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I recently received an offer from a firm. I indicated that I wanted to be in a certain city and was given that option. The practice group is pretty large (~60 people) with 20 partners, but none of the partners are in the office I requested. From what I understand, a lot of work is done cross-office, so this shouldn’t be an issue. However, if an economic downturn happens sometime in 2020, would I be more likely to be let go because of this kind of arrangement?

In my interviews, I did mention that I could sit in the office where a large majority of the practice is and was told that working in my choice city would be fine.

FWIW, there are two of counsels in the office and there associates in the practice group in similar situations with no partners in their office.

Doing good work for a given partner might be more valuable than face time around the water cooler. Partners may go to bat for an associate that they have a strong personal relationship with... but the best line of defense when the economy hits the fan is being known as the person that puts in the most hours and produces the highest quality work (especially for more junior people).

If there is lot of cross-office work and you have a bunch of counsel/associates around you, I think you will be fine. My biggest concern would normally be getting isolated and having people forget about you... but that doesn't sound like a real risk in this case.

Is this as a first year or as a lateral? There's different pros and cons of this for each.

UnfrozenCaveman wrote:Is this as a first year or as a lateral? There's different pros and cons of this for each.

Agree. I wouldn't recommend this as a first year. As a lateral this can work fine (depending on firm politics, your relationship with partners in other offices, health of your practice group, etc.).

I’d be coming in as a fourth year in January. I guess I’m just concerned that I’ll still fall through the cracks a bit because I won’t “be on the radar,” per se.

I think it’s not ideal, but will probably be fine, and the downsides aren’t worth moving from your preferred city (unless you really don’t care/don’t have real ties to either place(“).

I did a short stint in another office of my firm where we didn’t have *any* people in my practice group. Took me about a week to realize nobody knew who I was nor did anybody care. I worked from home 100% of the time after that. It was glorious...