Lateral Interview Question Forum

[Anonymous User]

I have an interview at a large firm coming up. The firm does similar work to what I do now at a 25 attorney firm. The new firm is in the same city. When asked why I’m looking to move, does it make sense / sound good to say I want to be at a larger firm where we handle more big claims and get more in the weeds on big cases rather than more small claims. Any advice is appreciated.

[HarrisonBarnes]

Large law firms like people who are with smaller law firms trying to move to larger ones--people from smaller law firms tend to be more motivated than attorneys coming from large law firms because they want to succeed in a large law firm environment and are more likely to be moving because they want to make more money and get access to more important work than because of performance or personality issues at their former firms. Large law firms typically have clients that can afford to pay a lot of money for work and are willing to have work done properly. If you are at a larger law firm, you will get the experience of going more in-depth into matters in order to do a perfectly because the clients can pay for. In contrast, smaller law firms typically have clients that are more cost sensitive and you will not be able to do the same sort of quality of work. Large law firms typically train their attorneys to be very, very detail oriented and this can help you become a better attorney. In-house companies prefer to hire from large law firms where they trust the quality of the work than small law firms they may not be familiar with. It is also better to work for a large law firm is you are seeking to work in other law firms because most law firms respect larger law firms more than smaller ones. These are reasons you generally will not need to explain yourself why you want to move to a larger law firm. The money is also generally much better. These are all reasons that larger law firms will expect you will want to work for them compared to smaller firms.