The Best Law Firms To Work For: Biglaw 'Quality Of Life' Rankings
Is your firm in the top 10, or perhaps the top 25?
Biglaw quality of life — what life? Cynics might say that “Biglaw quality of life” is something of an oxymoron.
If you’re expecting to earn $180,000 a year in your first job out of law school, be prepared for some sacrifices. And the required sacrifices could grow in the months ahead; as Patrick Lamb and others have warned, look for billable-hour requirements to increase in the wake of the recent pay raises.
How firms respond to the raises will vary from workplace to workplace. Not all firms are created equal — notwithstanding the attempts of many firms to make it look like they are the equal of Cravath simply because they pay the same starting salary. As I have argued before, not every firm should be copying the Cravath pay scale. If a firm decides not to raise pay (or not to raise pay to the full Cravath scale), that doesn’t mean it’s automatically a loser (as the Donald might say) in the fight for talent. Firms can distinguish themselves in other ways — for example, by making themselves into great places to work.
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How do you figure out which firms are great workplaces? There’s a ranking for that, produced by our friends over at Vault:
Vault’s 2017 Quality of Life rankings are here, and there’s a new Best Law Firm to Work For. O’Melveny & Myers tops the overall quality of life ranking, knocking previous champ Paul Hastings from the No. 1 position. O’Melveny earned that ranking in part by topping two Quality of Life categories—Satisfaction and Hours—while coming in second in three more areas key to associate happiness—Firm Culture, Leadership Transparency, and Substantive Work. O’Melveny’s associates report to Vault that “O’Melveny has a culture of caring about each other and truly seeing our work together as a team activity” and that “the people are what make OMM the best!”
The competition at the top is intense; Ropes & Gray is putting up a strong fight to reclaim the top spot. Ropes topped the Best to Work For list in 2011 and has been No. 2 since then, trailing O’Melveny by just 0.07 points this year. After three years at the top, Paul Hastings falls four places to the No. 5 spot.
Here are the top 10 firms in Vault’s 2017 quality of life rankings:
1. O’Melveny & Myers (up from #3)
2. Ropes & Gray (no change)
3. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (up from not ranked)
4. Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson (up from #17)
5. Paul Hastings (down from #1)
6. Thompson & Knight (up from not ranked)
7. Williams & Connolly (up from #13)
8. BuckleySandler (down from #5)
9. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (down from #7)
10. Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner (no change)
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Congratulations to these ten top firms, as well as all the firms in the full top 25 list.
If you check Vault’s list of top 25 firms against our salary wars scorecard listing which firms have announced raises since the start of June 2016, you’ll see that most of them are on the Cravath scale. But you’ll also find a few firms that either haven’t adopted the Cravath scale in full or haven’t raised pay at all.
And maybe that’s okay. As we’ve said before, Biglaw isn’t all about the benjamins. If you’re an associate who enjoys your work and your colleagues — if, in short, you believe your firm offers good quality of life — then maybe you shouldn’t worry too much about the money you might be leaving on the table.
P.S. Of course, to earn the goodwill of our many associate readers, here at ATL we will still pressure firms to raise salaries. Firms should resist our pressure as their circumstances dictate. And don’t take it personally, partners; it’s just our job.
2017 Best Law Firms to Work For [Vault]
25 Best Law Firms to Work For [Vault]
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Earlier: The Best Law Firms To Work For: 2016 Vault Rankings
The Best Law Firms To Work For: 2015 Vault Rankings
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.
