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I know this topic has probably been hacked to death, but here it goes. I am in the Top 5-10% at a T14 and just received an offer for a 1L SA in Chicago (the market in which I went to undergrad, worked after college, and want to practice in after law school). The position is at a Litigation Boutique. I wanted to know whether working for a litigation boutique will make me a less competitive applicant for big firms during OCI. I worked at a large firm as a paralegal before law school, and I have been fairly successful in interviews discussing that experience during my 1L job search, so the narrative I have been trying to craft is that I am using my 1L summer to get a perspective on what type of firm I want to work at after law school - a large firm or a litigation boutique. I am essentially 100% sure I want to do Litigation.

Although the position does pay slightly below market in Chicago, I still feel incredibly blessed to have landed a paid 1L job at all, and I really do want to use this summer to get an idea of what it is like to work at a smaller firm. The way I see it, I will never have a risk-free way like this to explore the culture of a smaller firm again, since starting my career at a small firm will likely make it difficult to get to a larger firm by lateraling, and exiting a large firm to a small firm will probably confine me to small firms for the rest of my career.

Any advice that you guys could offer me would be very much appreciated.

You got the best possible job (just about) a 1L can get. You'll do a lot of things biglaw lawyers do. You'll probably get more attention because its a boutique. You'll make money. Seriously, accept/don't fret. People 1L summer do things like look up obscure information for a prof to maybe write a law review article/book and still do fine.

You might also get an offer for employment after the summer too, which is a huge plus.

You have a better job than the vast majority of folks who will end up getting big law offers. You also have better stats than the vast majority of current 1Ls. I'm sure you already know this and this post is 1L self-validation (I get it), but you are going to be just fine.

Enjoy your summer and more importantly do well this semester.

Yes, you're boned. Do you have any non-paying offers, preferably doing something unrelated to your desired practice area, or even the practice of law at all? You don't want big firms thinking you're one-dimensional or in it for the money.