Yeah, yeah, I know I switched firms less than two years ago, but I've made another move. I'm purposefully withholding some details so that I don't dox myself, but you'll hopefully get the gist of what's going on.
To give you a brief refresher, I left my job as a partner at a mid sized regional law firm to become a partner at a national "BigLaw" firm. When I realized that I really hated being a BigLaw partner, I came back to my mid sized firm. I was relatively happy to be back and things were going pretty well. Then the COVID lockdown came. We were all working from home and everyone I knew was still pretty busy.
Things seemed to be going pretty well. Then, about a month into the lockdown, firm management started talking about cutting pay for associates and non-equity partners. This struck me as odd since I kept up with the deposit reports and we were seemingly having an outstanding year. It struck me that one of two things was going on, either (1) the firm's financial position was in worse shape than I thought due to information the equity partners weren't sharing or (2) the equity partners were going to use COVID as an excuse to screw the non-equity partners. They claimed that the equity partners had taken very large hits to their draws already, but of course I had no way of knowing if that was true. I immediately changed my LinkedIn profile to say that I was open to opportunities. Firm management decided not to cut our pay, but I still had a bad feeling in my gut, so I continued to take calls from recruiters.
Over the months of working from home, I had begun to really enjoy not spending 1-3 hours in the car every day fighting traffic. I was more productive working from home and I got to spend the time that I would have been commuting on home improvement projects or on my garden. I also started wondering why my firm was paying so much in overhead for office space that wasn't being used and pretty clearly (at least to me) wasn't necessary. I think I mentioned here several times that I'd really be interested in a law firm that had a remote model. The problem is that most of the "virtual" firms that recruiters called me about were pretty clearly scams, or at the very least provided minimal benefit.
I also got tons of calls for traditional firms. The lateral market, at least in Dallas, is pretty hot. However, most of the calls were pretty much the same.
I'm working with [NATIONAL FIRM] and they've made expanding their Dallas office one of their top priorities. They're looking for IP partners with portable business. They offer a national platform/rate flexibility/a collegial work environment/a no assholes policy/a puppy. Their partners would love to talk to you about moving over so that they can jump all over your current clients.
I'm always polite when when I talk to recruiters, but I didn't see anything that sounded interesting. Then one recruiter kept trying to get me to talk to an IP boutique firm. I was leery since I've always mentally equated "boutique" with low pay. I finally agreed to get on a call with one of the name partners. He told me that his firm had so much potential work that they didn't have enough experienced attorneys to work it all. THAT got my attention.
They use a virtual model where the firm maintains small offices in flyover states for administrative functions, but the attorneys for the most part work from home. This results in overhead per lawyer that's about 1/3 of where I was.
So anyways, yada yada yada, they made me a really good offer and I decided to make a move. I cleaned out my office and moved everything home. They actually lowered my billing rate, so now I can be hired for less than a paralegal at a coastal BigLaw firm.
As a final note, it's amazing how much I spent per month on everything that commuting to a downtown office entails. Between tolls, gas, dry cleaning and lunches, I'm probably saving $500 per month. I think that we're going to see a lot more firms moving to this model.
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