The Pros of Corporate Law? Forum

[R2-D2]

I'm a sophomore in college, and I've been considering Corporate Law for a while now. All I've been hearing about is how BigLaw is boring, uninteresting, and not fun, as well as a ton of billable hours, and no vacation or family time. But what are some of the positives of BigLaw? I would think that if you can make it there, starting out making $100-160K as a 25 year old really isn't that bad at all. What are some of the more positive sides of Corporate Law? It seems like a great way to make a living in your 20s.

[ToTransferOrNot]

I'm a sophomore in college, and I've been considering Corporate Law for a while now. All I've been hearing about is how BigLaw is boring, uninteresting, and not fun, as well as a ton of billable hours, and no vacation or family time. But what are some of the positives of BigLaw? I would think that if you can make it there, starting out making $100-160K as a 25 year old really isn't that bad at all. What are some of the more positive sides of Corporate Law? It seems like a great way to make a living in your 20s.

You gloss over the money as if there are any other good sides--or that there need to be any other good sides, for that matter.

(I'll leave the other "you won't get biglaw and thus will be crushed under a mountain of debt" talking points to others. Calling MTal.)

[ThreeRivers]

I'm a 0L so not really qualified at all so take my advice with a grain of sault (others that respond will be more knowledgable).

From what I gather, it's a sick gig for a 20's something with no so / kids. You make bank / collect dough / pay off loans. Yea, you work long hours but still able to go out some and enjoy life.

I think the problem comes with those engaged, married, with children, etc... Hours are often unpredictable and theres risk of becoming the stereotypical movie "say you'll be at little Suzy's dance recital then cancel cause a big deal came up and can't leave" dad

So I think a lot depends on where you're in life. Which is why for some working big law when young / exiting to in-house is a dream scenario

[monkey85]

Well, I'll turn the question around and ask you: why do you think you want to do corporate law?

The red flag for me in your question is that you may not have a solid enough reason to do the lsat, law school, big law etc, if you have no actual professional interest in the field. Working in a field, even with a lot of money, will really stink if you hate the industry.

[prezidentv8]

SUMMON MTAL!!

[R2-D2]

Well, I'll turn the question around and ask you: why do you think you want to do corporate law?

The red flag for me in your question is that you may not have a solid enough reason to do the lsat, law school, big law etc, if you have no actual professional interest in the field. Working in a field, even with a lot of money, will really stink if you hate the industry.

I've actually been considering corporate law in some way, shape, or form since I was in my senior year of high school. I was introduced to the field in my International Finance and Law class (I went to a magnet high school). I'm excellent at writing (lowest grade I've ever gotten on a college paper was an 89%), won numerous writing awards, and many people have told me that I'd be an excellent candidate for law.

[rayiner]

1) The work isn't all that boring. You'll do a lot of soul sucking diligence or doc review your first couple of years, but by years 2-3 you'll have real responsibility. At some places in some groups (e.g. capital markets) you'll be dealing with clients and running your own small deals. And revising a prospectus or writing a memo about some legal question a client asked isn't super glamorous, but it's much more intellectually interesting than what most people do.

2) You work in a legitimate office with a door that fucking closes.

3) You're treated like a grownup. Nobody cares if you come in 10 min late on a day where you have nothing going on. Nobody micromanages your time. If you need something administrative you can politely ask your secretary and it happens.

Big law is a lot of hours, and it's a huge commitment on your time, but for what you're getting paid its a good deal. Law is just full of people straight from undergrad who have never worked a professional job before. As such they have no appreciation for things like working in an office with a door that fuckig closes. They went to undergrad majoring in Poli-Sci thinking they'd be advising Presidents and shit. They talk constantly about how much better other jobs are (consulting, finance, engineering). Well, I worked at a tech startup and if I described it the way lawyers describe law, I would talk only about how you work insane hours to meet ridiculous deadlines resulting from marketing making promises engineering camt keep. About how you get into this bizarre game of overestimating how long it takes to do anything because project management never leaves time in the schedule for anything not going 100% right. About how you can spend days looking through stack traces to pinpoint a single bug that only happens to one customer on the other side of the planet who needs to be talked down at 3 am local time. The fact that the 10% of the time when you're doing design work the job is tremendously stimulating, creative, and fulfilling would be left out.

[RedBirds2011]

1) The work isn't all that boring. You'll do a lot of soul sucking diligence or doc review your first couple of years, but by years 2-3 you'll have real responsibility. At some places in some groups (e.g. capital markets) you'll be dealing with clients and running your own small deals. And revising a prospectus or writing a memo about some legal question a client asked isn't super glamorous, but it's much more intellectually interesting than what most people do.

