How many hours a week do lawyers work?

I heard conflicting statements, ranging from 40 to 70+ hours a week. I also read that you start out working many hours but then you work less and get paid more after a few years. Also, how many hours do specific lawyers work, such as corporate, intellectual property etc.

As someone who just graduated from law school and who actually wrote an essay on this topic, I have a bit of perspective on this. However, while you should never use this as an answer on a law school exam, the answer to this question truly is "it depends."

Lawyers who work in big cities [especially New York, Chicago, LA, and DC] will work significantly more than lawyers in more rural areas.

As you pointed out, younger lawyers tend to work more than older lawyers.

Specialty isn't really much of a factor in how many hours you will work as an attorney, but what sector you work in really will. Attorneys that work in large law firms work the longest hours, medium to small sized firms come next, then non-profits, and finally government workers. However, government workers will make significantly less money than those that work at firms.

Firms typically require you to bill a quota of hours to clients each year. However, not every hour that you are at work is a "billable hour". On average, for every two hours billed, an attorney will spend another hour at work doing non-billable tasks. To get an idea of workloads for young New York attorneys, on average they bill 2200 hours a year. If you add in non-billable hours worked and average that out over a week, that means you'd be working 66 hour weeks with two weeks vacation each year. Keep in mind that this is average, so that means that half of young lawyers in New York are actually working even more than that. I don't know about you, but that sounds unbearable to me.

Plus when you work in a firm, the firm also wants you to spend your free time finding clients/having drinks with clients you already possess/making connections, etc., and therefore, you basically never have any time off. These sorts of activities are not counted into the above.

Now, if you work for the government, most of the time you will truly only work 40 hours a week, and they will not ask you to do anything outside of your job description.

Medium sized firms can rate anywhere in between big firms and government jobs. When I was on interviews, medium sized firms were asking that you bill anywhere between 1400 to 1800 hours minimum. This would work out to 42 hours and 54 hours a week, respectively. Although, keep in mind that the minimum that they want you to work will most likely keep your job, but if you want to advance, in most situations they'll want you to work more than that.

Keep in mind the big paycheck difference. At big firms lawyers can start right out of law school making upwards of $150,000 whereas the federal government only starts you at $54,000 and state governments can pay as little as $30,000 for some positions [such as being a public defender].

As for your experience determining how many hours you work per week - on average, you have to work at a firm for 7 years before it will significantly decrease. At that time, the firm will either decide to make you a partner in which case you will be able to cut down on your work time and still be rich, or the firm will not make you a partner, in which case you'll most likely quit and feel like you've just wasted 7 years of your life.

Hope this info. helps!

As many as it takes. Legal work often involves covering massive amounts of data with a looming deadline. Can go 100+ hours a week.

It depends on your Field and level obtained. fresh out of law school 70+ hrs. become a firm partner and expect no more than 40 hrs unless you count Thursdays meeting at the golf course.

No more than they can bill someone for.

Remember that what they bill and what they
actually work might be quite different.
That said, law firms tend to ride new members
right into the ground with work.

It's 7:14 pm on Saturday night and I am still working. Worked all last week 8-11 hours each day and I will work tomorrow. I own the law firm and work for myself. Even when I am not at my desk, I am still thinking about my cases. Not unusual to wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea for a case. Honest, I love the job and love being a lawyer.