CharonQC comments on the truly horrid story of Matthew Courtney an associate with Freshfields who appears to have committed suicide by jumping from the 7th floor of the Tate.
This is, sadly, not the first such incident and assuredly will not be the last. It struck a chord with Geeklawyer since Mr Courtney was an intellectual property associate.
The Bar seems to be far less stressed than the associates at Magic Circle firms and that is a consequence of most of us being in control of our own lives and careers. Of course Mr Courtney, had he succeeded in shinning up the slippery pole, would have made far more money than most of us barristers (we’ll settle for being relatively poor and posh). That motivation, however, has the downside of piling nearly intolerable pressure on associates.
Whilst one is tempted to say “that’s a choice you made”, not entirely unfairly, Geeklawyer thinks that when you dangle one million beer tokens a year in front of a 27 year old their reaction should not be a surprise: you, as the law firm, know best of all the health risks that they are likely to subject themselves to to get it and you cannot disavow all responsibility: it is incumbent on law firms to arrange their practices to allow a modicum of humanity, if only to avoid a lawsuit.
You beat me to it as I was going to post on this tragic death. This is the third, apparant, suicide of a high profile lawyer in less than 18 months. Of course we will never truly know why it happened. Ruthie wondered whether the proximity to Valentines Day may be significant, and not be at all connected to stress at work.
Odd, when Ruthie left law school, everyone seemed to aspire to work for one of the magic circle firms in the City. They produce good PR cos when you look at the facts its not such an attractive option. Its desperately hard to get a training contract. Only 1 in 100 trainees get taken on as lawyers and the other 99 tend to know an awful lot about not very much since they have often been part of big teams and are therefore of limited immediate use to other firms. Mr. Courtney was apparantly earning 55k, but working 16 hours a day 7 days a week. If you work it out, (allowing three weeks holiday a year) it calculates to…£10 per hour. Before tax.
True, there are 1 million pound partnerships on offer. But do you want to flog away the best of your youth on the off chance? What if you are one of the unlucky ones?
Heres a really radical suggestion, maybe some of the partners could take slightly less (hey even a 50% pay cut would still allow them to shop at Waitrose) then more lawyers could be employed and everyone would have a better quality of life and not have to work such stupidly long hours.
Course it will never happen, cos the long hours are just part of the macho culture that pervades the magic circle firms. If you can’t handle it you must be “weak”. Sorts the men from the boys etc etc…
In the harshest possible way.
Uh yeah, well I would have read it if *someone* hadnt had a tantrum and intercepted my e mail inviting me to review it. However I note the subsequently Geeklawyer has had an outbreak of adultness and decided to permit e mails sent to my Geeklawyer address to be bounced direct to me without him having checked them first.…
If there was ever an advertisement to put you off a magic circle training contract, this would be it. Very sad indeed.
As a corollary, the new edition of book has just been published (see the link for a big discussion of the book). Insightful stuff.
Blast (link code problems again.) Book is entitled The Destruction of Young Lawyers. Visit link above.
Refering to what Ruthie said above:
> Odd, when Ruthie left law school, everyone seemed to aspire to work for one of the magic circle firms in the City.
Do you by any chance see the law students of today being not as eager to work for one of the magic circle firms? If so, to what do they aspire?
Thank you in advance for your comment.
Oooh. How polite.
If, by chance, you work in the HR department of a magic circle firm, the following advice will be charged at my normal hourly rate. For certain you arent employed as a solicitors at a magic circle firm, since you would barely have time to go to the toilet let alone be permitted to read subversive blogs at your PC.
Ruthie is a child of Thatcher, her teenage years shaped by the “greed is good” philosophy and the miners strikes. Ruthie thinks that Thatcher did a lot of damage to the post war British nature of selflessness and community, helping ones neighbour etc etc, and replaced with a philosophy of selfishness, which whilst good for the economy is not necessarity good for the soul or the family. Unfortunately the long hours culture which started off as a way for amibitous workers to prove something has now been adopted as the norm to the detriment of family/community life.
