This job is fvcking ruinous.
It’s absurd the amount of human life that gets burned over-optimising documentation that nobody reads for transactions that half the time lose people money.
How fvcking hard is it to buy Everton anyway fgs
Search RollOnFriday
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poor woman, and her family
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The job is designed to solve for a particular type of personality to succeed. Then we compete them against each other in a relentless hothouse.
And any support is perfunctory and so narrowly applied - it completely (and deliberately) ignores the wider systemic failures that drive people to impossible choices.
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How utterly awful.
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Has Matthew Morgan been given this line? it's a fcuking horrific thing to blithely wave off
yeah, the coroner said it could be exercise but in the context of that level of work when was she out jogging and why did nobody ask?
Even by Pinsents standards this is some terrible mismanagement
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Private practice runs on a few principles:
What have I missed?
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a rare wot unk sed, but he really has nailed it
u could add something like:
5. if a bright young person looks like they might become threatening 2 ur position (outshine u or otherwise), try 2 break their confidence hard and fast
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Nailed it
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6. Clients know all of the above and are still going to send instructions at 17:15 on a Friday
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people are to blame for letting work take over their lives
no one else is doing it, it's internally inflicted and the self-importance of lawyers is absolutely ridiculous
RIP but also physician heal thyself
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Poor poor woman and her family, rip. The focus will inevitably be on long hours, but my own experience was that long hours and the rewards from success were actually a means of gaining self-esteem which was helping me cope with underlying mental health issues stemming from historical trauma. Her work practices were likely another symptom of an underlying problem that led her to take her own life, not a cause of it.
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(I don't reckon work was the only thing going on in this lady's life either)
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7. The bright young things have to be motivated with the carrot of money and “prestige” to sacrifice their health and family ties (see Ebitda of ROF for a good example of what happens when someone gets obsessed with “prestige”)
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so much time, energy, and self respect wasted on the city law hamster wheel - oh well, can’t change the past.
we should print hg’s 4 points and give it to every lawyer we know who might be at risk of sliding into the cult’s abyss.
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Lots of people on this board are in senior positions in law firms. What will you do to minimise the chance of this happening where you are?
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I don't work in law, but it is v difficult.
I'm not saying this is the case with the Pinsent Mason partner (or law in general) but I find there is a challenge with v ambitious people who are talented/productive but not quite as talented/productive as the best people. They then work much long hours to try to keep up with the best people and it's difficult to stop them. We did once force someone to take paid leave to recharge, but it's not always obvious when that's appropriate.
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Also some people just have different capacities for hard work.
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HG has nailed this like Daqsonna Rokkit
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Mr Morgan's statement is very poor - and as Partner in charge he had responsibility for ensuring that his colleagues were not working such horrendous hours.
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Penguin - you can’t fix the problem completely without changing the fundamental economic structure of the profession but you could do a lot by changing the culture to being more collegial and actually being colleagues in a profession with some higher values than merely making a profit and being cogs in a profit maximising machine that is a large corporation with employees and management and a partnership in name only (eg even nearly 15-20 years ago when I was in an MC firm I remember a partner telling me he felt bad that the billable hours requirements meant he couldn’t do the mentoring and training and relationship building that he had benefited from - and it’s all even worse now when people don’t even go into the office)
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would be good for the SRA to start hauling management of law firms over the coals for failings in management of people with these crazy working hours, rather than sh1tting on paralegals in PI firms in Barnsley for relatively small cock-ups.
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I know some people put out of offices on over lunch or when they log off at night
fookin surgeons don't do this
lawyers need to absolutely get over themselves
if you get killed tomorrow work will have replaced you by Tuesday
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Some people want to earn half a million pounds a year or more and in a chargeable hours business model this is the only way to do it.
You and your team need to bill clients £60,000 every week. That means long hours. Sorry but it does.
The quid pro quo is £500,000 a year of income.
If you want to work a fifth of the hours you can but you can’t take home a big wedge.
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8. If someone looks like a "weakling" who can't handle it sideline them until they quit rather than doing anything constructive to help them.
I've said it before but I could have stayed in City law and been earning several times more than I do now but I'd have been several times more miserable than I am now. I'm quite happy to take decent but not stellar pay in return for colleagues who are genuinely decent and supportive people in a firm where there's no huge pressure to achieve the ridiculous.
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epic victim-blaming from clergham here
and yes, all lawyers are victims of the legal profession, and of the way clients abuse it
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To be a bit fair, she wasn't a junior getting beasted by a senior associate looking to be made up or by junior partner. She was equity partner. I'm sure she was under enormous pressure from client/colleagues/other side, especially if she already had a strong sense of responsibility and industriousness, but would anyone really be monitoring her billable hours to raise red flags?
