh, I mentioned my wife. Right now, she’s on the “income” side of our finances… because we’re still married! And she still has to work! I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn to point out what the intensity and pressure of a Biglaw job can do to many marriages. How many Biglaw attorneys are paying alimony right now? Would we have been one of the lucky couples to survive that crucible? Maybe. Would we have been one of those “power couples” where both of us work intense legal jobs, maximize our incomes, and communicate largely through our personal assistants? Almost surely not. Most likely, one of us was going to make Biglaw money, the other one was going to make no more than what I’m making now, and our family income would be a complete wash. I’m just lucky to be living in a time where gender roles are breaking down (sorry, honey).

Once you start looking at expenses, you have to also look at the opportunity costs. I likely could have stuck it out for another couple of years, at least made it to 2009 and then quietly, stealthily, taken a severance package to go find something else to do with my life. Lots of people did that. How do I know? Because I couldn’t open my inbox after February 12th, 2009 without applications to write for Above the Law falling out like it was an overstuffed closet. By getting out when I did, I had a head start on figuring out what I wanted to do next. You can’t predict or plan to get “lucky,” but part of the cost of doing a job that you don’t want to do is that you are not making progress towards the career that you do want to have.

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All that said, I’ll probably never recuperate my Biglaw salary. Short of getting my own show on MSNBC (I’m available, producers), writers just make less money than attorneys and partners at top firms. They just do. If life is all about the money, I made a terrible mistake.

According to the back of my envelope, in 2006 I left about $200,000 on the table and made almost nothing. But do you know what I did buy, two weeks after I quit? Life. I found this at the ASPCA that was blocks away from my apartment:

She’s 11 now, and has been my friend on many adventures. There is no way I’d have bought a dog as a Biglaw associate. There weren’t enough hours in the day.

Speaking of life, some of it can’t be purchased. It has to be created:

Obviously, I’m not saying that people who work in Biglaw can’t have dogs and kids and Playstations. I actually get annoyed at breeders who think that contributing to the overpopulation of the Earth is some kind of ultimate lifestyle win. Just because you popped out a baby doesn’t mean your life is fulfilling.

I’m saying that I don’t think I could have these things that I wanted had I taken the money at a law firm. They don’t give you that money for free. You can’t spend 40 (or 60, or 100) hours a week doing a thing and have it not impact how you spend all of your other time. For me, the impact of Biglaw was entirely negative on every other aspect of my life. It was making me a worse person, not objectively necessarily, but a worse person compared to the person I wanted to be. I like me, now. And I didn’t like what I was, or what I was becoming, ten years ago.

They say you can’t put a price on happiness? Bulls**t. I can. My happiness has been worth approximately $2,273,500 over the past 10 years.