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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
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