Big Law 1st Year Associate Taking Questions Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'll also jump in to represent the transactional side.

First year at V20, transactional, T2 -> T10 transfer.

Happy to answer questions.

Hi, I'm going to be summering at a V20 and want to do transactional work this summer. I had some general questions for you.

1. Are you in NYC or a secondary market?

2. What kind of work do you do specifically? What kind of deals and for what kind of clients? More specifically, what is your contribution on the deals you do work?

3. How do you find the work load? Is it unpredictable like I hear? Does it vary within transactions (i.e. Finance v. M&A)?

4. How do you like your job generally so far? How do you think your peers like their jobs?

5. Do you have any sense of the kind of exit options available yet or is that not something you've really had a chance to see?

1. I am in NYC.

2. I do finance work. Specifically, debt financings. Typically we are Lender's counsel and the Client is a large bank. We negotiate and draft credit agreements, security agreements, guarantee agreements and all of the supporting documents and filings thereto. I help out wherever needed. This can range from simply turning comments on a credit agreement to speaking with other outside counsel and everything in between. I sit on a lot of conference calls but, of course, am not negotiating documents directly. In the transactional world the junior associate plays a supportive role. This means that the junior's job is to make the deal easier for the senior associate and partner. For example, when the senior associate has been on the phone negotiating all day, you want to be able to come to them with an updated list of outstanding issues, a status of the supporting documents that others are drafting, and have those things lined up that you can. Moreover, juniors will be the first point of contact for the other side's lawyers and other outside counsel. So when there is a question, you're the one asking/answering it so the senior associate isn't getting hounded all day with various emails. This is a job of organization and logistics. This week for example, a large part of my job was persistently following up with various local counsel overseas to make sure that they were getting done what needed to get done and liaising with their counterpart Borrower's counsel to get things done. This amounts to a lot of "checklist calls" where we literally run through the checklist item by item and push people to get documents drafted, reviewed, and finalized. Where I have questions, I of course reach out to the senior associate and then relay the response. This allows the senior to work on the actual deal documents and substantive negotiation while I handle logistics and the progression of the deal through various stages. Does it sound secretarial? It somewhat is. Do you learn a lot from this role? Absolutely.

3. The work load is fairly unpredictable day to day when you're in the middle of a deal. On those days, I don't know how late I'll be staying until about 15 minutes before I leave. However, I also don't sneak out when things are quiet. I.e. I always call and ask if there is anything else I can help with before I leave. Sometimes this results in longer hours, but it also shows that I am a team player and that goes a long way. Its also insurance against the fact that the senior associate might have a better idea of whether we'll be getting an email with revised documents to review later in the night or in the morning such that I should stay or go. That said, I haven't found the work load to be too bad quantity wise. I made my hours for last month and it wasn't brutal. Its the unpredictability that sucks more than the actual quantity of hours.

4. I like my job so far. I will stress though, that I like my job because I like who I work with. I made a very conscious decision coming in that I would choose a practice group based on the people I work with. That doesn't mean I was considering litigation, but it means I chose between M&A, PE, Capital Markets, Finance etc based largely on the people in the group. I found a great mentor who enjoys teaching and is patient when appropriate and also gives me significant responsibility when appropriate. The job is fast-paced, detail oriented, and can be high-pressure--my personality is one that works well under those conditions. I can't say that I'd love my job if I did not respond well under those situations. My advice, try things out this summer and find 1) the general type of work you like (in broad terms transactional or lit), and (2) the type of people you want to work with. Look at the group, if there are not a lot of mid-levels or senior associates, ask yourself why that is.

5. I've seen a few people leave to the point that I have a general sense of the exit options--but certainly not enough to comment more than they are the type of options I'd expect. i.e. lateraling to different firm, joining a M&A desk at an I-bank, etc. Nothing crazy to write home about, but consistent with my expectations.

Hope that helps.

[hunter.d]

Thank you for your responses. Can you comment on the your firms hiring criteria.

Does it seem to be a pretty rigid GPA/School/LR or Moot Court formula or do you think they take a slightly more holistic approach?