2) You work in a legitimate office with a door that fucking closes.

3) You're treated like a grownup. Nobody cares if you come in 10 min late on a day where you have nothing going on. Nobody micromanages your time. If you need something administrative you can politely ask your secretary and it happens.

Big law is a lot of hours, and it's a huge commitment on your time, but for what you're getting paid its a good deal. Law is just full of people straight from undergrad who have never worked a professional job before. As such they have no appreciation for things like working in an office with a door that fuckig closes. They went to undergrad majoring in Poli-Sci thinking they'd be advising Presidents and shit. They talk constantly about how much better other jobs are (consulting, finance, engineering). Well, I worked at a tech startup and if I described it the way lawyers describe law, I would talk only about how you work insane hours to meet ridiculous deadlines resulting from marketing making promises engineering camt keep. About how you get into this bizarre game of overestimating how long it takes to do anything because project management never leaves time in the schedule for anything not going 100% right. About how you can spend days looking through stack traces to pinpoint a single bug that only happens to one customer on the other side of the planet who needs to be talked down at 3 am local time. The fact that the 10% of the time when you're doing design work the job is tremendously stimulating, creative, and fulfilling would be left out.

+1000

[R2-D2]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

[Always Credited]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The only abilities that translate well into biglaw are the abilities to have a terrible family life/no family life, have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle of never working out and not sleeping enough, and deal with assholes all day in numerous capacities. The last one isn't industry or field specific, but may help you the most.

[rayiner]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The relevant skill for Big Law: being able to do LSAT questions quickly and accurately. Every thing else is learnable.

[Always Credited]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The relevant skill for Big Law: being able to do LSAT questions quickly and accurately. Every thing else is learnable.

Its true. Law school definitely teaches you how to deal with assholes all day.

[redbullvodka]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The only abilities that translate well into biglaw are the abilities to have a terrible family life/no family life, have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle of never working out and not sleeping enough, and deal with assholes all day in numerous capacities. The last one isn't industry or field specific, but may help you the most.

If you exclude the last part (which may or may not be a huge exclusion), this is exactly the same as at the very least a medical residency, and potentially the vast majority of medical careers. I really think the reason lawyers complain more loudly is that they have the option to leave to use their law degree differently. If person A gets into biglaw and hates it, they can take their talents to a different industry and use their JD differently (hold off on the biglaw/bust arguments, because they're a strawman to what I'm trying to argue); if person B gets into a medical residency, they HAVE to finish it, no matter how much they hate it, in order to be a doctor.

Person A gets paid 160K (or around there) to do, at the most extreme, 75-80 hours a week. Person B gets paid a third of that, to do, on the norm, 70-80 hours a week, as a resident. The lawyer's much better off.

[Always Credited]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The only abilities that translate well into biglaw are the abilities to have a terrible family life/no family life, have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle of never working out and not sleeping enough, and deal with assholes all day in numerous capacities. The last one isn't industry or field specific, but may help you the most.

If you exclude the last part (which may or may not be a huge exclusion), this is exactly the same as at the very least a medical residency, and potentially the vast majority of medical careers. I really think the reason lawyers complain more loudly is that they have the option to leave to use their law degree differently. If person A gets into biglaw and hates it, they can take their talents to a different industry and use their JD differently (hold off on the biglaw/bust arguments, because they're a strawman to what I'm trying to argue); if person B gets into a medical residency, they HAVE to finish it, no matter how much they hate it, in order to be a doctor.

Person A gets paid 160K (or around there) to do, at the most extreme, 75-80 hours a week. Person B gets paid a third of that, to do, on the norm, 70-80 hours a week, as a resident. The lawyer's much better off.

Oh yeah, I get that. The thing is though that the resident usually loves their work. They may not love the particular period of residency, but - at least for those I know - they overwhelmingly love what they do and wouldn't have it any other way.

...not exactly feeling that from the BigLaw crowd.


Edit: not turning this into an anti-biglawl thread, I promise. Just got it on the brain, as one of said biglawl friends just left the office a few mins ago and called me for beers. He's due back around 6:30.

[redbullvodka]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The only abilities that translate well into biglaw are the abilities to have a terrible family life/no family life, have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle of never working out and not sleeping enough, and deal with assholes all day in numerous capacities. The last one isn't industry or field specific, but may help you the most.

If you exclude the last part (which may or may not be a huge exclusion), this is exactly the same as at the very least a medical residency, and potentially the vast majority of medical careers. I really think the reason lawyers complain more loudly is that they have the option to leave to use their law degree differently. If person A gets into biglaw and hates it, they can take their talents to a different industry and use their JD differently (hold off on the biglaw/bust arguments, because they're a strawman to what I'm trying to argue); if person B gets into a medical residency, they HAVE to finish it, no matter how much they hate it, in order to be a doctor.

