Need to lateral and move to CA from NY Biglaw as a junior...any thoughts and advice appreciated! Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hey guys,

Any advice and thoughts would be very much appreciated. For context, I'm a first year associate associate (just started work this past August) at a V50 firm in NY in their Investment Fund Formation practice, and went to a T14 law school. I really like the practice group and the firm so far, and I got admitted to the NY Bar recently. My girlfriend will be moving to San Francisco for her PhD in August 2021, and since that'll take 5-6 years, it makes sense for me to move with her. I know that lateralling as a junior is hard, but when how should I plan to lateral/when should I take the CA bar/how realistic is it to get placed in another fund formation practice in SF?

Thanks a ton!

[s1m4]

Hey guys,

Any advice and thoughts would be very much appreciated. For context, I'm a first year associate associate (just started work this past August) at a V50 firm in NY in their Investment Fund Formation practice, and went to a T14 law school. I really like the practice group and the firm so far, and I got admitted to the NY Bar recently. My girlfriend will be moving to San Francisco for her PhD in August 2021, and since that'll take 5-6 years, it makes sense for me to move with her. I know that lateralling as a junior is hard, but when how should I plan to lateral/when should I take the CA bar/how realistic is it to get placed in another fund formation practice in SF?

Thanks a ton!

Anyway you can move inside the firm?

[biglaw1212]

unforunately not, no CA offices.

[xoxoBlairWaldorf]

Feel free to PM me. My spouse did a PHD and is now a professor. If your girlfriend wants to enter academia, feel free to message me.

To answer your specific question:
1. Fine to take the CA bar after you lateral. Firms will give you 6 weeks of paid leave.

2. Not a great time to lateral considering how junior you are, but it can be done. Since you are so junior, it doesn't matter that you do fund formation and can probably land something in a corporate group. You should familiarize yourself with Bay Area practices. Fund formation work is in both SF and SV. I would also familiarize yourself with the Bay Area in general because SF and SV are 60 miles apart. If your girlfriend is doing her PHD at Berkeley that's an easy commute to SF firms but a hellish trek to the SV (Bart + Caltrain - probably 4 hours roundtrip of commute time a day). If your girlfriend is doing her PHD at Stanford, that's still at least a 45-minute commute (more realistically 1 hour to 1.5 hours given the proximity of firms to Caltrain) into the city, if you can catch the Caltrain bullets.