2nd Year Wrapped: An Hours Breakdown
Happy New Year to all! I thought it would be interesting to do a bit of review on my 2024 billed hours. In particular, I was interested to see the distribution of hours (weekends, holidays, etc.). I thought this could be interesting benchmarks for others at the junior level or those who are considering / starting BigLaw and wanted to see what the workload is actually like.
Background: Just finished my 2nd year in a V20 specialty finance practice in NYC. While I worked an empirically high percentage of days, I feel that was more because I prefer to spread out work. I didn't have as high of highs or as low of lows as some of my friends (in e.g. a CapMarkets practice).
Basic Hours Breakdown
The daily / weekly numbers are slightly off IRL, as they are based on which days they are billed to. Some late nights would be billed entirely to the day prior, while others would be split (depending on a number of factors). This is pure billables and does not include pro bono, CLEs, recruiting, marketing, etc.
| Total Hours Billed: | 2,249 billable (+119 non-billable equivalents) |
|---|---|
| Average (per workday): | 8.7 |
| Minimum (workday): | 1 |
| Maximum (workday): | 17 |
| Average (week): | 43.3 (52-week year); 46.9 (48-week year) |
| Minimum (week): | 0.5 (vacation week) |
| Maximum (week): | 69.8 |
| Minimum (month): | 125.5 (January) |
| Maximum (month): | 228.25 (October) |
| Total Days Billed | 322 |
Weekend & Holiday Work
Further to the below stats, I had 6 weekends totally free (no work on either day), 19 weekends in which I worked at least one day (averaging 1.96 hours) and 27 weekends where I worked both days (averaging 2.45 hours per day)
I took 13 formal vacation days (from otherwise working days), which combined to a total of 26 days of vacation (including appended weekends and holidays). Our firm had 11 firm holidays on top.
Most of the Vacation Day hours come from the initial or final days, on which I was technically on PTO but was in transit and worked to clear things out. During the vacation, I typically billed less than 1 hour per day.
| # | Weekend Days Worked | Firm Holidays Worked | Vacation Days Worked (otherwise working) | Vacation Days Worked (including appended weekends & holidays) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 73 | 6 | 7 | 10 |
| Percentage of total possible | 70.2% | 54.5% | 53.8% | 38.5% |
| Average Hours | 2.3 | 2.1 | 1.2 | 1 |
| Max Hours | 7.25 | 4.75 | 3.25 | 3.25 |
Overall Perspective on the last year: 8/10 (honeymoon phase still going strong). I really enjoy my group—both the work and the people—although I wouldn't be upset if things slowed down a bit. The last ~5 months were definitely rough though.
Let me know your thoughts, how your year compared, or if there are any other stats that you may find interesting!