If you want to do transactional more, is K-JD or non-relevant work experience going to be a big setback?

Does your firm hire firm-wide through OCI or only in certain offices?

Thanks again for any insight you can lend.

[Anonymous User]

Thank you for your responses. Can you comment on the your firms hiring criteria.

Does it seem to be a pretty rigid GPA/School/LR or Moot Court formula or do you think they take a slightly more holistic approach?

If you want to do transactional more, is K-JD or non-relevant work experience going to be a big setback?

Does your firm hire firm-wide through OCI or only in certain offices?

Thanks again for any insight you can lend.

Transactional NYC first year here:

I haven't been at the Firm long enough to know what the hiring looks like from the inside. My only insight is from my own and classmates' OCI experience. The firm I am has offices in several cities. It seems that getting hired in some cities requires stronger school/grades than others. The Firm I am at is just like any other NYC Biglaw firm: most attorneys come from top schools.

K-JD and/or irrelevant work experience will not hold you back in transactional or lit. Sure if you have the background its helpful, but not a pre-requisite. It would be helpful to take a corporate finance class and, if you're leaning transactional, you should definitely take corporations, M&A, etc. etc. That stuff will all help, but the expectation for any new lawyer to be an expert about the field you're interested in is not there in big law. You are expected to be competent/have a basic understanding and ready to work hard. Just come in and be enthusiastic to learn and do good work.

OCI is the predominant (if not exclusive) path to hiring at the Firm I work at. I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but I can't really comment there.

[Anonymous User]

Thank you for your responses. Can you comment on the your firms hiring criteria.

Does it seem to be a pretty rigid GPA/School/LR or Moot Court formula or do you think they take a slightly more holistic approach?

If you want to do transactional more, is K-JD or non-relevant work experience going to be a big setback?

Does your firm hire firm-wide through OCI or only in certain offices?

Thanks again for any insight you can lend.

Secondary Market V100 Lit associate here

1. I think this depends on the school. I haven't been privy to any direct information on cutoff formulas, but just commenting on my colleagues resumes it seems to depend pretty heavily on the school. The best school in this direct market is a T20 and if you go there it seems pretty rigidly top 15% + journal or you're out. For our local T2s and TTTs absolutely top grades are required. Nearly every associate who graduated from those schools was summa or coif. Other than that it's largely a mix of high grades at schools nearby or above median t14 people. I went to HYS and I think they will hire very deep into the class, although I can't comment more specifically because I'm the only HYS person in my first year associate class and I was about top 1/3.

2. At least at my firm it does seem that transactional practices value a little more experience, but there's also some self selection because you aren't hired directly into a practice group (the summer is rotations based and you preference your groups at the end). There are definitely several K-JDs in our corporate, finance/bk, and other transactional groups though.

3. I believe we do OCI hiring only for 3-5 of our dozenish offices. Some of those it depends on the year, but consistently we do OCI hiring for 3 offices. The rest are too small to regularly have a summer program, mostly focus on lateral hiring, or are overseas. My firm didn't come to my OCI and I ended up doing a phone screener followed by a callback after sending my resume in through a person I knew at the firm. I was interested in this market, but for family/personal reasons more than anything else, and there aren't many alums of my school around here.

[Lacepiece23]

V100 Secondary,

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions. I am also going to a secondary market. I will be a 2L summer. Hopefully I get the offer. My question is do you think the hours are less than NY. Do you regret choosing a secondary over a major market? Do you feel like some opportunities are foreclosed to you because you did not start in New York?

Also, I know you posted your normal hours. How do you feel about them. Do you feel like people generally burn out less at your firm? Or is it the same level of unhappiness as TLS portrays biglaw in general.

Thanks!

[Anonymous User]

V100 Secondary,

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions. I am also going to a secondary market. I will be a 2L summer. Hopefully I get the offer. My question is do you think the hours are less than NY. Do you regret choosing a secondary over a major market? Do you feel like some opportunities are foreclosed to you because you did not start in New York?

