Is there any way you can be a lawyer and NOT work 80 hours a week?

[I65Stang]

My wife's aunt and her aunt's friend (went to LS together) both practice personal injury law, her aunt owns a firm while her friend works for a firm.  A while back I was talking to the friend about going to law school after the Army and how much of your life would be consumed with law vs the military.  Her question to me echoed what others have asked here, how much do you want to make?  If you want the major money you will work the hours.  Within the same focus of law you can find jobs that expect different amounts of work from you (she did tell me to ask what the expected billable hours were at the firm while interviewing).  She wants her freedom (she goes on a number of vacations a year) so she doesn't make nearly what my wife's aunt does although still makes good money. 

Funny thing she told me was that the good thing about making friends in law school is even though you may not be able to buy the million dollar vacation home on the lake, one of your friends probably will (as we sat in my wifes aunt's $1.5 mil vacation home on the lake)

[Julie Fern]

julie say biglaw = long hours.  talk to you again when you're 40!

[Incursion]

I've heard that you don't have to work 80hrs/week at TX firms.  Instead it's around 60.

[newy]

Solo practitioner in small town/suburb can make ~$250k (depending on hours billed).

[V]

You can do a one man/woman show gig where you deem how many hours you want to work; of course though, keep in mind, what  your 'standard of living' is.  Those expectations will help navigate and hopefully solve your dilemma later w/ how much you want or are willing to work.

HTH

[kidblue]

Solo practitioner in small town/suburb can make ~$250k (depending on hours billed).

This has got to be on the very high end of small town practitioners. My guess is that the typical small town practitioner makes one-third to one-half of this.

[giffy]

Yah owning your own firm is good, but risky. I come form a family of small business owners and while they all love it, it certainly brings them more stress them working for someone else. If you work for a firm you can pretty much count on getting your pay check every two weeks. However if you work for yourself sometimes you might go a bit without getting any money. Plus you have to handle everything yourself form advertising to paying the rent. it gives you flexibility, but also the possibility that you could invest a lot of time and money and go broke. It really all gets down to a trade off between time/money/stress/hard work. As long as you figure out what balance is right for you, you will do fine

One a side note. I have hard that being a judge does not require long hours and gets good pay. Is that rue.

Scott

[txgirl]

yes.  a friend of mine works 40 hours a week and makes around $125,000(including bonuses).  She also lives in DC, so you'd probably want to factor in standard of living and all that... anyway, i don't think it's the norm though.  she got lucky.

[Gatank]

Government jobs.  I work as a legal assistant in a government job.  None of the lawyers ever work over 40 hours.  Of course, you don't make the good money unless you work your way up to director of the divison or agency.  Even the director of the legal divison does not work over 40 hours.

[newy]

Solo practitioner in small town/suburb can make ~$250k (depending on hours billed).

This has got to be on the very high end of small town practitioners. My guess is that the typical small town practitioner makes one-third to one-half of this.

You only need to be billing $125/hr, 40 hrs a week, to be making $250k.