Most difficult practice area? Forum

[Sackboy]

If making money is the most important thing to even corporate attorneys, why aren’t partners all running to Kirkland, where they can get that guaranteed money?

Also, top tax partners make a ton of money. As much as you’d like to think corporate partners make many multiples more than non-corporate partners, that’s just not how it works. Those corporate rainmaking partners (unfortunately) NEED the specialists because of their niche expertise, which requires them to pay them more than they would otherwise get.

Your top argument isn't really great, because it assumes say an equity partner at MoFo could go and get equity at Davis Polk. They might, but they also might not. Lots of equity partners aren't running to high PPp shops because those shops won't take them. But, yes, there are also other very important practices other than money that determine if equity partners lateral.

At the end of the day, someone needs to receive the lowest share of the firm's profits. When you're at a place where the average PPP is $5M, that might still be $1.5M, so, yeah, nobody is going hungry, but there might also be people walking away with $15M. I don't know who hugs the low end of the distribution, but my guess is that it'd be mostly deal support equity partners or junior equity litigators. My group has several equity partners, and I would bet all of them hug the bottom of the distribution, because we're a support group. I'm sure the chair probably receives $500K+ more (I'm at a $4M+ PPP firm), but it's pretty clear when you look at the internal firm committee assignments and the only equity partner in our group on a committee is our chair and it's ones not insignificant committee.

[nixy]

The areas that pay the most are those that sit in the center or adjacent to large flows of cash. If a company is spending $10 billion to acquire another company, M&A lawyers will collect rents as they do work necessary to transfer that $10 billion. Similarly, if a company is paying a $10 billion settlement to consumers, a plaintiffs lawyer will collect rents as they do work necessary to transfer that $10 billion. I’m not sure what proximity to cash has to do with substantive difficulty.

Yes, but getting these jobs is hard. That's the point.

Difficulty getting a job isn’t the same as it being difficult actually to do.

[Sackboy]

The areas that pay the most are those that sit in the center or adjacent to large flows of cash. If a company is spending $10 billion to acquire another company, M&A lawyers will collect rents as they do work necessary to transfer that $10 billion. Similarly, if a company is paying a $10 billion settlement to consumers, a plaintiffs lawyer will collect rents as they do work necessary to transfer that $10 billion. I’m not sure what proximity to cash has to do with substantive difficulty.

Yes, but getting these jobs is hard. That's the point.

Difficulty getting a job isn’t the same as it being difficult actually to do.

Also lol @ getting them being hard. You basically need to do academically OK (like get a 3.5) as a 18-22 year old and then study hard to get a 170+ LSAT. In most cycles, that pretty much guarantees you admission into a T13 (maybe even with money) and admission to a T13 is going to give you a 75%+ chance of corporate biglaw. Getting into medical school is hard. Landing in $190k biglaw is not. Just a lot of students at 18-22 don't have the foresight to plan or are arrogant enough to think that they'll be top 1% at their TTTT.

[Anonymous User]

The areas that pay the most are those that sit in the center or adjacent to large flows of cash. If a company is spending $10 billion to acquire another company, M&A lawyers will collect rents as they do work necessary to transfer that $10 billion. Similarly, if a company is paying a $10 billion settlement to consumers, a plaintiffs lawyer will collect rents as they do work necessary to transfer that $10 billion. I’m not sure what proximity to cash has to do with substantive difficulty.

Yes, but getting these jobs is hard. That's the point.

Difficulty getting a job isn’t the same as it being difficult actually to do.

Also lol @ getting them being hard. You basically need to do academically OK (like get a 3.5) as a 18-22 year old and then study hard to get a 170+ LSAT. In most cycles, that pretty much guarantees you admission into a T13 (maybe even with money) and admission to a T13 is going to give you a 75%+ chance of corporate biglaw. Getting into medical school is hard. Landing in $190k biglaw is not. Just a lot of students at 18-22 don't have the foresight to plan or are arrogant enough to think that they'll be top 1% at their TTTT.

I don’t have a position on difficult practice areas, but have to LOL at ‘just study and get a 97th percentile score on the LSAT’

That said, I do agree with your broader point. I go to a “T13” (?) and feel like a plurality, if not outright majority, of my classmates are near-simpletons who happen to be good test takers. If biglaw firms are hiring these people in droves, you can’t really say that generic corporate law is either hard to get or intellectually hard to do.

[Sackboy]

Also lol @ getting them being hard. You basically need to do academically OK (like get a 3.5) as a 18-22 year old and then study hard to get a 170+ LSAT. In most cycles, that pretty much guarantees you admission into a T13 (maybe even with money) and admission to a T13 is going to give you a 75%+ chance of corporate biglaw. Getting into medical school is hard. Landing in $190k biglaw is not. Just a lot of students at 18-22 don't have the foresight to plan or are arrogant enough to think that they'll be top 1% at their TTTT.

I don’t have a position on difficult practice areas, but have to LOL at ‘just study and get a 97th percentile score on the LSAT’

That said, I do agree with your broader point. I go to a “T13” (?) and feel like a plurality, if not outright majority, of my classmates are near-simpletons who happen to be good test takers. If biglaw firms are hiring these people in droves, you can’t really say that generic corporate law is either hard to get or intellectually hard to do.

Scoring 97th percentile in a test that has a massive taker base, many of whom spend very little time and energy preparing for the test and are aiming to go to TTT or TTTT schools isn't nearly as hard as the percentile marker makes it sound. As this forum used to preach frequently, the LSAT is easily one of the most learnable grad exams out there. Also, it's a total scale. I know people who got into T13s with 3.8s and 165s and people who got in with 3.3s and 168s. 170 was just a random but nice and round looking point I picked. I'd rather have a 3.3 and be attempting to make it into law school from Podunk State U than medical school (where the the GPAs at even bad MD schools are T13 level and the standardized test is far harder and the pool of takers is far more committed as the non-committed folks got weeded out in pre-reqs) or BB investment banking (where you're pretty fucked if not from a target school), etc. elite outcomes. Like, let's be honest. Those of us in biglaw are mostly people who took considerably easier humanities and social science classes and either wanted to do this from the beginning or stumbled into it because they couldn't get a job. We took much easier classes than our STEM peers and to do zero networking unlike our business peers and just had to study for one long reading exam that requires little to no technical ability.

[anon121]

Water law and specifically general stream adjudications (determining who has priority rights to a river, subflow, etc.) are just insane. The substantive law is not terribly hard though ridiculously all over the map, and the litigation and negotiations between parties is insanely complex. Sometimes thousands of parties with rights, including states, tribes, and the federal government, are involved. A few general stream adjudications have been going on for more than 30 years and have been handed off from one generation of lawyers to the next.

Do big firms handle this type of work?

[Prudent_Jurist]

Do big firms handle this type of work?

Some of them. I think it might depend on where the office is located. For example, my water law professor worked at Perkins Coie's Phoenix office doing water law, but I doubt you're going to practice water law if you're at Perkins Coie's NY office. But if you're in, for instance, Colorado or Arizona representing clients involved in mining, then you'll be trying to adjudicate streambed rights to mine minerals and rocks for gravel, which is a big money industry. So, insofar as big firms are in Colorado and Arizona presumably working with Colorado and Arizona clients, you can find this kind of work.