@br89, thanks for the post. My story is similar. Maybe sharing it will help. I did biglaw for 3 years and 9 months (counted the days, lol) and left with $700k more than I started thanks to this forum. I was actually a "good associate" but I hated it. Some of it was the hours, not because they were long but because they were constantly long -- it wasn't a busy week and then a light week but constantly cranking from the moment I started. I also had the joy of starting in the recession and watching the shitshow go down. It was eat what you kill and some associates were overwhelmed and others sitting around. Then the ones sitting around got fired, and everyone else worked to death. But the economy was so bad that nobody felt they could ever complain or turn down work. Also, for all the blah blah blah about how prestigious the firm was (the best in that particular city, supposedly), most of the work I did for the first three years was rote, just 70 hours of it a week, obsessively, on deadlines, never ending. I poured my heart and soul into when I started, and so by the time I actually moved up to complex things I was already bitter with the whole experience. It did provide me with a lot of money and confidence -- when I am in a tough negotiation now, I think "if I could handle those jerks at those private equity firm and their enormous egos, I can deal with this." I will say as a positive that I actually liked most of the people I worked with, it was just the system that frustrated me, and while the partners were paid a lot more I didn't envy their life or the pressure they (through the system, which they control even though they don't realize it) impose on themselves. I can't imagine how bad it is in a place where the people are also mean.
After that, I worked for a smaller law firm for less money. My experience there was more mixed, with positives and negatives, but I can vouch that at least at that firm, the work was just as complex at my biglaw firm. I still found the phenomenon that what people REALLY wanted from me was to be their assistant lawyer and do the things they didn't want to do to free up their time for other things. No matter how smart I was or hard I worked, there wasn't really incentive to move me up to things I could clearly handle because -- the senior lawyers didn't want me taking their work from them, they wanted to leverage my time. Eventually, about a year from partnership, where I felt I'd just be the junior partner reporting to the senior partner, I left. I got an offer to do something interesting, and when that dropped I did a gut check and realized that I fundamentally could not spend another freaking minute of my life being some other lawyer's assistant lawyer anymore. Partnership in a year be damned. I don't need to be the CEO of anything, but I have a new rule now that I'll never take another job reporting to a lawyer, for the simple reason that I fear they'll just do what every other lawyer always did to me -- skim off all the interesting work and leave me with the shit.
I work for a government agency now. It's a local agency, and I'm on a special executive payscale so I make more than federal attorneys but a shade under a first year biglawyer in my city. My agency is actually extremely active and had a desperate need for my skills. The executive director had lots of dreams and plans but execution was lagging. In the first 18 months now, we closed $500 million in real estate development and in the next few years hopefully we'll knock out $500 million more. There are enormous floods of work, so it's not an easy job and I work hard for the money (my hourly pay is $88 plus benefits, so my agency is getting me for a steal, special salary deal notwithstanding), but the work is very high level and there's a pool of a dozen large and medium firms that I can outsource to on a daily basis to keep the pipeline moving. Incidentally, I have three kids now and live in an expensive city, and like
@br89, don't save as much right now. Maybe 25%.
There's various things about working at a government bureaucracy that drive me batty, but on the whole I love my particular job and role. I've learned so much, but also like br89 said, it's really taught me that I have the skills, knowledge and competence to do great things and made me realize I should not sell myself short. That's why my response to
@legalstache was that valuing his 8 years of transaction skills at $50k is probably a sign of depression. I know I live in a better market, but I personally would never work for someone else for below $150k ever again. I place a very strong value on autonomy and for avoiding being under someone's thumb, so I've been pushing for a decade to save, invest and reduce overhead to avoid ever needing to put myself in a bad situation again, and to have the ability to walk away, start my own thing and support my family for a few years with limited income if I need to.
$250 an hour x 1000 hours a year = $250k minus benefits and overhead = $200k. After all the bullshit and disorganization I've seen, from major law firms on $100 million plus deals, I am convinced there's no way this is not achievable for a lawyer with experience, hustle and diligence.
I'll also add that in the many deals I've done, I've seen some very questionable hiring and promotion decisions, particularly in the local government / small business domain, so I no longer assume title and pay are a mark of competence Sometimes, sometimes not. So just because you are competent does not necessarily mean you'll be the big boss or a millionaire, and just because someone is a big boss doesn't necessarily mean they are God's gift to anything, but if you keep at it and don't allow anyone to sell you short you will craft a meaningful and profitable career. Don't settle for a bad situation, and don't settle for $50k either.