Where can I learn about how healthy firms are? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Any sites?

[NYAssociate]

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[Anonymous User]

Firms are not particularly transparent with this information, so you're going to have to dig through the websites listed above. Abovethelaw is always a good place to start. Usually, the more articles on a firm, the worse it is. Sometimes firms may appear to have no layoffs, but if you sniff around, you'll figure out that there are probably stealth layoffs going on. You can use nalpdirectory to see how many summer associates the firm is hiring and how many are getting offers. This is usually a indicator of the financial state of a firm.

Some of it though is just thinking through the firm's practice areas and thinking "would this area be profitable?" For example, bankruptcy firms, on average, are probably doing well. Corporate/M&A firms, however, are struggling because there's no capital to do deals. Litigation firms are probably more stable. Any firm with a strong government practice is probably doing well too. Of course, there's always the elite boutiques and elite law firms that at least give the appearance of doing extremely well, which defy categorization to some extent. These are rare and not in the reach of most aspiring law students though, so less of a concern.

One thing to recognize though when you start going through the data is the most law firms are struggling and many have laid people off. Thus, "healthy" is a relative term.

[NYAssociate]

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