Kirkland & Ellis is a terrific law firm, and they do excellent work. At the same time, am I alone in thinking that if you want to do video segments featuring associates trying to sell the firm, it’s probably better not to try to have a segment on Work-Life Balance?
Best line: ”When I’m away from my husband and I’m away from my children, the work is fulfilling.”
My favorite line: “[Helping a child with Down's Syndrome has been rewarding because it's allowed me to learn to] formulate a plan and move foward [on a case]. It’s given me a great opportunity to do that for myself.” I’m still paralyzed from the “warm and fuzzies.”
I’m still laughing at the video, although I give Kirkland enormous credit for being honest. I keep trying to decide what makes it so funny (other than the stilted body language), and I think that I’m laughing at how I actually believed these statements when I worked at a firm. I thought that “I work, have dinner with my family, then work more” actually qualified as a balanced life. Although I think I would have realized that it was an odd marketing line.
This video has been making me wonder whether going to law school was a good idea for about a year now. Thanks K&E!
For anybody that’s ever worked at a similar law firm, it’s quite easy to spot the moments when these large brains are straining under the processing power needed to untangle their real lives from the purple unicorn and rainbow depiction they’re being encouraged to present. They can’t even talk about the work-life balance without hedging all over the place. I like the second dude who says something approximating, “If you really try really hard to maintain work-life balance [sneak out of the office while the partner on your deal is taking a dump] you can, on balance [read: man, I really mean hardly ever, but that won't sound good in a promotional video, and they've already reapplied my eye shadow 7 times, so I can't fumble this and say 'never' again]achieve this balance.’ Yowza! And the first dude, who thinks having dinner with one’s family before reattaching his face to his blackberry is a ‘nice lull?!’ Sign me up, guys!
These folks go out of their way to make anonymouslawfirm.com easy to write.
Yikes! I saw the other segments too. Is it me, or do these associates all look and sound like robots?
I’m an associate at K&E. The video is pretty bad.
The points that they’re trying to get through are pretty true. We get a lot more responsibility and accordingly do more interesting work than our peers at other biglaw firms. And, relative to our peer firms, we don’t have a whole lot of face-time nonsense and our culture is centered around doing good work rather than “impressing” people by being in your office at 9pm.
But, it looks like the marketing people don’t have a clue how this video comes off.
“Yes, I sold my soul to the equity partners at Kirkland, but they lend it back to me for an hour each day so I can have dinner with my family.”