In mid-October we held our first conference for new partners, big-firm lawyers promoted since 2008. It was a bracing and satisfying experience. These young lions weren’t jaded; they had just enough anxiety about the future to engage with each other and a faculty prepared to challenge all-too-comfortable assumptions about their practices and their lives. To prepare for this meeting, we surveyed about 5,600 new partners, from The Am Law 200 and the big firms in Canada and London. Looking for benchmarks, we found a mostly optimistic group, although one with a healthy and appropriate dose of worry. The anxieties tumbled out in answers to our open-ended questions.
For once, we’ll start with the positives. Sixty-one percent reported that their new jobs were what they’d expected, and another fifth found their new roles were better than they had anticipated. Overall, the new partners are basking in the land of more: more money, more responsibility, and more information about their firms. However, their workload and their time with clients and, alas, with family are all about the same.
