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I'm starting at a V20 firm as a litigation associate when I graduate. The prospects for partnership are vanishingly small. What do associates move on to when they leave?

From my vantage, the order of likelihood is (roughly speaking):

- Another smaller firm (or a firm in a smaller market)
- Government (USAO / other federal agency / state or local agency)
- In-house insurance defense (insurance companies hire a TON of litigators)
- Other in-house

In-house options (other than insurance defense) tend to be tricky for litigators, since there's usually one or two designated litigation attorneys who manage and supervise outside counsel. GC's tend to have at least some litigation experience, but it's a tough nut to crack without some generalized transactional chops.

Which litigation subgroups would provide the best work experience to make an associate marketable for an on-house position?

ticklemesilly wrote:Which litigation subgroups would provide the best work experience to make an associate marketable for an on-house position?

Labor and Employment lit.

I worked at a large bank for a part of this past summer, and a few of the hiring senior staff noted their preference for hiring litigators, citing their common characteristic of being used to/able to learn new things very quickly and shift gears without a hiccup. I found this surprising given what is commonly said.

I think that, as with so much in life and hiring, we can really only talk about things accurately in terms of averages; there are enough exceptions to hiring norms that I think even calling them "norms" isn't quite right.

Just IME from searching, there are actually a decent number of in house lit positions, albeit noticeably fewer than transactional positions. The catch is that there are probably more lit attorneys than transactional ones (not counting NY), so you have more people competing for a smaller pool. Also the lit positions tend to demand more experience than transactional positions, on average. I probably see more lit oriented management (GC, AGC) than transactional, but my observations there are kind of worthless since most of those positions aren't getting posted publicly.

In terms of subgroups, the most common requests are labor and employment and IP (patent but also sometimes including trademark/copyright). "Class action" experience also crops up a decent amount.

Office window.


Just kidding (sort of). At my firm I've seen senior lit associates go to bigger/better firms, smaller shittier firms, good insurance defense (construction), not for profits, government and, in the rare occasion of a sexy as fuck associate, in house at an art gallery.

Granted I am at mid law known for 8,000,000 sub niches of real estate practice and an expensive but mediocre litigation group, but I have not seen any lit associates go in house in the corporate sense.0