Top Law Schools

I'm a second-year transactional associate at a mid-size firm (secondary market) & I'm considering a BigLaw lateral. On paper, I have a great gig: I make low 6-figures & work a pretty standard 7:30 to 6:00. However, I feel like I am receiving inadequate training.

Our deals are staffed 1 senior partner + 1 associate, which means I'm often taking the first run at drafting documents I only minimally understand. Given that there are no other associates on the deal, the only person I can ask questions of is a senior partner who is on conference calls 90% of the time. It can take me days of hunting someone down to get a small question answered. When I do finally track the partner down, they often seem irritated that I'm bothering them with questions. Once I turn in a draft, I infrequently get actual feedback about what changes were made & why the partner made them.

While I genuinely like the people I work with and LOVE the lifestyle of my current role, I'm worried I'm going to start falling behind my peers. I'm wondering if I need to take the lifestyle hit & jump over to BigLaw for a few years.

For those of you in BigLaw, do you feel you receive "good" training? How does the deal hierarchy usually work & what types of assignments are junior associates getting? Who do they usually report to? I'm trying to determine whether my frustrations are mid-law specific, or if I'll encounter the exact same situation in BigLaw...just in higher volume.

Thanks!

I am a litigator so perhaps not your best resource, but as a general matter, training in Big Law is terrible. The model is not to keep associates for the long haul, so there is little perceived incentive to invest in and train associates.

The key to success in biglaw is to have someone take you under their wing. It doesn't necessarily have to be a partner- but you need a mentor and an internal champion. If there's no prospects for such a person at your current firm, you may need to lateral, but make sure you've truly exhausted your options.

When looking for such a person, you have to make sure it is a mutually beneficial relationship. The busy partner is going to be even busier if she spends all her time correcting your work, so it is in HER interest to make sure you understand what you are doing. But, she won't take the time to explain if you can't prove to her that you will make her life easier over the long run if she invests the time.

Finally, keep in mind that you may be learning more than you realize. I found things started to seem a lot less overwhelming by the start of year 3. Partners didn't spend all that much time explicitly explaining stuff, but the exposure and seeing the comments of the partners on my various drafts added up over time.

I work in midlaw and your description of your circumstances nearly matches mine. I am usually taking a first stab and have little to no guidance. Maybe my firm is just really busy and the partner I work with isn’t good at mentoring, or maybe this is just how most firms operate.

I think part of being a lawyer is just enduring the grind, and through that process you learn more than you realize. At least that’s what I try to tell myself.

Raiden wrote:I work in midlaw and your description of your circumstances nearly matches mine. I am usually taking a first stab and have little to no guidance. Maybe my firm is just really busy and the partner I work with isn’t good at mentoring, or maybe this is just how most firms operate.

I think part of being a lawyer is just enduring the grind, and through that process you learn more than you realize. At least that’s what I try to tell myself.

Same. I've been at 2 firms. I didn't know it at the time, but the first was really great at training. Partners would go out of their way to explain comments, concepts, etc.

Second is like others describe. No review of what I do; barely any comments; and no explanation of comments even if I get them. I think it's practice group dependent as well. So YMMV.

Do you know how to run a redline? You should always be able to see what changes are made, even if you don't get the explanation as to why. And if partners aren't versioning up your document before making their changes, just save it locally when you send it to the partner, and then redline their document against that.

JohnnieSockran wrote:Do you know how to run a redline? You should always be able to see what changes are made, even if you don't get the explanation as to why. And if partners aren't versioning up your document before making their changes, just save it locally when you send it to the partner, and then redline their document against that.

This, except you don't even have to save locally, you can pull it right from outlook (as long as you didn't just send a link)

In my experience, "training" in litigation is watching and thinking about what other people are doing and incorporating that into your own work. Every time I write something I compare what I wrote and the final product and see what was changed. In most cases, it is apparent why the edits were made and I've learned something.

im a junior in house at a tech company, and my situation is exactly like yours. I dont even know the stuff i do is even good or proper sometime.

So many firms tout their excellent training on their websites, but that training probably just amounts to going to some seminar.