Survey

Career Center Survey: Going to Take the (Bonus) Money and Run?

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Earlier this month, we surveyed you to find out how satisfied you were with your 2010 year-end bonus. Half of all associates whose firms had announced bonus payments reported dissatisfaction with their year-end bonuses.

In today’s survey, we want to find out how many of you are actually going to put your money where your mouth is and leave your firm after collecting your bonus (whether due to dissatisfaction with your bonus or just general unhappiness with your firm). Or has all the recent buzz about springtime bonuses encouraged you to stick around for a while? As always, your responses are kept completely confidential.

For all the latest bonus news, check out the updated law firm profiles at the Career Center, hosted by Lateral Link.

Career Center Survey Results: A Working Holiday

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We received over 1,300 responses to this week’s Career Center survey on whether you made MLK Day “A Day On, Not A Day Off” — for your employer. The majority of respondents, 66 percent, reported working on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Not surprisingly, the top reason for putting in extra billable hours was that people just had work that needed to get done, even though no one specifically asked them to work.  But it likely also had something to do with the fact that 32% of respondents who worked said their firm does not recognize MLK Day as an official firm holiday.  Instead, some of these firms consider it a “floating holiday,” meaning that attorneys can either choose to take a day off on MLK Day or on another floating holiday.

What were some other reasons given for working on MLK Day?

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Career Center Survey: Did you work on MLK Day?

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When it comes to working on holidays, we all know that Biglaw attorneys are some of the worst offenders. In today’s Career Center survey, brought to you by Lateral Link, tell us if you were off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, or if it was just business as usual. Then check back later this week for the survey results.

Career Center Survey Results: Bonus Satisfaction

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In a previous post, we revealed that 73% of respondents to our survey met their minimum billable requirements last year.  Today, we find out whether associates were satisfied with receiving 2009-level bonuses for a busier 2010.

Let’s see what the survey says….

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Career Center Survey Results: A Better Billable Year

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After a year like 2009 (aka the worst year ever for Biglaw), 2010 was bound to be better.  According to the nearly 1,000 survey responses we received, 2010 did in fact turn out to be a busier year for most associates.  An impressive 73% of respondents hit their firm’s minimum billable hours requirements or unofficial billable hours expectations, which ranged from 1,600 to 2,200 billable hours.  You can find a breakdown of the results by minimum billable hours required or expected, as well as by practice area, after the jump. 

Stay tuned for our next post, addressing associate satisfaction with 2010 bonus payments.  In the meantime, you can learn more about billable hours and bonuses at the nation’s top law firms on the Career Center, hosted by Lateral Link. 

Now, on to the survey results….

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A Short Reader Survey

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Every now and then we conduct reader surveys, to learn a little more about you. Today’s short survey — just two to four questions, depending on your responses — focuses on what you do and where you do it.

The survey is anonymous. The results will be used by us for a variety of purposes, both business and editorial (e.g., figuring out which stories to cover).

One short explanatory note. For the question about where you’re based geographically, the four domestic regions — Northeast, Midwest, South, and West — are based on the U.S. Census Bureau designations (which you can review here).

Please take the survey by clicking here. Thanks!

Above the Law 2011 Reader Survey [Survey Monkey]

Career Center Survey: Did you hit your billable hours requirement?

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By most accounts, law firms had a stronger year in 2010 than in 2009 (although you wouldn’t know it from the disappointing bonuses that many of them paid out). Did a busier year translate into plenty of billables for all associates? In this week’s survey, we want to know whether you met your firm’s minimum billable hours requirement (or unofficial billable hours expectation), and how happy you are with your bonus for the amount of hours you billed.

Please take our short survey below (we keep responses completely confidential), and we’ll bring you the results next week. In the meantime, you can compare billable hours requirements between the leading law firms at the Career Center, hosted by Lateral Link.

What’s Your Practice Area? Stand Up and Be Counted

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Every now and then we conduct reader surveys, to learn a little more about you. Today’s survey, aimed at practicing lawyers, seeks information about your practice area.

The survey is anonymous. The results will be used by us for a variety of purposes, some of them business-related and some of them editorially oriented (e.g., figuring out which practice areas we should cover more).

Please take the survey by clicking here. Thanks!

ATL Practice Area Survey [Survey Monkey]

Career Center Survey: How are the First-Year Associates Faring?

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If you’re in Biglaw, chances are that not all of the first-year associates currently working at your firm are of the fresh-out-of-law-school-and-still-tan-from-post-bar-trip variety. With many firms just now welcoming back some Class of 2009 associates after a yearlong deferral, Class of 2010 associates have to wait their turn to start work in 2011 or 2012. But now that the great recession is over, surely business has picked up enough so that there is plenty of doc review and due diligence to go around for first-year associates, right? Or is work still so slow that the more senior associates have to hoard all the grunt work?

In this week’s survey, we want to know whether the first-year associates at your firm are being welcomed with open arms, or viewed as the competition…

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The Hours Open Thread: How Are Your 2010 Billables?

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We’re nearing the mid-way point of 2010. By popular demand, it’s time to check in on how people are doing for billable hours. We mentioned yesterday that in-house counsel are not looking to raise the billables of outside counsel, so we wanted to take the temperature of the community.

We did this survey last year in August. At the time, a majority of you said that you were on track to bill less than 2,000 hours.

Luckily, that was a snapshot of the sad and pathetic 2009. We are now well into the awesome and great 2010. RECOVERY SECURE … right?

So how are you doing on hours this year? Take the survey below and share you thoughts in the comments. We’ll do a follow up later this week on how you and your peers are doing.

Here’s hoping many of you are on track for that 1,900 – 2,100 hour sweet spot. We don’t want you to burn out, or get fired…

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