Person A gets paid 160K (or around there) to do, at the most extreme, 75-80 hours a week. Person B gets paid a third of that, to do, on the norm, 70-80 hours a week, as a resident. The lawyer's much better off.

Oh yeah, I get that. The thing is though that the resident usually loves their work. They may not love the particular period of residency, but - at least for those I know - they overwhelmingly love what they do and wouldn't have it any other way.

...not exactly feeling that from the BigLaw crowd.

That, I think, goes back to the "poli-sci student who wants to advise Obama" argument. It's not that BigLaw sucks relative to something like medicine -- it's that less people self-select out of it, because they don't understand it. I think if you're aware that you're going to be working 70 hour work week, with varying levels of unpredictability, BigLaw shouldn't look as bad to you as it's made out to be. I'm a 0L, so say what you want about my "perspective" -- it doesn't mean I'm wrong.

[RedBirds2011]

The only abilities that translate well into biglaw are the abilities to have a terrible family life/no family life, have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle of never working out and not sleeping enough, and deal with assholes all day in numerous capacities. The last one isn't industry or field specific, but may help you the most.[/quote]

If you exclude the last part (which may or may not be a huge exclusion), this is exactly the same as at the very least a medical residency, and potentially the vast majority of medical careers. I really think the reason lawyers complain more loudly is that they have the option to leave to use their law degree differently. If person A gets into biglaw and hates it, they can take their talents to a different industry and use their JD differently (hold off on the biglaw/bust arguments, because they're a strawman to what I'm trying to argue); if person B gets into a medical residency, they HAVE to finish it, no matter how much they hate it, in order to be a doctor.

Person A gets paid 160K (or around there) to do, at the most extreme, 75-80 hours a week. Person B gets paid a third of that, to do, on the norm, 70-80 hours a week, as a resident. The lawyer's much better off.[/quote]

Oh yeah, I get that. The thing is though that the resident usually loves their work. They may not love the particular period of residency, but - at least for those I know - they overwhelmingly love what they do and wouldn't have it any other way.

...not exactly feeling that from the BigLaw crowd.[/quote]

That, I think, goes back to the "poli-sci student who wants to advise Obama" argument. It's not that BigLaw sucks relative to something like medicine -- it's that less people self-select out of it, because they don't understand it. I think if you're aware that you're going to be working 70 hour work week, with varying levels of unpredictability, BigLaw shouldn't look as bad to you as it's made out to be. I'm a 0L, so say what you want about my "perspective" -- it doesn't mean I'm wrong.[/quote]







As someone with real life WE, TITCR and I'm not a 0L.

[rayiner]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The only abilities that translate well into biglaw are the abilities to have a terrible family life/no family life, have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle of never working out and not sleeping enough, and deal with assholes all day in numerous capacities. The last one isn't industry or field specific, but may help you the most.

You're over-stating your case. It's a "x, y, and z: pick two" situation. My dad's job as a public health consultant involves more than big law hours, plus extensive travel, and he's been doing it for over 30 years. Yet, he's got a great relationship with me and my brother, he eats healthy, he works out regularly. In trade-off, he has no hobbies and takes very little personal time.

The problem is that Americans, mostly white Americans, have these idealized notions of non-work time that involve highly structured, planned activities. A vacation means something two weeks long, far away, planned months in advance. Quality time with your kids means showing up during business hours to highly structured activities. Working out means a structured regimen of exercise with a regular schedule. And if your job is too demanding to allow you to partake in this highly scheduled activities, well then you can't take vacations, spend quality time with your kids, or work out.

These ideas are, of course, ridiculous. An impromptu stay-cation can be just as relaxing as fighting crowds at some popular tourist destination. A child, who by the way doesn't really remember anything that happens to it before the age of ten, doesn't need a structured schedule of school plays and team sports to be well-adjusted. He's happy to run in circles all day and have his dad help him with his multiplication tables in the evening. You don't need to maintain the workout regimen of a CK model to be healthy. It's OK not to be able to see your abs.

If you need to be able to schedule drinks with your friends on a week day, big law is not for you. Neither is consulting, finance, medicine or engineering, for that matter. But it's incorrect to confuse the scheduling constraint (can't schedule drinks ahead of time) with the time constraint (can't find time to get drinks). In very few demanding jobs do you work constantly. You have down time, you just don't know when. If you're not spontaneous and flexible in using that down time, your life can be miserable. If you are, then it can be entirely tolerable, as long as you accept that your lifestyle is just incompatible with certain things.

