Quitting biglaw first year - paying back stipends/bar exam fees? Forum

[Dcc617]

If it helps, I have heard of this scenario play out in two different ways. First, I knew of a guy who started biglaw, and quit in like the first 90 days to go to a nonprofit. I don’t think they made him pay back. The second was a person who lateraled to another biglaw firm six months in. They had to pay back the prorated rate.

But if you’re quarter-assing now, then really just barely do anything until they fire you. It’ll take longer than you’d think.

[hdr]

If you refuse to repay your firm, they're almost certainly not going to take you to court. My friend left a firm less than a year after starting, and they tried to make him repay his $50,000 clerkship bonus. He refused, and the managing partner eventually conceded that while not repaying was contrary to what he agreed, unprofessional, damaging to his reputation, and so on, they ultimately couldn't force him to. He never did.

Like others have said, if you are on the verge of quitting you should just slack off even more. Go to bed early. Make up excuses for why you can't work on weekends (groomsman in a wedding, driving eight hours to visit family, etc.). They probably won't dismiss you and even if they do you'll get at least three months severance.

[Anonymous User]

I was in your position. Got put in a practice group I very much didn’t want with terrible partners and seniors, bad culture, etc. Miserable. Had suicidal ideation for the only time in my life.

Quitting is not the worst thing you can do. I agree that riding it out is more optimal, but more from a nest egg or loan perspective. The idea that they’ll come after you for a bar stipend etc. seems far fetched to me but no personal experience on that. You think a law firm is going to hire another law firm to initiate a case against you? I guess they could file a bar complaint but that won’t get their money back, and I feel like an organization like BigLaw that’s incapable of punishing people for actual bad things (harassment etc) would actually go through the effort to recover the equivalent of one associate-week worth of billing. Also depends a little on the exit - “Hey man I made a mistake, this isn’t for me, I need to focus on my mental health for a while” will not elicit the same response as “fuck you bitches I’m lateralling up to the big leagues.”

I also encourage you to at least stay until you have another job lined up. I took that strategy. It ended up taking a while, so I was at the firm for 15 months or so and had no clawback worries. In my personal experience, the first four months were by far the worst, but ymmv. Find some chill shit making 65k working for county government somewhere and call it good.

[joeshmo39]

I had friends who left their firms after 9 months to go clerk and many were not asked to pay back their stipends or bar fees. Food for thought.

[Anonymous User]

As a miserable first year also thinking of quitting (hoping & praying that I can survive until the end of this year to quit probably during my second year) would be grateful for any advice. I was originally slated to start in a transactional corporate-adjacent group but have been cross-staffed on capital markets and corporate deals with a definitively worse work culture for the last few months and, as a result, I am totally underwater.

I feel like I can't even sell myself to another job because I have been pushed around through practice groups for so long now that I have nothing coherent/concrete to point to for my resume and no idea if that's even a relevant concern because I have nobody to talk to about this. No clue how to go about even getting another job. Can you just move to the government after doing nothing coherent/cohesive in big law? have I been trained? will I be trained by the time I want to leave? I hate the experience I am getting and do not want to be a corporate lawyer but no idea how to move forward from this place.

Any help seriously appreciated as my mental state worsens with each 3 am email ping.