lateral moves
Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 2:29 pm
I've heard over and over that, a few years into your career, it's a lot easier to lateral down than up. Does anyone have a sense of how true this is, and what exactly the up and down are based on here? Vault rankings? Chambers ranking/general perception of quality for a particular practice group? And how fine-grained are the distinctions? Would, for example, someone with a few years of experience doing M&A for mid-market, privately held companies at a v10 have a hard time moving to a v5 if they found they preferred doing public company work? Finally, does one's law school record play any role in the process, especially in the first few years out of school? (All of this bears very slightly on my choice of firm, but it's mostly just aimless wondering when I should at least be thinking about catching up on reading...)