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I’m an 8th year. Will probably be of counsel starting in January. I’m not on the market currently, but I definitely recognize that partnership chances at my current biglaw firm are slim. I look at openings every now and then, and I’ve never seen any looking for someone over the 5th year range. Same with headhunter emails — I get tons of spam, but they’re always sending me openings for junior associate positions. So where do e.g. 10th year of counsels look for openings? Just spam firms? Get a headhunter?

I’m in dc if it matters, and would be up for moving if that would help. I’ve passed bars in California and Colorado.

Specialist? Tax? UCC?

Anonymous User wrote:Specialist? Tax? UCC?

Lit. I have a little bit of a lit specialty that I’ve been focusing on for the past 2-3 years (maybe 75% of my work now), but it’s niche enough that I don’t want to say it here. I probably couldn’t keep the focus if I left dc, but could be wrong.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Specialist? Tax? UCC?

Lit. I have a little bit of a lit specialty that I’ve been focusing on for the past 2-3 years (maybe 75% of my work now), but it’s niche enough that I don’t want to say it here. I probably couldn’t keep the focus if I left dc, but could be wrong.

Is your tenure as counsel limited? Seems like a pretty good gig to me without more info. I wouldn:t jump the ship unless I had a partnership position secured. My uninformed opinion.

At a lot of firms you go off scale when you make counsel and don't get raises or bonuses after that point.

Op here. I can stay here for the foreseeable future. At least for now my pay is going up as counsel (not sure how long that will be true). So I’m not looking, just wondering what more senior folks do when they want to move.

I had hoped people at your level had vastly better ideas about their prospects by that time.

malibustacy wrote:I had hoped people at your level had vastly better ideas about their prospects by that time.

So my annual review is “we think you have the lawyer skills needed to make partner, but you really need a client base.” And quite frankly every potential client I know of already has a lawyer that they’re happy with. So I’m guessing I’ll continue to hear the same thing for the foreseeable future.

Anonymous User wrote:

malibustacy wrote:I had hoped people at your level had vastly better ideas about their prospects by that time.

So my annual review is “we think you have the lawyer skills needed to make partner, but you really need a client base.” And quite frankly every potential client I know of already has a lawyer that they’re happy with. So I’m guessing I’ll continue to hear the same thing for the foreseeable future.

Any chances people above u may retire?

barkschool wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

malibustacy wrote:I had hoped people at your level had vastly better ideas about their prospects by that time.

So my annual review is “we think you have the lawyer skills needed to make partner, but you really need a client base.” And quite frankly every potential client I know of already has a lawyer that they’re happy with. So I’m guessing I’ll continue to hear the same thing for the foreseeable future.

Any chances people above u may retire?

Probably not. They’re all pretty young. But I just got inspired and I’m going to go be a hand shaking dude for the foreseeable future. And really if it doesn’t pan out I’ll just keep making more than I probably deserve doing a job that I like good enough. I might ask the next few recruiters that call what they think, but it really sounds like I need some clients to be marketable to any other firm at this point.

Anonymous User wrote:

barkschool wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

malibustacy wrote:I had hoped people at your level had vastly better ideas about their prospects by that time.

So my annual review is “we think you have the lawyer skills needed to make partner, but you really need a client base.” And quite frankly every potential client I know of already has a lawyer that they’re happy with. So I’m guessing I’ll continue to hear the same thing for the foreseeable future.

Any chances people above u may retire?

Probably not. They’re all pretty young. But I just got inspired and I’m going to go be a hand shaking dude for the foreseeable future. And really if it doesn’t pan out I’ll just keep making more than I probably deserve doing a job that I like good enough. I might ask the next few recruiters that call what they think, but it really sounds like I need some clients to be marketable to any other firm at this point.

https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/site ... -partners/

This is for Kirkland & Ellis non-share partners, which seems similar to where you are. Many of them seem to go into high-ranking in-house positions, some straight to General Counsel.

At one point there was a lot of 8-10+ year positions for in-house counsel lit positions, way back when I was trying to look for them as a new grad/clerk.
I don't think most bigger firms are going to look for people with that kind of experience except in rare circumstances. On the other hand, I know very good small firms (not the TLS "elite boutique" Susman/Hueston/etc. type of firm) who really like having good 10th year attorneys join them. It's usually some kind of more regional/local firm with partners who have a shit ton of business and (a) are bringing more work than they can handle themselves or (b) don't really want to put in the hours anymore and would be happy to just bring in the business and have someone else work on it. And they don't want to take the time to train up (and their clients probably won't pay for) junior attorneys. The pay often won't be market, but sometimes it can get close.

Re business dev, in my very limited experience, the big companies are practically impossible to get business from if your firm isn't already getting business from them. They already have their list of preferred lawyers and law firms. So you need to know someone who can get you on that list somehow. Smaller places, more likely, but also less likely to have the type of work that they're willing to pay biglaw rates on or that the biglaw firm actually wants from the client.

Honestly if you actually have a future at your firm as of counsel (and aren't getting pushed out and aren't killing yourself) I tend to think that's not a bad gig. No more advancement unless you build a book of business, but sometimes the pay/hours are good enough to stick around if there's no up or out model.