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No, but there should be
de facto, equity partners in large corporate law firms are employees
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It is not the clients fault, it is the business model which is to milk human assets (not just employees but partners too) as far as possible. If clients knew lawyers worked office hours and things took as long as they took - as happens in most professions, the whole model would change. But law firms would of course make less money.
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Love LinkedIn profiles like this: Eric Hoffeinheimer III, business owner at Klein and Wafflestomper LLP. Fvck off mate. Definitely the type of person who refers to "one of my partners can assist with that" or "I'll give this to my trainee".
Largely what HG and Clergs said. Lawyers think the world will stop turning if they stop beasting themselves, driven by men and women who are so desperate not to see their tragi-families that they're happy to work late every single evening. A little humility combined with a bit more self-respect would go a long way to solving the problems in the private practice legal community.
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The dolla that makes thousands of bright young things gladly accept that Faustian pact.
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a victim of what? as amits points out the only reason to work like this is financial greed
somehow lawyers manage to convince themselves that it's VITAL they work gruelling endless hours for no thanks
it isn't
it's just greed and ego
"oh no what would happen if I was like all the ordinary spods"
what indeed
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ahem
were
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I actually only really know one workaholic socially (for obvious reasons) and he is definitely doing it to avoid his kids
which is a shame, they are fine, but his parents died young and he is obviously Experiencing Issues
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it often is clients’ fault
unreasonable timing demands are the essence of procuring and providing legal services
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wot Sails said - i was on track in a top 20 firm but it was making me miserable and exhausted. i went IH and now have way more time for my family and hobbies, and still earn v good if not stellar wedge. I don't care if i'm less "successful" than those who might be more accomplished in their professional lives, they do their thing and I'll do mine. Comparison is the thief of joy, as someone who wasn't me said.
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clients often impose unreasonable timing demands because they think it will limit the degree to which they get raped on fees
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On the client side we can ensure we do things to mitigate the stress like no undue urgency etc. doesn’t get away from the fact that at times there is due urgency and if you want to charge a grand plus an hour it’s because you don’t say know when the crisis hits. Examples I would give are:
Complex equity deals timing the market on aggressive timelines
Court or regulator imposed deadlines
Not much you can do about those if it’s a complex matter and you can’t extend the time - the recon people do this sort of work is because the rewards are sufficient to attract the talent.
No amount of mindful business charter or whatever can change that fact set - you can soften the edges but fundamentally it’s still a lot of work for a lot of coin (but less than front office)
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actually if you give lawyers a sensible amount of time to plan and think about stuff, fees will be lower
most transactional work is more or less fixed fee anyway nowadays
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I’ve never seen a “complex equity deal timing the market on an aggressive timelines
anyone who thinks they can time the public equity markets is a lunatic
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the key to happiness and success in life and work is:
ACT AS PRINCIPAL
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Problem with these places is they’re massively inefficient and run by and full of c unts. The end.
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...which is why law firm management should stand up to (and back their partners to stand up to) unrealistic deadlines. Clients setting stupid deadlines comes from law firms enabling and empowering it, or from clients who's background is in those very sectors.
Law firms can only get away with this stuff because at the end of the day most of the product is paperwork and it doesn't really matter if it's wrong or substandard because no one ever read most of it. In any sector where work output really really matters, and you have serious consequences if it goes wrong, management and regulation actually properly manages working hours, so that you don't have people who haven't slept in 48 hours carrying out brain surgery, or directing air traffic, or driving trains/planes/HGVs, major construction etc...
BBBB - If it's one of the (few) genuinely urgent and complex matters then the solution isn't "staff this with sleep deprived people who are exhausted and hope the cock-ups arn't too bad" Sleep deprived people just can't do complex work properly anyway. What the law firm has to do is resource the job appropriately. This means expanding team size by pulling in additional colleagues as needed and de-prioritizing less urgent work for that client or other clients. If they can't do that then they shouldn't accept the work until they're set up properly for it.
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This.
Two stories brought this home to me.
I dealt with a really awful executive termination case. Took over mine and my GC's lives. Worked on it for over 6 months. Endless conferences with CEO and others. Must have spent hundreds of hours on it. Sums paid to resolve were very very large. At a subsequent litigation review around 9 months later neither me or the GC could initially remember the employee's name. She was very senior. Reckon nobody would remember my name after one month rather than 9.
That poor lady. I do hope the Gen Z or Gen A thing does break the cycle but I fear they won't.
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Some people also like this work because they thrive under the pressure, they love the adrenaline and cortisone and they like bullying underlings who have to tow the line.
