Is it stressful to work in a law firm?

If you are an associate you will have to handle the substantive work. You will have to keep your productivity high. Billable hours are the bane of lawyers existence. Even people who work on contingency fees  or  corporate have   goals they must meet to remain employed. You will have clients to please sometimes with unpalatable advice; sometimes you never see the client, only the contact lawyer ( rain maker in US parlance) presents your work. You have to please the judges if that is your field. All of this in areas where you may or may not have any idea what you are doing.

The hours are long. Tempers run short. Privileged Characters ( adult version of  entitled brats) are rampant. Someone else is always , always, trying to market the client away from you, both in your firm and outside of it.That means politics in teh office can be fierce.

If you are a principal/ owner/partner in a firm, you have the added pressure of making sure there are enough clients/cases/income to keep the business running. A law firm is most definitely a business. You do all this while juggling the problems caused by the aforementioned Privileged Characters who think that the rules don't apply to them.

I started doing this in 1974. Most of my war stories are not printable

Morever, When you are representing clients, regardless of the area in which you are representing them, you incur a high level of responsibility. It doesn't matter if you are an attorney, a paralegal, a secretary, the receptionist, or the guy working in the mail room. You are a link in a chain that must be properly managed to make sure the client is receiving proper representation. There are deadlines to meet, rules you must know (staff must follow certain attorney ethics rules) and stressed out attorneys to deal with. All work must be performed properly because mistakes can lead to damage to a client's representation, which can lead to a malpractice lawsuit. Ethical violations can lead to a lawyer being called before the ethics board.

Never mind, you might be dealing with clients, depending on your role. Sometimes the clients are upset and will take it out on anyone they happen to talk to. Frequently, this is the secretary or the paralegal. This is especially the case if you are dealing with consumer law, i.e. where you are representing an individual as opposed to a business, and litigation has commenced or will. Litigation is stressful for everyone, but especially the client.

Some areas of practice are more stressful than others. Some firms are more stressful than others. Some bosses are more stressful than others. In this way, law is no different from any other job. But there is a lot that can go wrong and even minor mistakes can have serious consequences.

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Is it legal for a law firm to go public in the US?

It would be different in every state, since each state's laws are different and law firms are regulated by which ever state's bar association they fall under the jurisdiction of, but: the short answer is it would likely be a violation of the attorney's professional responsibility/ethics standards. In Florida it is against the bar's rules for a non-lawyer to have an ownership interest in a law firm that would compromise the attorney's professional judgment. This would preclude any type of public trading, since companies are responsible to shareholders before employees. A lawyer's professional judgment and the interests of the client must be put before the profit of the company. Similarly, a lawyer is generally (with few exceptions) prohibited from profit sharing with non-lawyers In Florida. Even more rules place further limitations on this type of situation. Most states probably have similar laws/rules. 

This is not a substitute for legal advice. Seek personal legal advice from a qualified lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. Nothing In this answer creates a lawyer-client relationship. I am a lawyer, not your lawyer.

Additionally, The NYT had an article a few years ago about this: Selling Pieces of Law Firms to Investors

Lawyers will claim fealty to their notions of ethics for why this is prohibited; nonetheless, it is a poor business decision on their part.

Allowing outside investors would accomplish two things:

• Provide for a more diverse source of capital than the current practice of having partners buy into their firms
• Allow partnerships to raise capital from banks or other institutions in the form of debt (note this is somewhat different than a revolving line of credit with one's bank)

Right now, I believe that the only way a law firm facing a liquidity crunch can raise money is by (1) requiring its partners to cough up more money or (2) factor receivables.  I suppose they could sell off furniture, too, if they were really desperate.

None of those options is really a viable source of capital long term.  Many of the law firms that have collapsed in recent years have collapsed precisely because they have no source of capital other than what has been paid in by partners.  It's a very leveraged (and risky) business model.

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How long must attorneys at most law firms wait before being considered for partner?

In big law firms (i.e. 50+), the current trend is to be considered for non-equity partnership somewhere around 7-9 years, and equity partnership within a few years of that.

However, this is all somewhat dynamic; the partner system was seriously injured by the crash in the legal marketplace in 2008.
Additionally,  The current trend is 7-9 years for partnership, although what that means varies significantly from firm to firm.  Many larger firms give lawyers the title of partner even though they are only "income partners," i.e., salaried lawyers who do not share in the firm's profits, and often work on contracts.  In firms with multi-tiered partnerships, equity partnership may only come, if it comes at all, 4-6 years after initially making partner.  In firms where there is only one tier of partnership, i.e., the title of partner is reserved only for equity holders, it is not unknown for associates to practice 10+ years before making partner.  Some of these firms will give titles like "counsel" or "senior attorney" to associates after 7 years or so until they become partners.

