Hours targets, client demands and chasing that bonus
It’s no secret that corporate law is demanding, with solicitors at top firms racking up the hours to justify generous paycheques and firm perks. Long days and demanding clients are just part of the job, but how bad can it actually get? Some weary lawyers have taken to Reddit to share their longest day on the job and how they spent it.
One Redditor shares:
“My worst week was 6 consecutive 20 billable hour days … capped off with a cheeky 15-hour day on the Sunday.”
In a heartbreaking turn of events, this billable marathon turned out to be fruitless as the poster continues, “the deal collapsed that night” — adding sarcastically, “Stuff of dreams.”
This is not the only solicitor who describes slogging through the night for little reward. Another poster recalls:
“Rushing to close financing that the client insisted had to close before Easter Friday. Started work 9am on the Wednesday and didn’t stop working till 11pm on the Thursday. Breaks for food and bathroom only. Totally horrific, and the irony was that by the time we closed the money wouldn’t move in time anyway.”
Others chime in with similar experiences. It seems that the concept of a “day” can quickly lose meaning for busy solicitors. “Longest ‘day’ was 8am Thursday, finishing later Friday afternoon, working through the night with no sleep,” shares one. “Went to work as normal at 9am on Monday, deal closing then ran overnight, got home at 5pm the next day,” another remembers.
While firms compensate their particularly assiduous solicitors with hefty bonuses, the reality of billable hours targets was made clear by the thread’s posters. One Redditor, describing themselves as “a transactional finance lawyer at City law firm” shared that they had “billed 16 hours on one day (which was preceded by several 13 hours days the same week).” However, this wasn’t enough to get them over their firm’s hours target.
Responding to a wet-nosed law student curious to know how lawyers are compensated for these mega-days, the poster explained, “I haven’t achieved the target this year and so didn’t get any bonus. The fact that I worked 13-16 hours per day on that particular deal is irrelevant … if your question was whether I got paid for that 16 hours as overtime, the answer is — unfortunately no.”
The cannier lawyers on the subreddit keep targets and bonuses at the forefront of their minds when taking on work. One poster, a disputes lawyer, shares:
I needed to bulk up my time to meet chargeable targets a few months ago after a quiet period. Got myself on another teams doc review exercise, charged for a couple of hours reading in and then doc review from 10am to midnight for a few days. Nice, easy, mind numbing boring chargeable made worth it for the bonus.
Despite these stories of gruelling hours, many contributors on this thread appear willing to put up with this tough work, seeing long hours as a way to get ahead. One poster says, “It’s not pleasant but it really does force you to develop a lot faster in my honest opinion, and also justifies the outrageously high NQ salaries and charge-out rates.” Another says of their longest day, “It was a magnificently horrendous experience, but hugely beneficial for my career long term.”
While this may seem like a strange form of masochism to outsiders, long hours in exchange for high salaries and fast career progression is a trade-off many corporate lawyers are keen to make. To get a sense of what the average day looks like across the UK’s top firms, based on anonymous data collected from over 2,000 trainees and junior lawyers, check out Legal Cheek’s ‘Exclusive Research: What time do lawyers finish work at the UK’s top 100+ law firms?’
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