don't hurt yourselfPatriot1208 wrote:Let me think really hard about this.....gothamm wrote:Let me fix your title:
Whyare so many people on TLSare people obsessed with $$$?

don't hurt yourselfPatriot1208 wrote:Let me think really hard about this.....gothamm wrote:Let me fix your title:
Whyare so many people on TLSare people obsessed with $$$?
For me, it's pretty much the only way I can attain my dreams: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfYFnQaG ... re=related.deltasigbn wrote:This is off topic, but why are so many TLS forum posters obsessed with biglaw?
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Seriously. Any non biglaw lawyer telling you that they are working biglaw hours is probably 1. Doing it voluntarily because they are able to make more money that way or 2. They're exaggerating. The likelihood of you working biglaw hours in other legal fields is not very high for a variety of reason. Those claiming that they work like that for the fed government are particularly suspect.romothesavior wrote:Almost all lawyers work a lot of hours, and almost all lawyers work some on the weekends. There's no disputing that.dkt4 wrote:this is a direct quote from an AUSA who is sitting on the couch next to me right now...
"No I don't work better hours, and I work fucking every day"
gonna trust that over what the federally scheduled holidays are. but good game man, seriously. i can tell you did your research
But very few non-biglaw people work as many hours as biglaw folks. A lot will try to make it sound like they do (some of my friends call it small firm syndrome), but most people who worked biglaw and left will say they work far less hours now. Your AUSA friend/spouse/SO may be right. Maybe he/she works as many hours as a biglaw associate. But the vast, vast majority of non-biglaw people don't work as much as those in biglaw, so it is just something to keep in mind.
No I think I'm going to convert to listening to some random internet poster over those who work at DOJ themselves/common knowledge.dkt4 wrote:lol okay, guy. continue to believe what you will.
SA's?FiveSermon wrote:ITT: Bunch of 0L 1L 2L 3L who haven't worked in biglaw speculate.
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i think what makes you clever is your ability to post words without actually adding anything.BruceWayne wrote:No I think I'm going to convert to listening to some random internet poster over those who work at DOJ themselves/common knowledge.dkt4 wrote:lol okay, guy. continue to believe what you will.
Stupendous_Man wrote:One major complaint with biglaw is not just the hours, but it's what you are doing during those hours. Big firms handle matters of such magnitude that they simply can't trust their young associates to take a case all the way to court. So you start at the bottom and you do grunt work and doc review while they develop you as an attorney through pro bono stuff and find out if you have what it takes to take on more responsibility. Especially as a first year associate, everyone is turfing their grunt work down to you, so you are working many, many assignments and only see a small mundane part of any one thing you're working on, which is probably pretty taxing. The trade off is, as you get more and more senior, you start taking on the exciting parts of huge cases/deals, and turf the grunt work down to the people below you. Partners at big firms handle famous and valuable matters, and have the resources behind them to see them through to the end.
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This sounds horrible. . . and I'm trying so hard to keep an open mind about transactional law heading into OCI.alumniguy wrote:Stupendous_Man wrote:One major complaint with biglaw is not just the hours, but it's what you are doing during those hours. Big firms handle matters of such magnitude that they simply can't trust their young associates to take a case all the way to court. So you start at the bottom and you do grunt work and doc review while they develop you as an attorney through pro bono stuff and find out if you have what it takes to take on more responsibility. Especially as a first year associate, everyone is turfing their grunt work down to you, so you are working many, many assignments and only see a small mundane part of any one thing you're working on, which is probably pretty taxing. The trade off is, as you get more and more senior, you start taking on the exciting parts of huge cases/deals, and turf the grunt work down to the people below you. Partners at big firms handle famous and valuable matters, and have the resources behind them to see them through to the end.
I'm not sure I agree with your statement that you are working on many cases/deal to see only a mundane part of what the deal is about. That isn't how cases/deals flow. My background is a transactional attorney, so it is difficult for me to know exactly whether this is the case for litigation, but my experiences in talking to fellow associates is that this isn't true either.
