This Is Why Working In Biglaw Sucks So Hard

Biglaw would be okay, for most people anyway, if going to work every day didn't fill them with a sick sense of dread and the certain knowledge their soul was slowly being sucked away.

onAugust 11, 2016 at 5:23 PMAugust 12, 2016 at 10:07 AM

Stressful day at the office Something that I know to be true, but have a difficult time explaining: working in Biglaw is the worst. Now, folks that have been there immediately understand that truth, but for the uninitiated, it can be a tough sell. Sure, the hours are long, and the demands often unreasonable, but more than anything, it is the treatment that causes people to bail on the life.

According to Valerie Alexander, a corporate trainer and former Biglaw (Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison) associate, that attitude is costing firms hundreds of thousands of dollars. She defines the phenomenon of “Accidental Managers,” people who fall into supervisory roles without any management training, and it is a huge problems for law firms:

When I work with a law firm that is losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in turnover and absenteeism, one of the first questions I’ll ask is, “How many managers do you have?” The answer for a large firm is generally, “Around 10 or 12,” at which point I have to point out that they have 300 attorneys, every one of whom has an assistant, and supervisory duties over paralegals, junior lawyers, receptionists and so on. Thus, every one of those lawyers is a manager. And none of them has been taught managerial skills. I was a lawyer in a 900-attorney firm and I taught law school, and this kind of curriculum or training does not seem to be offered anywhere. In fact, while I was a visiting professor at Berkeley Law, I took an hour out of my syllabus to teach, “How to speak to your assistant,” which most students thought was a waste of time. A year or two later, I started getting their emails, as so many finally understood what I was trying to convey.

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The notion that happy employees will cost an employer less than unhappy ones seems logical, but the increase in productivity, decrease in absenteeism, and cost of turnover can be difficult for firms — and other employers — to quantify. As a result, terrible management practices continue, despite the hit to employers’ self-interest. And there can be other reasons the practice continues:

[Upper management] came up through the ranks under their share of Accidental Managers and have never seen mindful, effective team leadership modeled. The second is that if they are aware of what makes for good managerial practices, they assume everyone already knows this as well, intuitively. That’s a grave mistake. Nothing about modern workforce management is instinctive. For most of human existence, our leaders were those who were the biggest, strongest and most aggressive — the ones who the tribe most feared. In today’s culture, fear is not a motivator for employee engagement, and yet, our instinct still tells us it is.

All of which rings very true to those that have done their time in the Biglaw ranks. Think about it: Do Biglaw firms generally offer management workshops or even give informal assistance on how to deal with junior associates? Nope. And the type of personality that does well in the academic rigors of law school (and thus winds up in Biglaw) isn’t always the best at interpersonal skills.

The hours and workload of Biglaw would all be okay, for most people anyway, if going to work every day didn’t fill them with a sick sense of dread and the certain knowledge their soul was slowly being sucked away. Crappy managers make the day in, day out of even the best jobs awful. Once Biglaw partners realize that, they’ll have a better, happier workforce on their hands.

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