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1st year at a big firm on the west coast doing transactional work. 6 months in and I'm so miserable. I'm either extremely stressed about not making my hours/people don't like working with me when I have little work, or extremely stressed about pissing off my supervisors because I have too many projects going on and everything needed to be done 5 min ago. I feel like a complete failure in both situations, which again adds to the miserable feeling. The only good thing is that people here are actually pretty pleasant to work with (for the most part).

Also, the feeling of being stuck doesn't help either. I know I want to practice law, but just not at this high level of stress. But I feel like I don't have a lot of options, as I'm not sure if smaller firms will take a big law first year (or that smaller firms are even that much better), and I think it usually takes at least 2-3 years before being able to go in house.

Will this ever get better? I have about $10K in student loans, so I don't feel a big stress on the financial side but I will be lying if I said I don't enjoy making $160K a year.

Any advice/suggestion on how to make this stress more manageable is greatly appreciated!

Do litigation. Exit options are shit, but you could last a lot longer, then maybe lateral into a fed gov. job. You're saying that you want to quit after 6 months of corporate. Maybe give lit a shot? Who knows you could probably last 3-4 years with more predictable hours, and less of a learning curve. It sounds like you won't make it long enough in corporate for those great exit options to even be in play.

IME the 6 month mark is a low point for a lot of people. Tread water for another couple months and reevaluate.

Felt the same way, then stopped caring about not being busy. You are 6 months in, you most likely have no reputation right now, so its probably luck of the draw you are not busy....enjoy it. I think that will help alot, once I started enjoying not being busy for weeks, when I had a deal come in, I worked harder, knowing I was able to relax for a few weeks.

DELG wrote:IME the 6 month mark is a low point for a lot of people. Tread water for another couple months and reevaluate.

I can speak to this as well, and I can relate, OP. Like life would be a bit easier if you didn't like practicing law - you could just quit and find something else to do with your life. As it is, it sounds like you want to find one of the bright spots (and there are bright spots) in this horrid profession.

Especially if "I like practicing law" is "I like transactional practice," you need to try to push through it for at least a few more months.

I'm a shitigator so I have no real idea about his, but everyone on here keeps saying the market for corporate laterals is really hot, so you may be able to find your way to better environment sooner rather than later.

Stop worrying about the slow periods and start enjoying them. Unfortunately biglaw isn't a 9-7 job for 52 weeks; you have some weeks where you do nothing and some weeks where you bill 100 hours. Unless people stop giving you work for several weeks while everyone else seems busy, you have nothing to worry about. Generally the only feedback you get in biglaw is more work, so if people keep giving you work you're doing fine.

IME the 6 month mark is a low point for a lot of people.

This. Also, stop worrying about being slow. The work will come.

And think of this as a way to learn time/workflow management. It is a good skill to have.

Agreed that six months is the worst stretch. You still don't know wtf you're doing but have a lot of responsibilities. You get better from there -- and, just as importantly, you start to recognize when you don't know something because you're new as opposed to when nobody knows something because no one knows anything.