The Gazette 1983

GAZETTE

JULY/AUGUST 1983

An Irish Law Student Visits Wall Street Impressions of the Practice of Law in the United States by Brian F. Havel B.C.L.

I N 1982, for the duration of my summer associateship with a Wall Street law firm, the United States temporarily obtained the services of its 574,001st lawyer. Unlike in Ireland, where unease about lawyer overproduction has been translated into restrictive entry quotas, the legal profession in the United States seems unable to check the spread of what the Northwestern University Law Review aptly called 'hyperlexis' — too many lawyers and too much law. It has been said that every time the U.S. Government unloads a bundle of new regulations on automobile safety, Toyota and Datsun hire an extra hundred engineers and General Motors takes on another hundred lawyers (apocryphal, of course, but the U.S. does have twenty times more lawyers per capita than Japan). This self-conscious questioning of our worth as a profession may be quite diverting but, as one of my new colleagues commented very early in my stay. Wall Street law firms are not in the habit of paying their attorneys large salaries to philosophize whether they would all be better off on a commune in Wyoming (where one of the firm's receptionists was apparently planning to flee). Wall Street is a dizzying mix of soaring height and constricting narrowness, set deep among the concrete canyons of America's most expensive pieoe of real estate, the financial district of Manhattan. The undisputed nerve-centre of American corporate law, Wall Street is a vital reason why the New York Bar has always been the most prestigious in the United States (why else would our new Attorney-General have seen merit in joining it?). The concept of the 'Wall Street law firm' conveys a blue-chip assurance of the highest professional standards — and, consequently, the highest professional charges. It has been correctly stated that at no other time and in no other place throughout human history have lawyers been generating incomes as massive as they earn at this moment in New York City. That observation, by the way, appeared in a journal for neophyte legal 'fast-trackers', who were naturally incredulous when told of the low average earnings of junior members of both branches of the Irish profession. I worked at a medium-size firm formed by the recent merger of two long-established firms and, therefore, in transition to a much bigger operation. Just how big some Wall Street law firms become is shown by the leviathans of the business, superfirms which employ from 250 to 500 lawyers. They are so large that many of their attorneys are assigned to the 'graveyard shift', from midnight to 8 a.m., with full secretarial support services, so that a round-the-clock legal furnace can be kept ablaze.

Having graduated from law school and passed the State Bar exams, the young lawyer, now usually in mid- to late-twenties, seeks employment and training as a first-year associate. Like new Irish barristers (though unlike new Irish solicitors since the revamped professional course was launched in 1978) U.S. legal graduates enter their profession so unskilled in the actual practice of law (rarely having read a real contract or will) that a New Jersey federal judge has contended that 'if the medical profession trained, qualified and licensed doctors in this way, we lawyers would want to put them in jail'. Unlike here, however, lack of experience is not reflected in starting salaries for new Wall Street associates. Last October the biggest firms were offering between $45,000 and $50,000 p.a. to be- ginning attorneys, but even the smaller firms were paying more than $30,000. The ideal résumé, which can almost command its own price, will feature graduation in the top ten per cent of one of the top ten law schools, membership of the editorial board of a university law review (even the law school equivalent of 'The People's Court' must publish a law review or perish) and a period as 'clerk' (not pronounced 'dark', as I was often reminded) to a supreme court judge, most desirable one of 'The Brethren' in Washington D.C. Literally thousands of unsolicited résumés pile on the desks of Wall Street hiring partners during each 'fall recruiting season', most of them considerably less awesome than the paragon I have just sketched (though American law students are so expert at presenting their résumés, often using agencies that specialize in helping them put together the most flattering format, that it is not always easy to separate wheat from chaff). Obviously, as one of our senior partners continually insisted, a brilliant academic record is no guarantee of success in the hardnosed practicalities of a New York law firm, but it does at least assure its holder of the earliest and best opportunity of proving his or her competence. Colossally strenuous demands are made on Wall Street's tyro lawyers. Partnership, their common target, demands at least seven to eight years of truly dogged application. The superfirms extract maximum 'burnout', somehow churning out enough legal work to keep their associates on 12 to 14-hour days, seven days a week. Called 'sweatshops' in Wall Street argot, their price for high salaries is life in a legal pressure cooker. My firm differed 'attitudinally', as the Americans say. Long hours were expected when particular projects required it, rather than as a matter of daily routine (though I should add that most of our associates did drive themselves to make marathon working days a 159