Big law class of 2010 Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi there, my former classmates.

I was wondering if we could do an informal group chat about how our first two years have been, who is thinking of leaving, who is thinking of staying forever, who is thinking of sticking around for a while, etc.

Where I work, it's in the past few months that the first 2010'ers have started to leave (after about a year and a half at the firm), but the overwhelming majority are still here.

So: if you're a 2010'er, how's it been so far?

[Anonymous User]

So far so good.

I get to work with smart people every day. The work is interesting, and the hours aren't as crushing as everyone made them out to be. Thanks to the generous compensation, I'm only about two years away from putting these student loans to bed. Just under 20% of my class has left, but all of them left for other biglaw or for interesting opportunities abroad. None have been asked to leave.

Am I going to go for partnership? Hard to tell. While the hours aren't bad for someone with no kids, I do wonder how things would be with a family. Unless I get forced out (which I think is fairly unlikely any time the near future), I do want to stay at least another 3-4 years. The training and experience are certainly worth the hard work.

It would be interesting to hear other people's thoughts on the level of grunt work people are expected to perform. The general buzz is that the new economy has created much less grunt work for junior level lawyers, depressing hiring but making things better for the ones who remain. That seems to be my general impression so far, but I'm interested if others agree.

[Anonymous User]

Similar. I like it a lot more than I thought. (Even though the hours actually have been crushing in the past few months. Work was a lot slower last year.)

As for the grunt work, I think you may be right, especially because there's a trend to use technology and hire outside contract attorneys to get through large volumes of documents. At the same time, however, I know there are people in our year who have been stuck doing doc review for a very long time. Not many people, but still some.

[redbullvodka]

So far so good.

I get to work with smart people every day. The work is interesting, and the hours aren't as crushing as everyone made them out to be. Thanks to the generous compensation, I'm only about two years away from putting these student loans to bed. Just under 20% of my class has left, but all of them left for other biglaw or for interesting opportunities abroad. None have been asked to leave.

Am I going to go for partnership? Hard to tell. While the hours aren't bad for someone with no kids, I do wonder how things would be with a family. Unless I get forced out (which I think is fairly unlikely any time the near future), I do want to stay at least another 3-4 years. The training and experience are certainly worth the hard work.

It would be interesting to hear other people's thoughts on the level of grunt work people are expected to perform. The general buzz is that the new economy has created much less grunt work for junior level lawyers, depressing hiring but making things better for the ones who remain. That seems to be my general impression so far, but I'm interested if others agree.

How much debt did you walk in with?

[Anonymous User]

So far so good.

I get to work with smart people every day. The work is interesting, and the hours aren't as crushing as everyone made them out to be. Thanks to the generous compensation, I'm only about two years away from putting these student loans to bed. Just under 20% of my class has left, but all of them left for other biglaw or for interesting opportunities abroad. None have been asked to leave.

Am I going to go for partnership? Hard to tell. While the hours aren't bad for someone with no kids, I do wonder how things would be with a family. Unless I get forced out (which I think is fairly unlikely any time the near future), I do want to stay at least another 3-4 years. The training and experience are certainly worth the hard work.

It would be interesting to hear other people's thoughts on the level of grunt work people are expected to perform. The general buzz is that the new economy has created much less grunt work for junior level lawyers, depressing hiring but making things better for the ones who remain. That seems to be my general impression so far, but I'm interested if others agree.

How much debt did you walk in with?

Just shy of $100k.