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What do you/they do as a first year? Especially on the transactional side?

wow, a new question on tls for once. good thing you're anon, this type of information can get you dinged quickly.

Anonymous User wrote:What do you/they do as a first year? Especially on the transactional side?

This question is too broad to be answered with any precision, however...
You can safely assume that a lot of your time will be spent doing grunt-type work. So litigators will do some kind of doc review, and transactional attorneys will be working due diligence.

This will be interspersed with some kind of more "responsible" work, like writing part of a brief/contract, which then gradually increases as a proportion of your workload as you become more senior.

Also,

mephistopheles wrote:wow, a new question on tls for once. good thing you're anon, this type of information can get you dinged quickly.

You probably could have been helpful in the same amount of time it took you to put together unfunny snark, bro.

In the universe of a law firm and many other professional service firms, a lot of litigation and transactional work will be in the form of producing documents by drafting from a precedent, submitting the draft to a superior, and receiving a 'markup' with comments for you to 'turn.' Repeat until it's ready to be sent to the client.

In the firm model, junior lawyers often let senior lawyers take on lots of tasks by being the arm of the senior lawyer. Senior lawyer needs to accomplish X and it would take him 2 hours, instead you do it and it takes you 6, takes him 20 minutes to correct, and you an hour to revise. Leverage, baby.

Ancillary tasks will include legal research, market research, drafting/reviewing/proofing/filing, signature pages, document review (lit), due diligence (transactional), conference calls, scheduling conference calls, and accidentally forgetting to mute yourself while on conference calls.

At the higher levels, negotiation of details and strategic advice.

So junior lawyers at big law firms aren't just doing doc review/due diligence when they first start?

That seemed to be how it was portrayed, and it was the more senior you got, the more integral you became with the brief-writing/deal-forming process.

Anonymous User wrote:So junior lawyers at big law firms aren't just doing doc review/due diligence when they first start?

That seemed to be how it was portrayed, and it was the more senior you got, the more integral you became with the brief-writing/deal-forming process.

Really depends on the firm and the practice. Some first years at some firms literally don't do any diligence or doc review, others can wind up doing nothing but doc review for one monster case.

I'm in litigation, but the past month I've been researching/writing memos and drafting motions. So far: answers, motion to transfer venue, forum non conveniens, motion to abate, notices of removal, and I'm working on a couple MSJs now. No document review yet, but I did some as a Summer Associate so I'm sure it's coming.