Also, I know you posted your normal hours. How do you feel about them. Do you feel like people generally burn out less at your firm? Or is it the same level of unhappiness as TLS portrays biglaw in general.

Thanks!

All really good questions.

I do think the hours are definitely less than NY. So far I've been billing around 150 hours a month. As time goes on that number will certainly go up, but it is pretty rare for even the relatively busy senior associates to bill more than 2200 a year. That is certainly different than New York, where my friends bill more like 220+ a month.

But there are some reasons that just comparing those numbers might not be appropriate. First, supply here is quite variable. In other words, there aren't always enough hours to go around, so some days I will end up billing 10-12 hours because I finally got something to do. Other days I am lucky to get 3-4 hours of billable work. My sense in NYC is that there is never a supply problem, so provided you are diligent and do a decent job managing your workflow you can pretty consistently bill 8-10 hours a day. Second, and related, because the supply of hours here is smaller, I don't feel the same pressure to finish tasks immediately because for all I know I might be waiting a couple days before I have enough to do again. I think I would be much more efficient in New York because if I didn't get task A done, I'm going to be in trouble when a bunch of additional shit comes in the door. Others might think of other reasons they vary.

In the end, I don't mind the hours. People here think they're crazy because it's much more a 9-5 culture than NYC where there are lots of white collar people working legitimately crazy hours. I do think people generally burn out less than in NYC in particular where many of my law school classmates are practically running countdown timers until they can lateral smaller or go in house or walk across the county with their beagle or whatever. Nonetheless, I wouldn't want to do this job for more than 5 years, but that is mostly for gripes that are general to big law rather than specific to my firm or a secondary market (stupid office politics, tyrannical midlevel/senior associates, blackbox partnership prospects, thankless shit work for most juniors).

I do regret not going to NYC (or in my case it would have been Chicago). My firm has a good reputation in the Midwest and in the places I ultimately want to work, so that doesn't really bother me. More than anything the issues I have are firm and geography-specific, as well as practice-specific. My firm isn't doing great financially. We're fine, but associate compensation is no longer top of market, has become an even blacker box since I started, and we are bleeding lots of lateral partners. My department is busy, but I definitely couldn't say that for Corporate. The big law market has changed, and I'm frankly not sure how much longer firms like this will be sustainable in their current form. Additionally, I would rather not be working hard to subsidize dying practice groups that are no longer financially sustainable post-recession when compensation doesn't recognize that fact. Finally, geographically and culturally I just like Chicago better than my current market (a fact which I underestimated for various reasons when choosing firms).

Finally, secondary market litigation is just different than NYC or major market litigation. My firm handles a strange blend of cases - we have everything from $100+ million 10b-5 class actions to seven figure breach of contract/business tort cases. This can be fun if you're interested in those smaller cases, but my interests (which I developed again, after picking my 2L summer firm) are mostly securities litigation and consumer class action defense. I have to hustle to get the cases that interest me because they don't show up every day. In a major market I feel like I could be getting a steady diet of them.

[Lacepiece23]

Thank you so much for your long and detailed response! You answered all of my questions perfectly. I'm glad you talked about the type of cases you get in litigation. I'm the opposite my interests are the class action tort cases rather than securities so that won't be a problem for me. I did not even think about the fact that you might not be getting as much work as you like in a smaller market.

Thanks again for your response.

[oblig.lawl.ref]

I'll also jump in to represent the transactional side.

First year at V20, transactional, T2 -> T10 transfer.

Happy to answer questions.

Hi, I'm going to be summering at a V20 and want to do transactional work this summer. I had some general questions for you.

1. Are you in NYC or a secondary market?

2. What kind of work do you do specifically? What kind of deals and for what kind of clients? More specifically, what is your contribution on the deals you do work?

3. How do you find the work load? Is it unpredictable like I hear? Does it vary within transactions (i.e. Finance v. M&A)?

4. How do you like your job generally so far? How do you think your peers like their jobs?

5. Do you have any sense of the kind of exit options available yet or is that not something you've really had a chance to see?