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*cortisol
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*toe the line
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In many cases though there will be at least one other firm offering to meet (or beat) those deadlines. Competitve pressure does the rest.
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What Paz said. It's a bit prisoner's dilemmaish in that everyone across the industry must agree it would be good to push back against unrealistic expectations but unless every firm does it there's a huge commercial incentive to be the firm that is willing to cave.
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It is a very sad story indeed. I wish that the profession could learn from it. I can guarantee you it won't. I wish that juniors could learn from it. Maybe some will.
On the subject of the importance of being earnest, I once worked with a chap who was so important to the client's wellbeing that it was necessary for him to charter a helicopter to fly him back from Remote, France to a very important meeting, wwhich it was vital he importantly attended. With much jowls.
This was charged to the client,obv.
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All may be true, but still misses the point that her workload probably had relatively little to do with the reason she killed herself. Ironically, it was probably one of the things that had been keeping her alive
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I think it is fair to say there is literally no purpose to 90% of legal work, so there is no alternative to money reward that people take from their job. In the old days you got shafted for 10 years, then it was someone else's go and you could collect, safe in the knowledge that nobody would be standing beind you ready to stab you in the back for your profit share, and what you collected allowed you to go on nice colleges, farm our worry about your children's future to a private school and clock off whenever you left the office (which I am going to guess was pretty much never what would give you an average of 100 chargeable over 6 weeks, which are stats I've seen), with no real need for two full time parents allowing someone else to pick up lots of the shit that can't be dealt with from an office.
Now it is dog eat dog shit to have a terraced house in Dalston, both of you in demanding jobs, gaming school systems because you can't afford the school fees, having potential control of everything in the palm of your hand 24/7 and being wedded to it for a mapped out 30 years because any step-down will be perceived to be fooking over your children and partner if they have a London centric job too.
It would be nice if people could go back to a world where if they felt like being an engineer, teacher, town planner etc. they weren't having to forego the opportunity to be able to buy a relatively shitty house close to where they live with decent schools nearby and/or a minimal chance of being burgled or mugged.
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^^^^^^^
🔥🔥🔥
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This woman clearly had mental health issues and developed an alcohol problem which in combination appear to have caused her death. This happens to people in all jobs. Do we know it is directly caused by working long hours on a project that had actually finished?
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It seems like the lady was undoubtedly a high achiever, but couldn't draw a line for the sake of her mental health and children. And one can't draw a line when under pressure and overwhelmed with anxiety and depresssion. That is never the case.
The society and the profession has to work on helping such individuals and in sad situations like this, their surviving families as well.
I also think that it is important that the education system explains to the young bright minds, especially to those who show signs of becoming high achievers that they cannot have everything perfect in life. This has to start in the education system because families would not necessarily be reasonable in their expectations towards their smart offspring.
In this way hopefully such young high achievers will have instilled in their minds that at some point in their lives they will have to draw a line and give priority to their mental health and well being.
This is not to say that the worst can be avoided in all cases, but if the education process does not start in younger years, then when an individual feels lonely and helpless then there is nothing in them, in their mind, that will intuitively prompt them to make a change in order to protect their mental health. This is also not to say that mental health issues are easy to fix.
I feel sorry for this lady. She must have excelled at everything and am sure that the last thing she wanted for her children to grow up without her being around.
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"It would be nice if people could go back to a world where if they felt like being an engineer, teacher, town planner etc. they weren't having to forego the opportunity to be able to buy a relatively shitty house close to where they live with decent schools nearby and/or a minimal chance of being burgled or mugged."
Lots of people do this, whole cities exist where very few people earn over £100k and NHS doctors tend to be the best paid in town, but there are still decent areas decent schools etc etc.
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Yes, lot's of cities outside the SE, which is the sole economic driver for the entire country i.e. all the high achievers being sucked into pointless jobs ergo why we have largely fook all innovation in this country and can't compete with outstanding manufacturers in other jurisdictions. These areas are entirely dependent on the SE gifting money to them, which is what makes me laugh when people from the English regions whine about Wales, NI and Scotland.
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B-man is so London-centric that it's silly.
You can get a perfectly decent house 30-40 miles from London for between £400-£500k for a first house, and a very nice 'next move' one for £800k.
A couple would only need to be earning between 80k-120k between them to be able to afford those.
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it is grim that selling everton to some rich cocks is counted as "high achieving"
what an absolutely dull waste of time
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Yep, that sounded a bit odd when he said it was 'the deal of a lifetime'.
I'm guessing, but in terms of numbers is was actually relatively small-beer in M&A terms?
