Corporate law jobs, compatible with a life

[CakeAndCoffee3pm]

I work in the City and have a toddler. I'm finding it horribly hard since having my son and I miss out on lots. I don't want a career change completely, but I don't want late nights anymore, anyone manage to find 9-5 jobs in London in corporate law? I

The in house jobs these days seem to come with long hours too. PSL jobs seem to need 15 years of experience. Any websites or recruiters that someone can recommend?

I looked at civil service but honestly the pay cut would be insane.

I don't want to be a SAHM but I do enjoy time with my son!!!

I work in investment banking, our in house lawyers work ridiculous hours too unfortunately. I get e mails from them most nights at 10pm and usually through the weekend too. They do WFH some days but it still seems an incredible work load - far more than the bankers and we do 60 hour weeks as standard. They are very well paid though.

Move to a nice regional firm where the hours target is 1400. Corporate is still the engine of the firm though and those guys still pull the hours when there’s a completion (and a lot of the rest of the time).

It does tend to be a choice between money or quality of life, unfortunately. I moved into a part time job in a local firm when my DS was born, and then fairly accidentally moved into social welfare law - that was full time but at least the culture was generally that people would clock off at a reasonable hour. I've never regretted it and in fact I think my legal career has also been considerably more interesting and mentally rewarding than it would have been if I'd stayed in corporate and commercial law.

OP are you an M+A lawyer? Unclear from your post, if that or another City practice area.

I'm in big tech.
Hours for lawyers are about 50 ish

40 on a good week 60non a bad week - would that work...?

Money is good ic6 makes over 100k prob like 150k ish
Work is interesting ish too

Impressed you are managing it with a toddler at all...

In-house might be slightly better. But you’ve landed on the reason why I’m an ex-corporate lawyer.

Yeah I never went back. Nor did most of the other women. International finance worked day and night. I had hoped it had changed seems not.

professional support lawyers are on their way out as a group unfortunately. AI will have too much of an impact.

I don’t think you’re bring realistic if 50 hour a week jobs are too much too. You’d easily work 50 hours a week in the regions and even in most high street firms. Surely you know this. Plus corporate law involves more networking than probably any other type of law which means evenings lunches and breakfast meetings too.

My company’s in house lawyers work from home and block out their calendars for picking kids up and bedtime etc.

I’m in tech and they are earning a nice fortune too.

not sure if you are coming back OP but another one wondering if you have looked in house at your current law firm, or other firms? The money is less of course but can do bedtime every night. Sometimes logging on later, esp if senior.

can be a perfect fit to come from fee earning as your experience is valuable. Have placed many women into these roles and they find the trade off acceptable.

there are specialist recruiters for these areas.

You can't have it all - it's either the big money or time with your son.
I think most resident doctors are doing 50+ hours a week and on shit money.

Can you give a ballpark for salary and PQE? The corporate lawyers in my firm seem to work reasonable hours, plenty have kids. I work in an adjacent team, have a preschooler and have lots of flexibility. I work 4 days and come in late on my 2 office days (but I do stay late too as DH can be with DC). WFH the other 2 days (including evening work where needed) but I rarely see the corporate lawyers online at 9pm!

PSL would be the obvious move but jobs don’t come up that often and when they do there are lots of applicants, as understandably there are lots of people who’d like to work for a city firm but do 9-5. You also need to be able to sell yourself in a knowledge role, which means more than just “I’m an experienced corporate lawyer looking for better hours”. Good PSLs actually want to be PSLs and have some experience and ideas relating to KM. If it appeals then I’d suggest trying to get some KM experience in your current role- talk to your PSL if you have one, volunteer to take on additional non-chargeable work (training, writing articles, drafting consultation responses etc)- obviously this is hard when you are flat out with fee earning but it’s worth doing.

Depending on your manager, I’d also suggest talking to him or her about it all. So many associates never speak up because they don’t want to look uncommitted and then just resign out of the blue, when in fact if they had told someone how they felt earlier then things could have been different. Many firms are more open to being flexible now than they were even 5-10 years ago and there may be things you can agree that will make it easier (such as additional time WFH or taking on fewer client matters and more non-chargeable). If you’re considering leaving then it can’t hurt to explore what might be possible. (This is assuming they want to keep you- less likely to work out if they don’t.)

Someone up the thread suggested working for a regulator, which is something I’ve also done. My experience was great work, terrible pay. For many roles you’ll also need sector-specific experience eg competition, energy, etc. Going in as a straight corporate lawyer might be possible at a lower level though.

Have you considered the smaller City/west end firms? Yes the pay will be substantially less than what you earn now but still more than the regions and often fewer hours too (1200 hours). Appreciate you might be quite specialist in your corporate focus at the moment so will need to be more general, and there will of course still be midnight/early hours completions. I find recruiters often push the higher end jobs as they earn a bigger commission, so ask to be looking at smaller firms around the top 50.

Regional partner here 👋 the work life balance is excellent, the pay is nothing like the City, junior partners earn what NQs earn at US firms, but the trade off is worth it for actually having a life outside of work, seeing your kids and having hobbies and the ability to make weekday evening plans!

We left London. Dh didn’t want to work City hours either he wanted to you know actually know his children. Rather than having a day nanny who is relieved by the night nanny like our colleagues did well the ones that if didn’t go the SAHP route.