1. I am in NYC.

2. I do finance work. Specifically, debt financings. Typically we are Lender's counsel and the Client is a large bank. We negotiate and draft credit agreements, security agreements, guarantee agreements and all of the supporting documents and filings thereto. I help out wherever needed. This can range from simply turning comments on a credit agreement to speaking with other outside counsel and everything in between. I sit on a lot of conference calls but, of course, am not negotiating documents directly. In the transactional world the junior associate plays a supportive role. This means that the junior's job is to make the deal easier for the senior associate and partner. For example, when the senior associate has been on the phone negotiating all day, you want to be able to come to them with an updated list of outstanding issues, a status of the supporting documents that others are drafting, and have those things lined up that you can. Moreover, juniors will be the first point of contact for the other side's lawyers and other outside counsel. So when there is a question, you're the one asking/answering it so the senior associate isn't getting hounded all day with various emails. This is a job of organization and logistics. This week for example, a large part of my job was persistently following up with various local counsel overseas to make sure that they were getting done what needed to get done and liaising with their counterpart Borrower's counsel to get things done. This amounts to a lot of "checklist calls" where we literally run through the checklist item by item and push people to get documents drafted, reviewed, and finalized. Where I have questions, I of course reach out to the senior associate and then relay the response. This allows the senior to work on the actual deal documents and substantive negotiation while I handle logistics and the progression of the deal through various stages. Does it sound secretarial? It somewhat is. Do you learn a lot from this role? Absolutely.

3. The work load is fairly unpredictable day to day when you're in the middle of a deal. On those days, I don't know how late I'll be staying until about 15 minutes before I leave. However, I also don't sneak out when things are quiet. I.e. I always call and ask if there is anything else I can help with before I leave. Sometimes this results in longer hours, but it also shows that I am a team player and that goes a long way. Its also insurance against the fact that the senior associate might have a better idea of whether we'll be getting an email with revised documents to review later in the night or in the morning such that I should stay or go. That said, I haven't found the work load to be too bad quantity wise. I made my hours for last month and it wasn't brutal. Its the unpredictability that sucks more than the actual quantity of hours.

4. I like my job so far. I will stress though, that I like my job because I like who I work with. I made a very conscious decision coming in that I would choose a practice group based on the people I work with. That doesn't mean I was considering litigation, but it means I chose between M&A, PE, Capital Markets, Finance etc based largely on the people in the group. I found a great mentor who enjoys teaching and is patient when appropriate and also gives me significant responsibility when appropriate. The job is fast-paced, detail oriented, and can be high-pressure--my personality is one that works well under those conditions. I can't say that I'd love my job if I did not respond well under those situations. My advice, try things out this summer and find 1) the general type of work you like (in broad terms transactional or lit), and (2) the type of people you want to work with. Look at the group, if there are not a lot of mid-levels or senior associates, ask yourself why that is.

5. I've seen a few people leave to the point that I have a general sense of the exit options--but certainly not enough to comment more than they are the type of options I'd expect. i.e. lateraling to different firm, joining a M&A desk at an I-bank, etc. Nothing crazy to write home about, but consistent with my expectations.

Hope that helps.

Helps a lot, thanks so much.

[Anonymous User]

I'll also jump in to represent the transactional side.

First year at V20, transactional, T2 -> T10 transfer.

Happy to answer questions.

Hi, I'm going to be summering at a V20 and want to do transactional work this summer. I had some general questions for you.

1. Are you in NYC or a secondary market?

2. What kind of work do you do specifically? What kind of deals and for what kind of clients? More specifically, what is your contribution on the deals you do work?

3. How do you find the work load? Is it unpredictable like I hear? Does it vary within transactions (i.e. Finance v. M&A)?

4. How do you like your job generally so far? How do you think your peers like their jobs?

5. Do you have any sense of the kind of exit options available yet or is that not something you've really had a chance to see?

