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I'm not basing my decision off this, but I'm interested to know which firms are generally okay with associates transferring between offices.

I know that answer is heavily based on an office's need for you in a certain practice group, but I'm wondering in a very general sense which firms are more okay with this than others.

I have a general idea of which market I want to start out in, but am less sure where I want to be 5-10 years from now so any anecdote helps!

Yea I would love to hear about the NY to DC lateral market.

I am curious about NY to ATL (with ATL ties obviously).

Also, is this doable after only 2 years? Just want NY on the resume of life.

Dechert is pretty open about allowing associates to transfer to a different office after 3-4 years, as long as your practice group has a presence in the new office. White Collar, Antitrust, & Financial Services are all pretty doable for D.C.

anyone know about Baker & Mckenzie?

Especially move from large secondary market (eg. Palo Alto, Dallas, Houston) to head office in Chicago?

Quinn seems pretty cool about it.

OP here. I saw in another thread that Jones Day is usually pretty fine with it. And anecdotally I know people that have transferred from the Cleveland office of Jones Day to both NY and DC. Not sure how unique those moves are though. Anyone from JD that can comment on that?

I've been told that Gibson is generally good about this.

i've heard Foley and Lardner are pretty open to it.

Anonymous User wrote:anyone know about Baker & Mckenzie?

Especially move from large secondary market (eg. Palo Alto, Dallas, Houston) to head office in Chicago?

seemed like it was doable, at least based on the questions i asked after getting my offer. Ended up going somewhere else though.

Anonymous User wrote:Quinn seems pretty cool about it.

Anonymous User wrote:I've been told that Gibson is generally good about this.

+1

wilson sonsini appears to be chill about this, at least DC-->NYC

I think a better question might be which firms are NOT ok with it. It seems to be the general rule that if the office you want to transfer to has 1) practice group you work in and 2) an opening, then you can have a fair shot of getting transferred without much hassle or annoyance by firm.

I've heard plenty of stories for instance from NY firms, where people work in the head NY office, and then transfer to a satellite office somewhere else after awhile. I would obviously say that you need to have a good reason for transferring to that specific office, beyond just getting out of the office you are in currently.

The point is that for some of these, they'll pretty much let you work remotely from another office and not care about where the partners you work for are located.

Skadden?

Anonymous User wrote:Skadden?

I left Skadden NY for a satellite office. It was no big deal and took about a week to work out. Only catch is that the move can only happen if there is room for you in the desired location. Besides that, I know people who bounced from office to office for a while without any repercussions. Have to pay your own relocation expenses if you request the transfer though.

Is it okay to go from a Skadden satellite to a different satellite? I have no intention of doing this, I only ask for curiosity's sake.

^ I did, so yes.

How soon can you change offices? Is it normally 2-3 years or can you, say, summer in one location and decide it's not for you and start in another?

So would the same be for international offices too?

Anon who transferred at Skadden.

You can summer in two offices and you'll probably get offers from both and can take it from there. It wouldn't be easy to summer only in office A and then take a full time offer in office B though ---- maybe if it was a large office (like summering in Chi and then wanting to start in LA) but not so much for a tiny office (like...Korea). Wouldn't recommend it either way unless something came up (like, your spouse/fiancee got a job offer in the interim and you needed to move before your start date).

After 2-3 years, transferring offices or to international offices is totally doable as long as it's similar work (e.g., if you're doing cap markets work in NY, easy to switch over to London).

Can you transfer from a non-LA, secondary skadden office to the NYC/LA office at the end of the summer?