I was at Shaw Pittman Potts and Trowbridge, now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. It's been 20 yrs now since I left them to start law school. I had gone to law school thinking I would go back to corporate law, but got diverted into the JAG Corps and have never looked back.

My experience as a legal assistant is the lawyers made bank, but were generally miserable. Half the associates were just getting the name on the resume and planned to work the insane hours for 3 years to pay off their law school loans and then go work in-house or at some boutique firm. The other half were working even more insane hours as they tried to make partner. The partners made serious cash and worked a little better hours than the associates, and bought really nice cars/houses that they never saw because their ex-spouses got them in the divorce which they all seemed to experience.

My personal hours were not bad as staff, but I'd get voice mails from my attorneys at 2am on a Sunday. It was really tough going. The JAG Corps pays 1/2 or 2/3 what I would have made in Big Law, but I went home at 5pm or earlier and almost never worked weekends except if I was starting a court-martial on Monday. Now as an Army civilian, I go home at 4:30pm and absolutely never work weekends.