Top Law Schools

There's a partner in another office of my biglaw firm I'd love to work with. The problem is, he's very old school and intimidating (strikes me as perhaps the old boys' club type). He leads a team of mostly male attorneys (sr. associates).

I'm a jr. associate and I don't have experience in his rather niche area of law. However, I did take a course on it in law school. To express my interest in his area of law, I actually attended a court hearing of his recently when he was in town (I asked another partner for permission).

Can people give me advice on how I can try to work with this partner? I'm currently thinking I should try to work out of his office a couple days (I have ties to the city his office is in) and shoot him an email asking for a short coffee meeting, and also chatting a bit about the litigation he's working on. The other thought I had was to get to know him through one of his senior associates, who I've heard is very approachable.

Appreciate any suggestions!

Why do you want to work with him? Honestly if he is difficult to work with, I would stay clear of him for a while. You don't want to ruffle feathers when you are a Jr. associate. If you want to get aggressive, I would ask the Sr associate to see if he wants to talk.

Yeah I'm confused about why you want to work with this guy if you have to go through such a production just to get introduced to him and when you don't even have experience in his practice group.

If you're trying to get work in that niche area, it may be just as effective to get in the good graces of that senior associate and drop at some point that you're looking to specialize in that niche. The senior associate may be able to talk the partner into giving you some work as a test run or something, or may have his own related work he can give you. Doing well with that work will probably get the partner interested in giving you more work, while also (hopefully) preserving the senior associate as a buffer between you/partner if he's really that hard to work with.