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Unfortunately I struck out in my target market but landed a job at a V75 in NYC doing transactional/finance work. I'd like to one day end up in SF/SV or if not at least LA. I'd want to set myself up to lateral a couple years down the road. Currently at a T25 top 10%.

Pretty difficult outside of the V62

Employed at a V means you’re in good shape to lateral in a year.

Anonymous User wrote:Unfortunately I struck out in my target market but landed a job at a V75 in NYC doing transactional/finance work. I'd like to one day end up in SF/SV or if not at least LA. I'd want to set myself up to lateral a couple years down the road. Currently at a T25 top 10%.

It will require some legwork, but you will be able to lateral after year or two.

I think it will be very easy for you to lateral after about 1.5-2 years (as long as the economy holds up), especially if you pass the California bar prior to applying.

What I would do is to see if you can take the California bar prior to applying.

I've found the interest picks up much more heavily after your first anniversary

Danger Zone wrote:I've found the interest picks up much more heavily after your first anniversary

What if you are looking to change practice groups? is it usually easier to change practice groups through a lateral before or after your first year?

No experience with that but I'd assume you should start applying from day one if switching groups, since your experience in that practice group won't matter to your next employer.

Anonymous User wrote:

Danger Zone wrote:I've found the interest picks up much more heavily after your first anniversary

What if you are looking to change practice groups? is it usually easier to change practice groups through a lateral before or after your first year?

Depends on what you want to do, but your ability to change practices tends to go down over time, especially if the practices are dramatically different (e.g. litigation to transactional). I switched over as a second year, and have heard it is much harder as a more senior attorney.

While this effect may be muted for more similar practices where your skills transfer over, keep in mind that if someone is looking for, say, a second-year associate for a venture fund practice, they may be more willing to train you (since they aren't expecting much in the way of skills anyway), whereas if you're a fifth year up against someone who has done primarily / exclusively venture fund work, there's less of a reason to take the candidate with less experience.

Just apply to stuff once you're there, ymmv. Lateral hiring is based on need, needs change (I know plenty of people of who lateraled up and down vault with less than a year's experience to new markets and within the same market--and I know plenty of seniors who felt as if they were trapped).

Be discerning, you should only switch jobs every so often as a general rule.

Anecdotal. In the V world, the ones I know trying to lateral into a different area, not having much luck.