Ruthie also thinks this explains the huge disparity of numbers between men and women achieving partnership at City firms. Theres still the old boy network of course, but most women really cant be bothered to get involved in the alpha male willy waving that goes on. “I can work harder than you cos I’m a bigger stronger alpha male” etc etc.
Ruthie thinks that modern students are a bit more savvy in that they no longer buy into the Thatcher dream, that hard work will necesarily bring money, success and ultimately happiness. They are realising that this ethos is simply a cunning plan for their employers to get them to work incredibly hard. Whilst money is a bigger issue for more and more students who are leaving University with massive debts, the mere aquisition of wealth for its own sake at the expense of a quality of life is becoming less popular.
So, to answer your question, I think students aspire to fulfillment. Money is obviously part of that as its difficult to have a fun time when you are very poor. However students are looking for greater fullfillment in the work that they do, rather than simply the financial rewards they receive.
I’m sure if other people disagree with me they will say so here…
My favourite quote from Ruthie’s response:
“..most women really cant be bothered to get involved in the alpha male willy waving that goes on.”
I snorted into my cup of Twinings when I read that.
I was born at the tail end of Thatcher’s ‘reign’ in what was then still a corner of the British Empire (Hong Kong). Regarding Thatcher, I think the fabric of society might have crumbled all the same, perhaps at a slower pace, without Thatcher giving it a head start. Her reforms were simply an accelerating factor of the overall trend that was already there to begin with.
I think within my peer group (mid-20’s) there are the overachievers who find fulfilment in overachievement itself, and then there are the opt-outs who take a minimum wage job that pays the bills and for which they are overqualified. Strange as it may sound, girls make up the majority of the former group, whereas guys make up the majority of the latter group. A while ago, the news were full of reports of how girls are outperforming guys at school, but that trend has been around for years and how my peers fare in the workplace may just be an extension of the trend at school. I have to say that it seems to be the guys who can’t be bothered to get involved in the alpha male willy waving, and it is the girls who willy-nilly find themselves in well-paying jobs with heavy responsibilities. Jobs these days choose the girls but shun the guys. It will be interesting to see the choices these girls make as they filter up to senior / partnership positions.
I agree with all of that. Strewth?! Geeklawyer and Ruthie not disagreeing? whatever next. If you’d read Jeremy Blachman’s excellent book ‘Anonymous Lawyer — a novel’ you would have seen this parodied wonderfully, though the result here is hideous and not at all comical.
An extremely interesting article: I’d read the book but I’m too busy with my workload (and that isn’t a joke). Litowitz makes some very good points — many of these are applicable to solicitors firms here as well. But less so the Bar.
I don’t think our ritual of humiliation is as fully formed as in the US but the Thatcherite money loving work until you drop ethic definitely rings true.
Paradoxical, then, that Ruthie is trying to drive me back into a higher pressure environment; to destroy me so that she can take over the blog.
As a died in the wool old school liberal lefty I pretty much despised Thatcher — but even I would say that some of what she did was economically necessary if unpleasant; Geeklawyer resents the world working that way and blaming Thatcher for the necessary restructuring is unfair. Of course a lot of it was pointless crap: much of the privatisation process was, and is, unnecessary and other reforms were unneeded. It didn’t help that she was so unpleasant and lower middle class.
Your views on female willy waving are mine, it’s odd Ruthie as the arch ambitious overachiever fails to recognise this in herself and her peers. Things will remain the same at partner level however because, by definition almost, the males who are their already are old school patriarch or are younger men who share their values. Despite the decline in, and rise, of male and female work ethics respectively, there remains authority vested in traditional values: so long as women have to have children it will be used as an excuse to deny them senior positions. This is a lessening trend but not lessening enough.
There, if that bit of sucking up doesn’t put me in Ruthie’s good books nothing will.