Los Angeles Market Associates Taking Questions Forum

[Anonymous User]

I may need to move back to LA after a couple of years and I'm interested in learning y'all's take on my chances and whether I should target the LA market now as a judicial law clerk instead of later on as maybe a mid-level/senior. I will be starting/have accepted an offer at a top Houston litigation boutique (non-Susman, think of the firms in tiers 1/2 of chambers and partners lit rankings for Texas), have D.Ct. + COA clerkships (TX D.Ct. and 5th/6th/10th/11th COA), worked 1 year at NYC V50 biglaw, and graduated T6 probably top 1/3. I'm barred in two jurisdictions in the East Coast. I went to a top Cali school for undergrad (Stanford/UCLA/Berkeley/USC) and was born and raised in SoCal. A lot of my family still live in the area.

Should I try to move to LA right now (after my clerkship this fall) and renege on my Houston firm if I get an offer? I was hoping to practice in Houston first because of the low COL and the slightly above-Cravath bonuses/salary my firm apparently doles out. However, my SO is also from SoCal and would like to move there once we start a family maybe in the next three or four years. I applied sparingly to some California firms like Susman and HH but didn't get even a sniff.