How soon can I leave biglaw? Forum

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Re: How soon can I leave biglaw?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Jul 21, 2017 5:36 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
I'm a first year in a funds practice and work directly with partners every day. Also get calls from clients all the time if they can't reach the partner. It doesn't make the work any more enjoyable. In fact it's kind of depressing because you realize that the stuff you are working on as a first year is the same stuff the partner/client are working on and it doesn't get any more interesting.
+1. Tax in my opinion seems to have the steepest, longest (and most interesting) curve to "competence" but even in that area, in many respects, the partner does what the junior associate does, just much, much better.

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Re: How soon can I leave biglaw?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Jul 21, 2017 5:48 pm

dixiecupdrinking wrote:Why would you want to work directly with partners? Working directly with partners sucks. It's just like working under a senior associate except you have to give a shit about what they think and if you give them bad work there's no doubt where it came from.
IME it depends on the partner. One partner I work with is very laid back and takes the time to answer any questions and explain things to me. This is preferable to working with a senior or midlevel whose answers to most questions are "I don't know, we'll have to check with the partner." When you can just call the partner up, ask the question, and get an answer, it makes life so much easier.

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Re: How soon can I leave biglaw?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Jul 21, 2017 6:52 pm

FYI, I think working directly with a partner is the norm at my firm (mid V100) on all but the biggest matters. Especially in litigation, I think the model of having an associate (or multiple associates) mediate all your interactions with partners is only the norm at very large firms and/or on very large case teams. I also don't find partners any more difficult to work with in general than senior associates (and in fact are typically easier to work with/less stressed-out).

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Re: How soon can I leave biglaw?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Jul 21, 2017 6:55 pm

At my biglaw firm senior associates have the hardest job without a doubt. The person drafting at 4 am is a senior associate or junior partner 99% of the time.

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Vincent Adultman

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Re: How soon can I leave biglaw?

Post by Vincent Adultman » Fri Jul 21, 2017 7:46 pm

Anonymous User wrote:At my biglaw firm senior associates have the hardest job without a doubt. The person drafting at 4 am is a senior associate or junior partner 99% of the time.
100%

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Rahviveh

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Re: How soon can I leave biglaw?

Post by Rahviveh » Sun Jul 23, 2017 8:02 pm

tomwatts wrote:I tried to do transactional biglaw for about 4 weeks as a summer. At one point, a senior associate described a transaction that I was assigned to (an IPO, maybe?) as "really fun." I asked him, "What makes it fun?" He said that it was fun because it was a wacky Norwegian fishing business, and learning about how the business worked (in order to write disclosures or whatever) was fun. It was at that moment that I realized that even the "fun" parts of transactional practice were excruciatingly boring to me. The boring parts were enough to make me hate my life. So I decided not to do any more transactional work.

Have not regretted it for a moment.
Writing disclosure is the worst. Especially when you have to argue about this shit you don't care about to opposing counsel

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