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"Yes, lot's of cities outside the SE, which is the sole economic driver for the entire country i.e. all the high achievers being sucked into pointless jobs ergo why we have largely fook all innovation in this country and can't compete with outstanding manufacturers in other jurisdictions. These areas are entirely dependent on the SE gifting money to them, which is what makes me laugh when people from the English regions whine about Wales, NI and Scotland. "
You can certainly argue that our economy focuses too much on pushing money around and not enough on inventing and building things and that this is too focussed on the City and the SE. In fact I would agree with you.
I am not sure that is an answer to the point that if you wish you can have very nice life doing a 9-5 fulfilling profession outside the South East, you wont be rich but you can live in pleasant suburbia and send your kids to a nice middle class state school. Which I thought was your original beef?
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Guy I think you have a very rose tinted view of the “provinces”
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I am really sorry that she was in such despair. Alcohol and exhaustion are not good for people with declining mental health.
Here's the issue, whilst the victim is no longer in pain, they leave a trail of pain behind them. Her family, her friends, the emergency services that had to deal with the scene and the train driver is undoubtedly traumatised by the whole thing.
If you are this low and don't see another way out, seek help. Sounds easy to say and I know seeking the help is not a simple step BUT you can be helped and you can avoid the destructive trail.
It may not seem like it when you're in the depths of despair but there are good days ahead, mixed in with the bad but they are there. Get Help, people won't judge you or think less of you.
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deal of a lifetime might mean the size of the bills they issued.
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Eddie your second paragraph is a really outdated and very dangerous way to frame suicide.
Suicidal people don't think they are unburdening themselves. They aren't doing it for selfish reasons, the motivation is often in fact completely the opposite.
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Never ceases to amaze me that people will sacrifice their health and wellbeing working 70+ hour weeks to earn big bux - which the government then takes half of.
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That is a really weird take from this story Iguana.
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I don't see how. I'm just pointing out that the sacrifice isn't worth it even from a financial pov.
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the sacrifice is for status as against your peers and upgrading your lifestyle, 45% tax or whatever it is makes little difference to this, you still get the nice house, the nice car, the private school the caribbean hols whether you earn £1m as a city partner without tax or £600,000 with tax makes little difference to any of those things really.
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there is nothing dangerous in what I said. There is nothing outdated in what I said. I know exactly the frame of mind of the ideation and planning that goes in to it. I know exactly the thought process of "no one will notice / care" or "people would be better off". Believe me, I know the thought process.
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What you’re all ignoring in classic rof is bananaman is describing the situation, not approving it. And he’s right, for obvious reasons, Some of you people live in lalaland
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Trust Warren to make this woman’s death all about him
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At my most stressed i quit pp and when i did a colleague said “I was so surprised to hear you’d handed your notice in you always seemed happy”. The reality was no one really got to know me as I’d moved firms and so they saw me as a heads down diligent hard worker who smiled and chatted when I was approached l. The reality was I had been given far, far too much work for the three days I was meant to be working, I was stressed out of my mind, was trying to get the work done so I could get back to my kids, was contacting our nanny to say I wasn’t going to get back for the kids, I lived on permanent cortisol about either fooking things up at work and the guilt of being a mum. During covid the firm said “we understand the pressures you’re all under, we don’t care when you get the work done but get it done”. So us mothers and fathers were expected to look after our children and get work done or get kids to sleep and then start a new day. That’s when I told them I was quitting.
This is the same firm whose management is would wang on about the importance of good mental health and how they promoted it whilst I was slowly informed two predecessors whose role i had take on had gone off on stress leave. The young associate next to me who I thought of as amazingly competent one day seemed to be in floods of tears and then went off on a period of stress leave.
Putting a poster up in the bogs saying call this number if you’re stressed is not enough. Nor is it enough to assume the person getting on with their work and never taking time to chat to others is okay: they prob aren’t but literally have no time to make tea and have a chat.
Working in house has been a revelation. Half the pay and ten times less stress, it is so worth it. Please if you ever feel desperate know that in quitting the job you are not failing but succeeding in putting your mental health first. Fwiw I think it’s innate that I look at LinkedIn and think wow my ex colleagues are all so successful and I feel a bit the opposite but then I remember behind each promotion is a whole lot of stress and hard work and I get to see my children in their plays and when needed.
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I just think this idea of success is so misplaced. As above, no one outside the cloister has even heard of these Top Firms. When someone says they're missing Christmas again who feels anything other than slightly nauseated pity?