[Always Credited]

Sounds like truly great work. I've also been gravitating to this because of my parents; while not lawyers, they are businesspeople, and they deal with a lot of contracts. I've read a lot of contracts that they've worked on, and even helped them edit them sometimes. Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw? Also, I've done very well in the fields of geography, foreign affairs, and history (throughout my school years as well as during college; I'm a History major). Do skills like this translate well into BigLaw, and could I put them into good use in any way (multinational business deals, etc.)?

The only abilities that translate well into biglaw are the abilities to have a terrible family life/no family life, have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle of never working out and not sleeping enough, and deal with assholes all day in numerous capacities. The last one isn't industry or field specific, but may help you the most.

You're over-stating your case. It's a "x, y, and z: pick two" situation. My dad's job as a public health consultant involves more than big law hours, plus extensive travel, and he's been doing it for over 30 years. Yet, he's got a great relationship with me and my brother, he eats healthy, he works out regularly. In trade-off, he has no hobbies and takes very little personal time.

The problem is that Americans, mostly white Americans, have these idealized notions of non-work time that involve highly structured, planned activities. A vacation means something two weeks long, far away, planned months in advance. Quality time with your kids means showing up during business hours to highly structured activities. Working out means a structured regimen of exercise with a regular schedule. And if your job is too demanding to allow you to partake in this highly scheduled activities, well then you can't take vacations, spend quality time with your kids, or work out.

These ideas are, of course, ridiculous. An impromptu stay-cation can be just as relaxing as fighting crowds at some popular tourist destination. A child, who by the way doesn't really remember anything that happens to it before the age of ten, doesn't need a structured schedule of school plays and team sports to be well-adjusted. He's happy to run in circles all day and have his dad help him with his multiplication tables in the evening. You don't need to maintain the workout regimen of a CK model to be healthy.It's OK not to be able to see your abs.

BLASPHEMY

You're right about the rest though. Like I said in the edit, I've just been hearing a lot of anti-biglaw buzz lately and those were the common complaints. It was on the brain. Being the only one of my friends who opted out of the firm life, they come to me to complain about their random shit. I just think people need to consider carefully what they're sacrificing before they go down a path they may regret. Some people don't have anything TO sacrifice - so, yeah, fuck it. Go put in 90. But others do, or will. This is all irrelevant to the OP though...sorry OP.

[PrinceKasra]

I have a question regarding not only big law but the various fields in the private sector as well. I understand the economy is horrible right now and the chance of getting into big law is very small or nonexistent. But if I start at any law job coming out of a tier 2 school, couldn't I work my way up into big law. Maybe not in the near future but after years of hard work? Because I have wanted to do corporate law and considering that I am not going into a top 20 school, I do not have knowledge on the number of lawyers who make it to big law.

[rayiner]

I have a question regarding not only big law but the various fields in the private sector as well. I understand the economy is horrible right now and the chance of getting into big law is very small or nonexistent. But if I start at any law job coming out of a tier 2 school, couldn't I work my way up into big law. Maybe not in the near future but after years of hard work? Because I have wanted to do corporate law and considering that I am not going into a top 20 school, I do not have knowledge on the number of lawyers who make it to big law.

This is generally unlikely. Big law firms tend to want to develop lawyers from fresh graduates. They hire laterals from other big law firms, but rarely from small law firms. Lawyers at small firms by and large don't do the same sort of work, so it's not like they have an experience edge over fresh graduates. The best route into a big firm outside of the top LS -> first year associate treadmill is to go into the federal government and try to lateral from there.

[blsingindisguise]

I have a question regarding not only big law but the various fields in the private sector as well. I understand the economy is horrible right now and the chance of getting into big law is very small or nonexistent. But if I start at any law job coming out of a tier 2 school, couldn't I work my way up into big law. Maybe not in the near future but after years of hard work? Because I have wanted to do corporate law and considering that I am not going into a top 20 school, I do not have knowledge on the number of lawyers who make it to big law.

It's very unusual for someone who doesn't start in biglaw to work their way into biglaw. When it does happen, it's usually because the non-biglaw person can bring in some huge client or clients and is brought on as a partner or an of counsel. Occasionally I have seen young associates who miss biglaw somehow manage to work at a midsize firm for a year or two and/or maybe clerk and then get biglaw, but it's not something you can count on.

[LOLyer]

Do you think skills like this would help me in BigLaw?

No.

[thelawyler]

I'm going to be honest that I expected much more BigLawl whining in here.

[justinp]

Surprisingly insightful and balanced thread. *golfclap*

[Odd Future Wolf Gang]

You read, edit, and draft documents like this for 70 hours a week:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blo ... merger.pdf

And then people yell at you if you missed a comma or a typo.