The NonBillable Hour

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At least you know what your getting into.

Harvard 3L to be, Jeremy Blachman, reflects on his summer clerkship at a large New York City law firm:

It is very clear to me, after 13 weeks at a law firm, that partners and associates work too many hours and need to expend too much mental and emotional energy into their jobs for this to be a truly fulfilling career unless you are passionate about what you are doing. Or at least very, very interested in it. If the work does not excite you, there seems to be -- at least at a big New York firm -- no way to be really happy doing it. Unless you're lying to yourself, or really into the money. More than one associate this summer has said that the law firm life leaves you room for one other thing -- a social life, a family, a hobby -- but not more than one of those. More than one associate has talked about having to consistently cancel plans with friends, because the hours are not only sometimes long, but relatively unpredictable. There are slow weeks when they get out at 7:00 every night. And there are weeks when they don't. And what type of week it is can change very quickly. More than one associate has talked about how a lot of the work is pretty mindless, especially for the first couple of years.