And yes, just about every large firm makes a partner or two "early" every few years--at some larger firms that make a few dozen partners per year, this may be an annual occurrence.  My current firm made a lawyer a partner after 5 years, and at my prior firm, we had some lawyers make it in 5 years, as well.  Some lawyers are just exceptionally skilled early in their careers, and some lawyers are exceptionally marketable early in their careers.  In either case, it wouldn't be smart for a firm to run the risk of losing people that they've already recognized as "keepers" within their system. 

That all being said, You don't know that there is a list of individuals who made partner earlier than average, nor that such a list would be particularly useful.  Making partner at any time is a personal achievement, but it does not mean that work/competition is done.  It could be analogized to completing the first stage of a triathlon; it's great that you made it, but there's still a long way to go.  If anything, most partners work harderthan they did as associates:  for income (salaried) partners, there's the challenge of developing a book of business to try to become an equity partner, and for equity partners, compensation is largely based on the work that you generate, so there's a constant challenge to bring money through the door.  Speaking personally as an equity partner (who is now trying to grow his share), in addition to my normal business work, I also now spend significant amounts of time on business development and attention to the marketing/economics of my firm, none of which earns me a dime, at least not initially.  The bottom line is that if you look at random large firms--who is running them, who is a rainmaker, who is a nationally recognized name, etc.--most of those people made partner 6-9 years after law school, and kept on working.  Making partner early means that you've climbed another rung on the ladder of success (and before your classmates), but it does not mean that you're on easy street for life.

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Do laws protect freedom?

As we know that the law was created to everything of our life is fair and right, but we can say with certainty that " Laws protect freedom"  we we need to make more clear:
The best answer I can muster is that it depends.
 
Freedom has different interpretations depending upon which nationality you live in or depending in which country you live in or depending upon your value system or shifts in your vaue system.
 
Sometimes we are told that rules or laws need to be drawn up in order to protect the freedom or perceived freedoms of the masses. 
 
For example, road signs are really important. ( Stop signs, traffic lights etc.)
Without them, people would get hurt. Is it infringing on my freedom when I have to stop and wait for the light to go green? I wonder. 
 
We all have to pay taxes. Is it infringing on my freedom when money is automatically taken out of my pay check whether I want to or not participate in all the government programs of my country or my employer or my union? I wonder. 
 
Then I have this weird idea that freedom is an illusion. 
 
I know one thing for sure. In nature, freedom is dangerous. The laws of nature have to be followed or you simply will not survive. 
 
You can dance in the medow full of daisies but I suggest you'd better be aware of predators out there.  To some of them, you are seen as prey.
 
I think of the native people on my dad's side. The laws never EVER protected their freedom or their way of life. 
 
Their lands were taken from them. All their customs and their culture was dessimated. Their value system was not respected. Children were taken away from them and put in orphanages. ( This was supposed to turn them into civilized people rather that keep on living like "savages".)
 
On and on it goes. 
 
Let's explore the phenomenon of organised religion.
 
Is the flock truly free. ( I was raised catholic.)
 
As soon as you are born the baby has to be baptised because apparently the new born baby is already a sinner. It is a ritual to rid the child of what the catholic religion terms as the original sin.
 

Original sin, also called ancestral sin,[1] is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the fall of man.[2] This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt.[3]

 
Does it truly make a difference whether the child in baptised or not? 
 
Are the parents truly free to chose? Perhaps. 
 
50 years ago, the thought of using your freedom of choice not to have your child baptised would have been scandalous.
 
Did the churches laws infringe on your freedom? In my case, yes. 
 
From a common sense point of view, laws in general are supposed to protect 
 the masses in order to assure the general well being of the group. 
 
In my opinion laws are not, at their core essence, designed to protect freedom. 
Freedom can mean so many things to so many different people.

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The difference between copyleft and copyright

There are many imformation to distingguish between copyleft and copyright, but i will provide some main things about them for you to understand clearly:

A copyright is a legal process used by creators and inventors to protect their work and to control distribution of their product.

The copyleft is an invented term, used to describe a copyright that requires anyone distributing a copy or derived copy to allow redistribution of their code. Specifically, the term copyleft refers to the GNU copyleft license (which is in fact, a legal copyright).

The copyleft is not the same as open source. Many licenses are not compatible with the copyleft. The BSD license which allows code to be taken and made proprietary. (Did you know Microsoft used BSD code in their command line FTP client in ages past?)

There are many many open source licenses, not just BSD and the GNU copyleft. There's the Artistic License, and the X11 license, and so many more.

Additionally, They're the opposite of each other. Copyleft means there's no ownership claimed by the originator and the item can be used and modified by anyone in anyway. Copyright means the originator claims ownership and has the right to dictate whether anyone else uses it. This typically means they don't allow changes or sharing and the owner can legally stop its use whenever discovered to be used without their permission.

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