As a junior transactional attorney, you stay on a deal typically from start to finish. A large amount of the work on any deal is going to be fairly standard (i.e., you won't be drafting anything novel, but simply adapting precedent to the specific deal terms). You'll be doing due diligence and drafting corporate resolutions and other ancillary documents that require little to no knowledge of the law. You're essentially filling in the blanks with company names, pulling language from primary deal docs into ancillary docs, etc. The reasons why juniors do this work is two fold: (i) juniors are much cheaper than midlevels/seniors and (ii) it allows the juniors to understand the scope of the deals. As a junior you won't be drafting the credit agreement or purchase agreement (in fact you likely won't even be involved in the negotiation of these documents), but at the very least you know they exist and if your midlevel is good, they'll try to explain bits and pieces along the way. But, you definitely see the deal through to the end. There is so much preparation work for a deal to close that the junior never checks out prior to closing (in fact, the junior is likely the one wrapping up the deal and attending to the post-closing items that need to be resolved - once the deal has closed and the bill has been paid, partners and midlevels tend to move on to the next case while the junior finishes things up and gets a deal bible in the works).
The only time you're getting to see a piece of the deal is if you are a "service" attorney on a particular deal. You may be called in to help with due diligence for a week, you may be asked to help out while others are out on vacation or you may be asked to help as the closing approaches because the deal has not moved as fast as people originally anticipate and their is a ton of work to finish by closing. You're probably seeing this type of work at most 1/3 of your total billables. The majority will be working on "your" deals.
As a junior litigator, it is probably a little more accurate to say that you're working on portions of a case. The fact of litigation is that there is usually a ton of document review and not all of the juniors doing the doc review will be kept around to do research/drafting of memoranda and motion papers. At my firm though, most junior litigators have "their" cases and then they are asked to do additional one-off projects to fill up their days (i.e., additional document review). If you're good, you'll be assigned to be the junior on cases and will have less of the one-off projects. If you aren't good, then you'll probably be on mostly document review. With litigation, again at my firm, it is about cultivating relationships with the seniors who will ask that you be the main junior on the case.
I MUCH prefer transactional over litigation. It isn't that horrible either (and it much more collaborative than litigation). I find myself being a bit negative about biglaw on these boards but I think that is primarily to counter all of the biglaw hype. Biglaw, if you are working with the right people, can be a great working experience most of the time.Veyron wrote:This sounds horrible. . . and I'm trying so hard to keep an open mind about transactional law heading into OCI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kValaG55kUkdeltasigbn wrote: why are so many TLS forum posters obsessed with biglaw?
Enlighten me please
What makes you particularly amusing, is that you're arguing for a point that's essentially commonly known to be patently false. Which essentially makes you a fool.dkt4 wrote:i think what makes you clever is your ability to post words without actually adding anything.BruceWayne wrote:No I think I'm going to convert to listening to some random internet poster over those who work at DOJ themselves/common knowledge.dkt4 wrote:lol okay, guy. continue to believe what you will.
'm a civil AUSA, which basically means I defend the US whenever it's sued.
I went to Chicago, did decently but not spectularly, went to a big firm, paid off debt, left to clerk, and came here right after.
My preference from interviewing in criminal and civil divisions across the country was that I do civil work. But that is also due to me liking the folks I work with.
From talking to friends who had issues getting clearance, yes, any drug use in law school was a problem.
The Honors Program is an entirely different animal from being an AUSA. 90 percent of the offices will not hire without good work experience ~3-5 years.
The best thing about my job is that I truly run my own cases. From top to bottom. I think working in a big litigation firm, most associates spend their entire tenure working to help the partners practice law. What little experience they do get is usually crumbs. I put in serious hours but nothing like firm life. I usually work 8-6:30 and one day a weekend when things are normal. Trial is 16 hour days easy. There's a lot in between these extremes, though.
But there's no filler work. I'm running from dep. to hearing to writing dispositive motion. There's no make work, which I enjoy. But you truly are the person on the line. All. The. Time. It's a big responsibility.
It depends. Main justice is a cush gig. AUSA's tend to work more/heavier case loads. We have one former Honors person in our office. A lot of those people go to agencies which is even more cush.
The law school thing depends. My office is changing from being local grads to top 10 grads from firms who've completed district court clerkships. Grades need to be good, but you need work experience and a federal clerkship. It's pretty competitive. We were hiring before the freeze and got ~4000 applications. For one spot.
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It's true that tax can produce better hours. But I think a lot of people exaggerate their hours. I have no doubt your friend has worked plenty of 70 hour weeks, but what I'm saying is that it would be exceedingly rare for someone to be working 70 hours a week every week for months on end. At my billing efficiency rate, 70 hour weeks every week with two weeks vacation would produce 3,000 billable hours. People do bill 3000 hours, but such people are extremely rare outside of the Cravath/Wacthell/S&C type firms.Nealric, your hours sound absolutely fantastic. But it doesn't sound representative. My friend is a 2nd year associate at a V15. He tells me 60-70 hours a week is typical.
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