Generally, which attorneys work the hardest and which have the best working hours?

Generally speaking there is no strong correlation between area of practice and the number of hours an attorney works. While there are certain areas of law that are so specialized that the ratio of clients and transactions to the number of lawyers available to represent such clients creates thousands of hours of work per attorney each year, any area of law can require the same if the practice is part of a big law firm.

Big law firms generate income based on the billable hour of each attorney, therefore the pressure to bill lots of hours for associates hoping to make partner is very high whether they be in corporate (which includes M&A), real estate, litigation, bankruptcy, environmental, etc. Such associates will typically bill over 2400 hours a year which translates roughly into over 3000 hours at work.

What is more relevant to an attorney’s hours is whether the attorney works in a law firm or outside of one (in house counsel for a company, public interest law/government practice law). Outside of law firms, the concept of the billable hour generally doesn’t exist and therefore there is no pressure to bill lots of hours to generate income. Hours tend to be much more manageable in such environments, and while all jobs will have cyclical upturns in work requiring occasional long hours, many attorney jobs outside of law firms afford an average 40-50 hour work week.

In between the aforementioned jobs and big law firms are smaller law firms. For these firms, the number of hours can vary depending on the firm culture and business model for such firm, but there are many smaller firms that afford comparable hours to those of in house, public interest and government positions. The real estate attorneys you heard about probably fall into this category.