OCI bidding questions: practice groups and target market
Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 7:44 pm
So, I'm most interested in privacy law (but I don't really want to go the PI/gov't way), which is kindof niche for biglaw. Most of the firms I've researched have 5-15 attorneys on it.
I'm not really interested in leaving the SF/SV area - family's here, S.O.'s here, etc, but I've noticed that a significant number of Biglaw firms have the head of their very small privacy practice located somewhere else (most oddly, one of them was in Rhode Island...) and I'm wondering whether I should even bother bidding those firms for OCI if I'm going to highlight my interest in privacy compliance. Often, there are 1-2 attorneys at the SF/SV offices listed as having privacy practice contact, but it's not the bulk of the privacy attorneys for most firms.
Mostly, I don't want to be in an interview looking like I haven't done my homework on the firm. If it's common for a S.A. to work in an office that has a small but still present contingent working in their target practice area, I'm not going to worry about it, but if I really should only be trying to work in the office where the practice area is biggest, I don't want to bother bidding firms that I'll have to go to TX or RI to actually work with.
I know that I probably won't get to do much with a privacy group either way as a S.A. since it is such a small practice area in most firms, but I don't want to get shut out of privacy as a career path because I don't know much about being a S.A. I may not be able to go down such a niche road either way, but I'd like to give myself the best shot possible. Should I be bidding firms with the majority of their privacy practice located somewhere else, or should I just stick to firms that have most of it concentrated in SF/SV?
I'm not really interested in leaving the SF/SV area - family's here, S.O.'s here, etc, but I've noticed that a significant number of Biglaw firms have the head of their very small privacy practice located somewhere else (most oddly, one of them was in Rhode Island...) and I'm wondering whether I should even bother bidding those firms for OCI if I'm going to highlight my interest in privacy compliance. Often, there are 1-2 attorneys at the SF/SV offices listed as having privacy practice contact, but it's not the bulk of the privacy attorneys for most firms.
Mostly, I don't want to be in an interview looking like I haven't done my homework on the firm. If it's common for a S.A. to work in an office that has a small but still present contingent working in their target practice area, I'm not going to worry about it, but if I really should only be trying to work in the office where the practice area is biggest, I don't want to bother bidding firms that I'll have to go to TX or RI to actually work with.
I know that I probably won't get to do much with a privacy group either way as a S.A. since it is such a small practice area in most firms, but I don't want to get shut out of privacy as a career path because I don't know much about being a S.A. I may not be able to go down such a niche road either way, but I'd like to give myself the best shot possible. Should I be bidding firms with the majority of their privacy practice located somewhere else, or should I just stick to firms that have most of it concentrated in SF/SV?