tru wrote:i personally prefer plaintiff-side because 1) no billable hours 2) no shit from the boss 3) go home at 3-5. However, the regular base pay is obviously nowhere near biglaw defense. plaintiff-side has a long term perk of hitting big and striking rich overnight as opposed to biglaw where you just grind it out on a fixed pay. also, even if ur not a partner, you can get % off big cases if you originate them.
im also skeptical whether reputable plaintiff's firm would hire someone from the defense side considering they probably hate each other and always 1-up each other in terms of prestige. there are only a handful of mid to big law plaintiff firms and those seem extremely hard to get into.
i gotta make this decision in a month.
Plaintiff firms are very different from defense firms in that there is a much higher degree of variance between them in comparison to defense firms. My (limited) experience is primarily with class action plaintiff work, primarily in securities and antitrust, but some consumer and mass tort as well. As far as my practice areas, most of what you cite is the general common knowledge but not actually be the case. I'll take it one by one:
Billable hour- while many plaintiffs firms get paid on contingency, if you are doing any type of class action or mass action, all settlement agreements, which include attorneys fees and costs, must be approved by a judge. In deciding the fairness of the fees, judges often give heavy weight to a firm's lodestar, which includes the number of total spent by the firm by person multiplied by some common multiple, as a gauge of what is fair. So while you may not be making money for every hour you bill directly, there is still a need to bill for the settlement. For example, the firm I summered with had an informal hour requirement of 2400.
No shit from bosses- plaintiff firms tend to be viewed as more liberal than firms on the other side, however, you never know when a hard personality may arise. There are definitely top partners on the plaintiff side who are known to be difficult to work with. You can just as easily have oen of those on plaintiff as on defense.
Go home at 3-5- see billable hour. If youre doing anything like class action work, you will not be going home anywhere close to 3 regularly. 5-7 may be more reasonable, unless you have a filing due. They may also let you work from home, but that's very firm/partner dependent. Honestly, i dont know any firm that's going to think leaving at 3 regularly is normal, unless there's some extenuating circumstances or you come in very early (5-6 am).
nowhere near big law base pay- this is true for most plaintiffs firm, however not as true in my areas of practice, where attorneys typically make 6 figures. It may not be 160, but 120 is not too far off to be nowhere near.
Hitting big and striking rich- this is pretty dependent on business model, but what the way I've seen firm do more is take a slew of smaller cases that help bank roll their bigger cases, as well as make use of litigation finance where they will sell future cash flows from potential settlements to fund the case. This is obviously more predictable than simply striking gold. The upside (and the lowside, lower) is definitely higher though than that biglaw across the board.
Origination- read the fine print of any law firm manual you get. the clauses on this stuff tend to be filled with discretionary language. not saying that you wont get it but there have definitely been cases of lawyers suing their former firms for not giving them their cut.
Skeptical of plaintiffs firms hiring defense associates- in my area at least you couldnt be more wrong on this point. most people partner or associate, started in big law defense work and lateral over. that is the typical trajectory. Look at attorneys profiles and most associates will list their former employment either explicitly or implicitly, and they are often big defense firms. Partners typically do not list former employment, but if you dig enough, youll find they too are biglaw alums.
All the above is related to the bigger name class action plaintiff firms and obviously that's a bit more niche, so I dont know if the info is directly applicable to you, but still prob some is.
Id say the main reasons people join plaintiff firms is for the responsibility, ideology, and potential financial upside. Plaintiff firms are typically paid on contingency and so they tend to be lighter on capital and staff leanly. They will thus typically be more entrepreneurial, allowing younger associates to work on matters and projects that they would never have the opportunity to work on at defense firms. Many people are not interested in representing big corporations like citibank and RJ Reanolds. And the contingency model tends to produce a lot of upside for the partners involved, whereas big law partners are typically capped.