Agreed on anonymity, but not as sure about the other stuff.SFSpartan wrote:While there are bad partners to work for at any law firm, I'm skeptical that a partner "review" site will take off for the following reasons:
1. Anonymity - Partners typically don't work with a terribly large group of associates, so it would be difficult to give a negative review with enough detail to be helpful without outing onesself. Of course, associates could wait until they left to leave reviews, but (a) time is going to dissipate the urge to give a negative review and (b) people generally don't like burning bridges.
2. Custom - Lawyers generally don't tell unrelated third parties bad things about other lawyers in an identifiable way. At most, if someone is a pain to work with, I'll hear other people describe them as "difficult" without further specifics. This isn't really helpful, since "difficult" can mean a bunch of different things (anecdotally, I've heard "difficult" be used as a proxy for attorneys that are screamers, kinda psychopathic, disorganized, lazy, or needlessly picky - obviously, this runs the gauntlet enough so that it is not helpful.
3. "Bad" is a Broad Term - Some partners are "bad" to work for, but "bad" can mean a lot of different things. Some partners are "bad" to work for because they don't have juice within the firm. Others are bad because they are lazy, and still others are bad because they have prickly personalities.
4. Associate Experiences are Subjective - Different people are going to interact well/poorly with different personalities. So, one associate may have an awful experience with one partner, while another may have a great experience with said partner. For example, at my prior firm, I worked with a partner that had a reputation of being a pain to work with because he/she was very particular about associate work product, and because the partner tended to express displeasure with associates' work product fairly rudely. However, I got what the partner wanted from me, so had a great experience with him/her.
Also, a certain legal recruiter named above has a reputation for hyperbole and routinely publishes blog posts with stories that seem a bit too close to his point to be real. Accordingly, I'd take any story that recruiter spins into a blog post with a grain of salt.
Bad partners to work for at each biglaw firm Forum
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