WORK/LIFE BALANCE
Faegre & Benson
Top five offices Minneapolis Hq | Denver | Boulder | Frankfurt | Des Moines
Total attorneys 442
Major departments/practices Corporate/M&A | Restructuring | Litigation
First-year salary $90,000
2001 summer associates 47
2001 fall first-years 25
Who to call Joanne Jaensch, Director of Legal Personnel Services, 612-766-7000
Web site faegre.com
Shocking but true: There are first-rate law firms that not only acknowledge the existence of lawyers’ time outside the office but actually value it. Take Minneapolis’s Faegre & Benson.
Boasting such Fortune 500 clients as 3M, Target Corp., and General Mills, 442-lawyer Faegre, Minneapolis’s second-largest firm, handles plenty of challenging, high-quality work. But a sane workload policy (the billable-hours target is 1,800) makes it one of the rare places where a lawyer can handle multi-million-dollar mergers and still regularly get home in time for dinner.
“People don’t feel constrained to be here if they have something else they need to do,” says third-year associate Jason Walbourn. Indeed, Walbourn left the office on a recent afternoon to attend the closing for a condominium he’d bought, and two days later, he took the day off to move into his new home. Ted Cheesebrough, another third-year, coaches a girls’ high school hockey team and leaves for practice at 5:30 every evening during the season (Minnesota hockey is serious business). Firm partners have encouraged his volunteer coaching, Cheesebrough notes.
Minneapolis firms are generally known for reasonable hours, but Faegre also has specific policies that promote a healthy work/life balance. Lawyers can take up to a year’s leave per child, for example, and reduced-time arrangements can be worked out for child care or other reasons for as long as a lawyer wants. Working less doesn’t have to derail your career, either. Six current Faegre lawyers became partners while working on a reduced-time schedule, and they continue to do so as partners.
Faegre lawyers don’t take home as much as some other attorneys (first-years earn a base salary of $90,000, compared to the typical $125,000 in New York). But it’s a trade-off associates are willing to make. “We could make more money,” says Cheesebrough, “but how can you quantify how happy you are-not just at the office but, for me, in the hockey rink?”
Also Consider
Associates at 511-lawyer Kilpatrick Stockton (Kilpatrickstockton.com) rate the Atlanta-based firm one of the tops in the country in terms of overall satisfaction. One reason Kilpatrick attorneys are treated right: Associates get to review their partners. And a merit-based compensation system rewards not only billable hours but also an attorney’s overall contribution to the firm.