What's not to like about unlimited vacation? Ask a Big Law associate, and you might find that the answer is "a lot."

Associates of at least 11 big firms expressed disapproval with unlimited vacation policies, according to submissions from The American Lawyer's Midlevel Associates Survey. Young lawyers say they want work-life balance, but what sounds like a promising policy has been a source of stress and worry to many junior lawyers.

"Unlimited vacation is a joke," a Mayer Brown respondent wrote. "No one takes it, or you end up taking less than you would if there [were] a traditional vacation policy."

"Actually [have] a vacation policy rather than 'take what you dare!'" a Dorsey & Whitney lawyer said in response to a question about what they would like to tell the managing partner.

"Switch from unlimited vacation to a specific number of PTO days," a Latham & Watkins lawyer suggested.

About 20% of big firms offer unlimited vacation time for associates, said Kate Reder Sheikh, a San Francisco legal recruiter at Major, Lindsey & Africa who focuses on placing associates, adding it's an "emerging" trend within the legal industry that could recede due to some backlash.

At most firms, she said, associates get an average of three weeks off a year, with some firms offering two or four. In these cases, most associates are still accruing vacation days or paid time off in the traditional manner, as they work.

It's not clear when unlimited vacation first appeared in Big Law, but it often pops into the headlines when a big tech company offers it, as Netflix has done and LinkedIn did in 2015. Its benefits are extolled both for workers, who worry less about punching a clock, and managers, who don't have to worry about paying off accrued vacation when an employee leaves.

Unlimited vacation policies, however, can sharply conflict with a business model still centered around the billable hour.

An associate at DLA Piper called the policy a "big joke," noting in the survey that a supervisor, responding to a request to take two weeks off, asked the associate whether he or she was on track to bill a certain amount of hours in 2018.

The benefits of the policies can depend on a firm's culture and case staffing practices, lawyers and industry observers say.

In an interview, an associate at a Pacific Northwest law firm who takes about four weeks of vacation a year under an unlimited-vacation policy said it can be hard to find others to cover his workload when he's gone, and the burden for finding coverage falls on him. His last firm didn't offer unlimited time off, he said, but at least it was "true vacation."

By contrast, an associate at McDermott Will & Emery, an unlimited-vacation firm, said partners in his group were respectful of his time off for the roughly two weeks a year he selected for his vacation. "Everyone wants to take more vacation," he said in an interview. "But it's a hard job. I think that two weeks is about right."

To be sure, some lawyers enjoy unlimited vacation policies, saying in interviews that they feel they can take a good deal of time off when they hit their targets. And even at firms where vacation accrues in a standard fashion, a firm's culture affects the amount of associates' vacation time. One associate at a firm with four weeks of paid vacation told ALM that he wasn't comfortable with the idea of using all of it.

As with parental leave and other forms of time off, said Sheikh, the recruiter, "there's a written policy and then there's in actuality the way partners respond."

Spokespeople for Dorsey and Mayer Brown confirmed that they had unlimited time-off policies, but declined to comment on the associate criticism. A Latham representative declined to comment, while representatives for DLA Piper and McDermott didn't respond to comment requests. 

Joshua Abbotoy, a corporate associate at Kirkland & Ellis, said he thinks uninterrupted time off can benefit both employers and employees. He said his colleagues at Kirkland self-regulate and tend to be conservative with their vacation time. He takes about a solid week of vacation a year, plus a few four-day weekends here and there when the work slows down, but he keeps in mind that the bottom line is doing the work and being there for clients.

"Clients don't care about what our vacation policy is," he said. "They just want to get their deals done."