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It is misplaced you’re right. I think lawyers are often in a little micro bubbled rat race climbing up a greasy pole that gets greasier the higher up you get. You spend most of your day with capable colleagues who all seem to be coping (with the odd breakdown or jokes about breakdowns) and there are lots of perks like a decent salary and nice dinners and invites etc but Jesus it is far nicer to drive a shit car and not feel sick that a client is going to kick off or you’ve been negligent because you’re so overworked! Perspective is everything! That poor lady. I feel so bad as I expevt attaining partnership meant she really couldn’t tell colleagues how much she was struggling.
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The work is so boring and pointless (selling a football team to a PE firm FFS) - how can further compulsory hours of forced feeding after 18 hour days of no exercise be appealing to anyone.
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It’s hideous. And I hope lots of partners and management are not only reading this thread but reviewing the comments and upticks on the news page and working out new strategy’s. I found the linked in pile in a bit weird but actually it means law firms shouldn’t be hiding and should be working out what to do including there being big red flags when someone is working 18 hour days.
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who the fvck does exercise fgs
I think I did some in 2019
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Poor lady- she’s been on my mind.
And good for you incakenito for know what’s what x
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knowing*
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Laz is on the money here. Since moving IH, I’ve always made a point not to forget the PP perspective and fall into the trap of unreasonable demands on turnaround time. Granted, I’m not in M&A so can’t knowledgeably comment on whether the deal deadlines are truly necessary (I suspect not) but in my area, it’s rare that I need something in less than 48 hours and I’m always apologetic to our external counsel if asking for something within that sort of timeframe. Others in my team seem to have forgotten what it was like to be on the other side of the equation.
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I kind of agree with Clergs here. Continuing to work in pp is a choice. We’re not talking about starving, indentured labourers here.
The unfortunate reality is that it is harder for mothers. Very young children often need their mothers more than fathers, even if the father is a very caring, hands on type person. So for a woman with young children to get to the top and keep at it is extraordinarily difficult.
There is a reason why we see so many extremely capable women stuck in junior roles for years. And many more leave when they realise there are alternatives (even if they don’t pay as much). And the men who rise to the top often do so because they’re the only ones left.
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deal deadlines in M&A are all fake
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Especialky the most laughable of all:
This has to be done in the week before Christmas
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Some real ‘hot takes’ on here from people in the top 0.1pc of uk earners who have never been anywhere in GB other than south east england
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Which of course means "I need to chalk up this deal before January because my end of year bonus carry depends in it and Hugo has invited me to Verbiers on 26th"
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Thise are actually legitimate reasons for a deadline
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And Everton FFS.
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very, very rarely pftse, as well you know
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I’ve got a property investment deal on that the moment.
Got Gowling WLG on the case for me.
I’ve told them the deal should be done as soon as reasonably practicable.
Don’t really care whether that’s this month or next
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One thing to bear in mind is the utter contempt in which front office hold lawyers
We’ve done the (largely fictitious) modelling and commercial terms now write up the docs over the weekend you dim witted bloodsuckers
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They actuall are very legitimate reasons for hard deadlines
If you're paying someone a lot of money to get something done in time to 1) make it profitable for you in your current financial year and 2) allow you to enjoy your holiday without having to do more work then should fookiñg well get it done. If they can't they should do something else.
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Fact is if you’ve been given a mandate or had capital committed you’d best execute as fast as possible because time is money
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A completely tragic story and I feel very sad for the poor lady and her family. What I’ve found particularly disgusting are the hundreds of LinkedIn posts about this. Many of them make wild assumptions about what caused her death and many offering tips and suggestions for how to avoid it happening to you as if victim blaming on ROF wasn’t bad enough. I think I saw one post about the story titled “Don’t die” or something. Tasteless and voyeuristic.
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The band-wagon jumpers are just normal for linked-in, but the number of senior lawyers spouting paltitudes, when you know they won't change anything is the bit that boils my wossnaames
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I think it’s all terrible on LinkedIn. Don’t get me started on the “lawfluencers” pontificating about this story, you know the type. The ones who worked at Irwin Mitchell for a year and feel qualified to lecture everyone about the industry.
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Oh and being very happy to pull up arsehole partners who never give positive feedback, throw juniors under buses or put unrealistic expectations on their teams. Qunts.
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Some think they are saving others from pain. Some think they just can't go on. It's not accurate to make sweeping generalisations either way. And the mental state a person can be in to get to suicidal point can be myopic.
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Good sensible points Orwell and something most people could implement straight away
On the person concerned, they were in the process of trying to get help for various things in the last moments of their life. As the coroner concluded it is quite possible that although they intended to take their life generally they didn’t mean to in the moment. Tiredness a hangover and a shit load of gin might have been the deciding hand. Very sad
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