Call this Stockholm syndrome, but I'm wondering whether people are overstating how transformative the jump from Biglaw to a more normal 9-5 actually is in terms of quality of life.
I see my friends who went in house or somewhere else for better work life balance but they are still generally working till 5/6 pm, 4 pm on a good day. And in practice, I'm convinced most people are not spending their weeknights in some state of self-actualization. 9-5 is still a grind, people are tired, come home, eat, work out, run errands, decompress (some combination of doom scrolling and netflix), maybe see some friends, waste some time, and poof, it's bedtime and the week is over before you know it. Yes we have to log in and put in some more hours after dinner, but at least we get paid substantially more in biglaw (and there are slow periods where we're working 3 hour days). And if the hours between 6 and 10 pm are getting absorbed into the normal post-work/pre-bed routine anyway regardless of whether you’re in biglaw or doing something more chill, then that makes the calculus for leaving feel much less obvious to me than people are making it sound.
So for people who made the jump: what are those extra evening hours actually buying you that feels worth the pay cut especially in the context of biglaw, where you're walking away from a very competitive compensation trajectory? Are you genuinely living some transcendent, self-actualized existence from 6 to 10 pm that makes the pay cut obviously worth it, or do your weeknights still mostly look like dinner, gym, errands, decompressing, and wasting some time and the occasional dinner/drinks out with friends/SOs/family?