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When you go into biglaw are you supposed to have chosen what area you want to be in...IP, antitrust, securities...? So in the interview you would express that you are really interested in one area? Is it more of a general thing and you don't get to pick? I'm just not sure how it all works. Thanks!

Anonymous User wrote:When you go into biglaw are you supposed to have chosen what area you want to be in...IP, antitrust, securities...? So in the interview you would express that you are really interested in one area? Is it more of a general thing and you don't get to pick? I'm just not sure how it all works. Thanks!

Heading into OCI most firms don't expect you to know exactly what you want, and it's ok to tell them that. Most firms let you rotate through practice groups for the summer. It would probably help if you express an interest in a practice area where they excel, and tell them you'd really like to try that out for the summer. The exception is if the firm is a boutique, make sure you know it (and know what their field is) and are interested in it.

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In my interviews I talked about a few areas of law that I'd been tangentially exposed to and why I thought they were interesting, but made it VERY clear that I was open to doing assignments in any practice area and was excited to see what else was out there. It worked out.

Edit: I'm a 1L. Maybe the standards for knowing what you want would be higher for a 2L, I dunno.

You don't have to have a strong preference. You do need to have an answer to "So what practice areas are you interested in?" So "iuno" is a bad answer but "I think corporate would be interesting b/c _____ but maybe litigation would be interesting because ???" would be better.

Climate change...

This is somewhat tangentially related to this thread, but if you want to practice in tax at a biglaw firm, do they expect you to plan on pursuing a LLM, or is this not a necessary condition for working in a firm's tax dept?

You generally don't have to choose until the end of your summer associateship. In fact, it's a bad idea to get too specific because the firm may have no openings in that specific area. If they think that's all you are willing to do, they may reject you for that reason alone.

This is somewhat tangentially related to this thread, but if you want to practice in tax at a biglaw firm, do they expect you to plan on pursuing a LLM, or is this not a necessary condition for working in a firm's tax dept?

Depends on the firm. Most firms don't require or expect an LLM. Some firms will pay and expect you to do one part time (this mostly applies to NYC and the NYU LLM, and to a lesser extent DC and the GULC LLM). If you are going in to tax, I would take at least the following in law school: Tax I, Corporate Tax, Taxation of Partnerships, International Tax.

nealric wrote:You generally don't have to choose until the end of your summer associateship. In fact, it's a bad idea to get too specific because the firm may have no openings in that specific area. If they think that's all you are willing to do, they may reject you for that reason alone.

This is somewhat tangentially related to this thread, but if you want to practice in tax at a biglaw firm, do they expect you to plan on pursuing a LLM, or is this not a necessary condition for working in a firm's tax dept?

Depends on the firm. Most firms don't require or expect an LLM. Some firms will pay and expect you to do one part time (this mostly applies to NYC and the NYU LLM, and to a lesser extent DC and the GULC LLM). If you are going in to tax, I would take at least the following in law school: Tax I, Corporate Tax, Taxation of Partnerships, International Tax.

This.