1. I am in NYC.

2. I do finance work. Specifically, debt financings. Typically we are Lender's counsel and the Client is a large bank. We negotiate and draft credit agreements, security agreements, guarantee agreements and all of the supporting documents and filings thereto. I help out wherever needed. This can range from simply turning comments on a credit agreement to speaking with other outside counsel and everything in between. I sit on a lot of conference calls but, of course, am not negotiating documents directly. In the transactional world the junior associate plays a supportive role. This means that the junior's job is to make the deal easier for the senior associate and partner. For example, when the senior associate has been on the phone negotiating all day, you want to be able to come to them with an updated list of outstanding issues, a status of the supporting documents that others are drafting, and have those things lined up that you can. Moreover, juniors will be the first point of contact for the other side's lawyers and other outside counsel. So when there is a question, you're the one asking/answering it so the senior associate isn't getting hounded all day with various emails. This is a job of organization and logistics. This week for example, a large part of my job was persistently following up with various local counsel overseas to make sure that they were getting done what needed to get done and liaising with their counterpart Borrower's counsel to get things done. This amounts to a lot of "checklist calls" where we literally run through the checklist item by item and push people to get documents drafted, reviewed, and finalized. Where I have questions, I of course reach out to the senior associate and then relay the response. This allows the senior to work on the actual deal documents and substantive negotiation while I handle logistics and the progression of the deal through various stages. Does it sound secretarial? It somewhat is. Do you learn a lot from this role? Absolutely.

3. The work load is fairly unpredictable day to day when you're in the middle of a deal. On those days, I don't know how late I'll be staying until about 15 minutes before I leave. However, I also don't sneak out when things are quiet. I.e. I always call and ask if there is anything else I can help with before I leave. Sometimes this results in longer hours, but it also shows that I am a team player and that goes a long way. Its also insurance against the fact that the senior associate might have a better idea of whether we'll be getting an email with revised documents to review later in the night or in the morning such that I should stay or go. That said, I haven't found the work load to be too bad quantity wise. I made my hours for last month and it wasn't brutal. Its the unpredictability that sucks more than the actual quantity of hours.

4. I like my job so far. I will stress though, that I like my job because I like who I work with. I made a very conscious decision coming in that I would choose a practice group based on the people I work with. That doesn't mean I was considering litigation, but it means I chose between M&A, PE, Capital Markets, Finance etc based largely on the people in the group. I found a great mentor who enjoys teaching and is patient when appropriate and also gives me significant responsibility when appropriate. The job is fast-paced, detail oriented, and can be high-pressure--my personality is one that works well under those conditions. I can't say that I'd love my job if I did not respond well under those situations. My advice, try things out this summer and find 1) the general type of work you like (in broad terms transactional or lit), and (2) the type of people you want to work with. Look at the group, if there are not a lot of mid-levels or senior associates, ask yourself why that is.

5. I've seen a few people leave to the point that I have a general sense of the exit options--but certainly not enough to comment more than they are the type of options I'd expect. i.e. lateraling to different firm, joining a M&A desk at an I-bank, etc. Nothing crazy to write home about, but consistent with my expectations.

Hope that helps.

Helps a lot, thanks so much.

Happy to help. Good luck this summer.

[foundingfather]

Do you see yourself being in this for the long haul? If not, what are your future goals?

Is BigLaw what you expected it to be?

V100 secondary guy here:

I definitely do not see this as a long term career for me. I will be starting a district court clerkship (in a major market) fairly shortly and am applying/interviewing for COA for the year after. I'm still deciding if I want to transition to government (AUSA/DOJ) as soon as possible after clerking or if I'll come back to big law for a few years to make some more headway on my loans.

I would say big law is what I expected it to be (i.e. long hours, annoying people, weird prestige complexes), but there are some dimensions of the work that maybe aren't what I expected. I would imagine this is true on the transactional side (although I had no interest in that and did zero transactional work as a summer), but you get a fairly skewed picture of what life as a litigation associate is like as a summer. In other words, I certainly never drafted an affidavit or proposed order or random non-dispositive motion, assembled exhibits, pieced together witness kits, or did doc review as a summer. Yet these are all a fairly significant part of what you'll do as a junior associate in litigation. That didn't necessarily surprise me when I started, but I was surprised how steep the learning curve was on these tasks once I started.

Thank you, V100 secondary.