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My law firm offers two start dates - Oct and Dec. I have debt that I need to pay off. For those of you working in biglaw, do you have any advice w/r/t which start date I should pick? Obviously the earlier allows me to start paying off my debt sooner, while the latter gives me another month or so of travel time. Other than the debt, I could afford either (i.e. I wont run out if money and starve before December). Thoughts?

I started in September and I had plenty of time to take a fairly extensive bar trip and take time off to decompress. Definitely start in October. Plus, you'll probably be running low (or be out of) money by then.

I'd personally start in October because I'd be bored out of my mind by December. I started at the end of September - plenty of time for a big bar trip in August, moved and got settled in early September and took smaller trips to see friends and family in September. I was ready to start and even felt bad for friends who had to wait until October. Plus, even though it's only two months, you may feel behind your classmates who start in October. I guess one other factor is that my firm is pretty easy on stubs, so it wasn't like I was thrown right into outrageous hours, in which case you may want those two extra months before joining the fray.

no one cares. if I could have started in December I woulda jumped on that in a heartbeat for the longer bar trip.

$ is easy to come by, you can get some 0% interest credit cards if u run out of $, which u then have 12-24 months to pay off before u pay any interest.

You are going to be spending the large majority of the rest of your life working, so if you can swing it, take off those extra months and enjoy it. I've got my 24th full time work anniversary coming up in a couple of months and the only time I've taken more than one week off at once was in Feb when I took two weeks to study and take the Bar.

You've got the rest of your life to work. Take a breather.

Start as late as you possibly can, and travel during the time before you start. Once you start real life (working + marriage + kids) you basically won't get a period of free time like this until you retire. This might be your last chance for extended travel while you're still young. Don't waste the opportunity.

rpupkin wrote:Start as late as you possibly can, and travel during the time before you start. Once you start real life (working + marriage + kids) you basically won't get a period of free time like this until you retire. This might be your last chance for extended travel while you're still young. Don't waste the opportunity.

What I'd give to have three months of boredom with a guaranteed job at the end of it.

I requested an extra 4 months off before i start which is goign on now. It is amazing. i do whatever I want every day. travelling for 6 weeks and going to do a bunch of bucket list things. If you can get your stipend to last long enough, I say take the time. it is like retired life without having to work 35 years beforehand. My goal is to be as bored and broke (without going into credit card debt) as humanly possible before startign work so that I am as ready as possible and have a little fire to start making cash.

Do everything you can financial-wise to pick the later start date. You have debt that you're eager to pay off, but 3 months is not a lot on the debt clock -- it won't change when you retire.

3 months is a huge amount of time, though, to decompress, travel, get in shape, relax, and read for fun. And you'll never have it again. I took the earliest start date I could 8 years ago and have always regretted it. I've never taken more than a week at a time for vacation in 8 years, and now that I'm finally about to move jobs, I'm taking 3 weeks but those will largely be spent on childcare duties.

If money now is an issue, this is the time to make an exception to the general rule against acquiring credit card debt. And it's not as if you have to spend 3 months at the Four Seasons Tokyo. At this point, I'd kill for even a few weeks sleeping on the couch in my mom's basement to catch up on the novels I want to read.