Quitting BigLaw after less than one year Forum

[First Offense]

One of the dumbest aspects of biglaw is total fuckup of priority of cost savings. Some dumbass senior associate wanted me to go to a library to use their JSTOR account to pull one article that could be bough for 35 bucks online. Another wanted me to read through 6000 patents but was too cheap to use a search firm.

Because of their pathological demand for perfection, some big lawyers make really stupid choices when choosing between an automated process and a human putting eyes on something. They assume a person looking at something will NEVER fuck it up.

Was talking to an attorney over the summer about shit like this at my firm. She told me whatever cost to run a search or do the end around is a lot less than the time spent trying to avoid that cost.

Don't know if that's the message at all biglaw firms though.

[los blancos]

Is it advisable to leave with 50k of debt and less than 1 year of biglaw lit experience? What are the alternative options available?

T20, LR + Coif if credentials still matter.

Why do you want out so early? I'm not sure what you can really jump to at this point other than T20+coif maybe putting you in a good spot to cop dat AIII clerkship.

[californiauser]

It seems like the VAST majority of complaints ITT are coming from litigation associates. Is the consensus that big law lit is a much more horrific experience than transactional work?

[Br3v]

It seems like the VAST majority of complaints ITT are coming from litigation associates. Is the consensus that big law lit is a much more horrific experience than transactional work?

I don't think so. My rough understanding is big law lit = better big law life but worse exit options.

[84651846190]

practicing law in general is really really shitty

[Anonymous User]

I find it boring as hell too, and the work is miserable. But the money is good. I believe everyone in the entire firm feels the same way, but never discuss it.

[barkschool]

I find it boring as hell too, and the work is miserable. But the money is good. I believe everyone in the entire firm feels the same way, but never discuss it.

Have you ever held another career?

[84651846190]

I find it boring as hell too, and the work is miserable. But the money is good. I believe everyone in the entire firm feels the same way, but never discuss it.

Have you ever held another career?

Yes, I have (engineering). It was a LOT chiller, more interesting, with WAAAAAAY better people and working conditions. More than hating the actual practice of law, I hate actual lawyers--fake ass pieces of shit who are pretentious beyond imagination.

[los blancos]

As best as I can tell, I think I definitely enjoy practice, but yeah lawyers sorta suck.

[Anonymous User]

after working in accounting I think I'll enjoy biglaw

[84651846190]

after working in accounting I think I'll enjoy biglaw

bless you

[Anonymous User]

It seems like the VAST majority of complaints ITT are coming from litigation associates. Is the consensus that big law lit is a much more horrific experience than transactional work?

Being a junior lit associate sucks hard. Assignments usually consist of (1) researching needle in a haystack questions given to you by people who usually don't fully understand the assignment they are giving you themselves, (2) second level or priv document review (which is harder than everyone always says since you don't understand the case well enough to know whether a given document is responsive or not), and (3) citechecking and proofreading briefs (where, again, you are shit at it because you don't have much experience spotting common issues people miss). And lawyers are terrible managers so all this stuff is often rushed.

It's much more bearable once you move up into a midlevel AND burn off all the assignments where you are the junior, since you can regulate workflow much better than in corp. You'll always know months or weeks in advance when deadlines are happening or are at sufficiently high level to know when deadlines are going to get pushed back. Dealing with the inevitable discovery disputes is still shitty, but this thankfully doesn't take up much time.

[Anonymous User]

Assignments usually consist of (1) researching needle in a haystack questions given to you by people who usually don't fully understand the assignment they are giving you themselves, (2) second level or priv document review (which is harder than everyone always says since you don't understand the case well enough to know whether a given document is responsive or not), and (3) citechecking and proofreading briefs (where, again, you are shit at it because you don't have much experience spotting common issues people miss).

As a first year lit associate, I can attest to this but some of the above is not true (thus crossed out).
(1) most of the times, the mid-level associates already did the search and couldn't find the cases after a quick search, so they push the research down to the junior level to rack up billable hours. Have fun searching for cases that don't exist, only to feel shitty after to not find those nonexistent cases...
(3) people don't expect junior associates to be spotting missed issues, assignments are like citechecking for law review, just needs attention to details.