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I'm currently considering offers from a very corporate heavy firm and a very litigation heavy firm. Obviously there are a lot of considerations to account for in deciding but I'm also thinking about exit options if I want to leave in 3-5 years.

I know the consensus seems to be that corporate attorneys frequently go in-house after working at a firm. What about litigators? Are they limited to working for other firms or becoming DAs/PDs? I know I've met 1-2 litigators who went in-house, were they complete anomalies?

In-house litigators are not complete anomalies, but they are rarer than corporate folks.

Almost certainly a decent paycut.

Most in house lit positions are in unglamorous areas like mass torts, etc...

Fresh Prince wrote:Almost certainly a decent paycut.

Oh definitely, in 5 or 6 years after I've paid off my loans I may be willing to trade money for time.

Anonymous User wrote:Most in house lit positions are in unglamorous areas like mass torts, etc...

Is it possible to be a litigator who goes in-house in a non-litigator capacity? Is that just too much of a shift in terms of the work?

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Most in house lit positions are in unglamorous areas like mass torts, etc...

Is it possible to be a litigator who goes in-house in a non-litigator capacity? Is that just too much of a shift in termsof the work?

Are you asking if litigators go do M&A? The answer is almost def., no. Something like contract drafting could conceivably be a duty assigned to a litigator but its prob less likely unless the dept is really small

Anonymous User wrote:I'm currently considering offers from a very corporate heavy firm and a very litigation heavy firm. Obviously there are a lot of considerations to account for in deciding but I'm also thinking about exit options if I want to leave in 3-5 years.

I know the consensus seems to be that corporate attorneys frequently go in-house after working at a firm. What about litigators? Are they limited to working for other firms or becoming DAs/PDs? I know I've met 1-2 litigators who went in-house, were they complete anomalies?

Other than the government (DA, DOJ, USAO) and Public Interest Organizations (Public Counsel), there are many different types of private companies that will hire in-house litigators.

Insurance companies have large in-house legal departments made up of former law firm litigators.

Many Fortune 100 companies also have large in-house legal dept.s with litigators. This is how companies like GE, Tyco, WMI, etc. contain legal costs. They "insource" many of the smaller legal issues that may arise, from simple breach of contract with vendors to day-in-and-day-out employment issues, etc.

Also, media and entertainment companies (e.g. Fox, NBC) also have very significant number of litigators in their in-house legal depts. I've never understood exactly why, but they do (I know from personal experience because I have friends in such positions). Many of them do exactly what you would expect a law firm to do, e.g. MSJ, TRO, etc.

So the options are there, just depends on what you want to do.

Other smaller law firms bro.

Although this has been mentioned somewhat, the most attractive option is probably the federal government. This stems from a few reasons: 1) DRAMATICALLY decreased hours 2) dramatically increased job security 3) dramatically increases the likelihood that the litigator can, after working for the fed government for a number of years, make partner at a law firm. If you work at the SEC, DOJ, DOE, EPA, CFTC, FTC, IRS, etc. for a number of years there is a very high likelihood that you can make partner at a firm in the practice area relevant to what you did for the government. In fact you've got a better chance of making partner that way than just slugging it out as an associate at the firm after being hired straight out of law school. That list of reasons is a big contributor to the insane competitiveness of federal legal jobs.