A survey of trainees and junior attorneys at American regulation companies’ places of work in London exhibits that they spend as a lot as 13 hours a day at work—roughly twice the common work week within the U.Ok.
That comes with a life-style of Deliveroo dinners and selecting up calls at “ungodly hours or on days off,” an nameless worker informed Authorized Cheek, a authorized information website that surveyed 2,000 staff throughout London’s numerous regulation companies, in November.
“I haven’t seen daylight in three months,” stated one other nameless worker.
Yet one more participant stated that though trip time was revered, they had been at all times anticipated to reply work calls.
Sure, all of the tropes that exhibits, like Fits, make you imagine about how lengthy and laborious regulation companies work their new employees work, may simply be true.
Whereas it has the trimmings of a poisonous work tradition folks would attempt to keep away from, working lengthy hours at regulation companies comes with good-looking pay. Beginning salaries within the prime companies are over £170,000, or practically 5 occasions the U.Ok.’s median revenue in 2023.
The likes of Kirkland and Ellis and Paul Hastings, American regulation companies with practices in London, pay £172,000 and demand a median of 12 to 13 hours a day, The Occasions reported. In distinction, British companies make workers work barely shorter on common whereas capping beginning pay at £150,000.
To make sure, not each agency within the trade has brutally lengthy hours in alternate for a six-figure paycheck. A number of of the companies listed by Authorized Cheek in its survey restrict their workday to 9 hours or so for freshly certified solicitors.
Nonetheless, that’s a far cry from the common workweek within the U.Ok., which spans 36.6 hours or 7.3 hours a day.
Billable hours are the metric regulation companies typically use to measure the efficiency of their attorneys. In some instances, these hours tick as much as 2,000 a yr. The U.S. calls for the next variety of hours on common in comparison with Britain.
Nonetheless, the mannequin has been controversial amid price pressures and calls for for a extra clear system. Attorneys additionally argue that there might be extra environment friendly methods to do the identical work with out a billable hours construction that determines pay. With AI’s emergence into public consciousness, the authorized career is already starting to vary.
That hasn’t hit hiring momentum, at the least on the prime degree. London’s prime regulation companies employed companions at file pace in 2024, pushed by American regulation companies’ urge for food to compete for expertise within the British capital.
A part of the attraction for contemporary expertise at U.S.-based companies is the excessive pay they will swing relative to British ones. Essentially the most esteemed regulation companies are rethinking their accomplice pay construction in response to the rising competitors.
“The impression of the covetous New Yorker on the very best ranges of the London authorized companies market over such a brief interval has been profound,” a report by recruiting agency Edward Gibson stated in July.
A model of this story was initially printed on Fortune.com on Nov. 5, 2024.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
