Switching from litigation to corporate 1st year Forum

[Anonymous User]

Any thoughts on how to make the switch from litigation to corporate? I am in Houston, graduated with honors from a T14, and started working in October. Initially I thought I wanted litigation, but had some second thoughts after my summer. The firm I am at made it clear I was hired for litigation and reacted pretty poorly when I brought up changing groups. I tried the 3L job search, but did not have any luck (thought I had something, but then Covid happened). Now I am almost five months in, my post-summer hesitations have proven correct, and I am just not enjoying it. Moving markets is not a current possibility, but I am willing to start over as a first year. Thoughts?

[2013]

Isn’t Kirkland hiring a ton of people right now in all offices? And isn’t Goodwin allowing people to work remotely from certain cities (including Houston)? I see my classmates posting about it on LinkedIn all the time.

[Anonymous User]

Any thoughts on how to make the switch from litigation to corporate? I am in Houston, graduated with honors from a T14, and started working in October. Initially I thought I wanted litigation, but had some second thoughts after my summer. The firm I am at made it clear I was hired for litigation and reacted pretty poorly when I brought up changing groups. I tried the 3L job search, but did not have any luck (thought I had something, but then Covid happened). Now I am almost five months in, my post-summer hesitations have proven correct, and I am just not enjoying it. Moving markets is not a current possibility, but I am willing to start over as a first year. Thoughts?

Current Goodwin associate here. Can confirm re: the above that Goodwin is hiring folks to work remotely in Houston and there are needs in every office for junior corporate associates, so if this is interesting, happy to DM to provide more details.

[Wild Card]

Incredible. Plenty of folks unwillingly stuck in corporate and hoping to make the leap to litigation.

[jotarokujo]

i wonder if switching from lit->corp is harder than corp->lit all other things equal

[Sackboy]

i wonder if switching from lit->corp is harder than corp->lit all other things equal

No

[Anonymous User]

i wonder if switching from lit->corp is harder than corp->lit all other things equal

Is this a stereotype? I switched from Lit to Corp as a first year. Third year now, and no regrets. The subject matter was more interesting to me in Corp, and I like the negotiation aspect of corp work over the adversarial ethos in disputes. Plus the lit team at my firm were very awkward and always tense and offputting, but that's just an x factor unrelated to practice area.

[jotarokujo]

i wonder if switching from lit->corp is harder than corp->lit all other things equal

Is this a stereotype? I switched from Lit to Corp as a first year. Third year now, and no regrets. The subject matter was more interesting to me in Corp, and I like the negotiation aspect of corp work over the adversarial ethos in disputes. Plus the lit team at my firm were very awkward and always tense and offputting, but that's just an x factor unrelated to practice area.

it's commonly known that lit has worse exit options than corp, at least for in-house and a lot of government. that could make its way upstream to making it harder to go from lit to corp.

on the other hand, it's harder to get lit than corp from OCI. maybe the two factors balance each other out

[nixy]

it's commonly known that lit has worse exit options than corp, at least for in-house and a lot of government.

how are government options worse for lit? That's where I understood most lit exit options to be.

[Anonymous User]

Incredible. Plenty of folks unwillingly stuck in corporate and hoping to make the leap to litigation.

interesting ... all the folks i know wanting to get out of corporate law want to be out of biglaw in general, not leap into litigation

[Anonymous User]

Double post.

[jotarokujo]

it's commonly known that lit has worse exit options than corp, at least for in-house and a lot of government.

how are government options worse for lit? That's where I understood most lit exit options to be.

honestly haven't looked into it, i've just bought into the meme of "corporate has better exit options". usually it's not qualified with a "for in-house only" so i generally have assumed that it means for more than just in-house as people care about more than just in-house.

if lit is actually better for government, i think we'd see a lot less of the "lit no exit options" meme

[Anonymous User]

i wonder if switching from lit->corp is harder than corp->lit all other things equal

Is this a stereotype? I switched from Lit to Corp as a first year. Third year now, and no regrets. The subject matter was more interesting to me in Corp, and I like the negotiation aspect of corp work over the adversarial ethos in disputes. Plus the lit team at my firm were very awkward and always tense and offputting, but that's just an x factor unrelated to practice area.

Can you please elaborate re: the subject matter being interesting and the negotiation aspect? Also, what are some of the typical substantive work that mid-level M&A associates usually perform (I said mid-level because it seems that junior corporate associates are always doing the “grunt” work)? I am a 2l trying to decide btw lit and corp.

[nixy]

it's commonly known that lit has worse exit options than corp, at least for in-house and a lot of government.

how are government options worse for lit? That's where I understood most lit exit options to be.

honestly haven't looked into it, i've just bought into the meme of "corporate has better exit options". usually it's not qualified with a "for in-house only" so i generally have assumed that it means for more than just in-house as people care about more than just in-house.

if lit is actually better for government, i think we'd see a lot less of the "lit no exit options" meme

Most lit options are in government, the problem people have is that government usually pays quite a bit less, so the meme becomes “corp has better exit options” because the money is better than in lit. There are fewer options for corp in government because most government positions are in litigation (not exclusively of course).

[Anonymous User]

i wonder if switching from lit->corp is harder than corp->lit all other things equal

Is this a stereotype? I switched from Lit to Corp as a first year. Third year now, and no regrets. The subject matter was more interesting to me in Corp, and I like the negotiation aspect of corp work over the adversarial ethos in disputes. Plus the lit team at my firm were very awkward and always tense and offputting, but that's just an x factor unrelated to practice area.

Can you please elaborate re: the subject matter being interesting and the negotiation aspect? Also, what are some of the typical substantive work that mid-level M&A associates usually perform (I said mid-level because it seems that junior corporate associates are always doing the “grunt” work)? I am a 2l trying to decide btw lit and corp.

Maybe other summer associates and law students were more discerning or insightful than me, but I was completely unequipped to actually understand the differences between practice areas when going through the recruitment, and I wonder if it's even possible for law students to make this determination.

In any case, for Corp I liked working with counter party counsel and the client to get deals done. Obviously it's still tense at times, and you're not on the "same team" with the other side, but typically everyone is trying to get the deal done and get to yes, and that tends to moderate people from being total jerks. There's a self-interested collaboration between everyone than happens on M&A deals that just suits some personalities better. When counter party counsel calls me on a deal on some issue I tend to be very forthright about what we're thinking, why that's our position, not playing games, and 9 times out of 10 they try to find a way to make it work and everything's easier if you just spill the beans. That wasn't my disputes experience.

I'm sure there's a better thread on here describing mid-level M&A work. You're transitional in your experience and a lot depends on the specific deal or the specific team. You might make initial markups of some transaction agreements, especially more ancillary agreements, and work with the precedents you have. You're likely to be drafting memos and reports related to due diligence or specific points of law. You tend to hold the pen on internal facing documents and there's just a lot of coordination with specialists. You're chasing IP or Tax or whoever it is about the new language in the side letter and then you realize they have no idea that the counter party has changed the structure in that one respect and so you have to explain it to them but you're only 75% sure you've actually communicated what's going on and Tax understands it, but realistically that's the best you're going to get, and they have 5 other deals going anyway and they just want this task off their plate, so you tell the other side that most of their changes are fine, but their change in the defined terms is a problem Because Tax Said So, and everyone's a little annoyed because this is all inconvenient, and no one is 100% sure they're actually correct in their analysis, and it's 10:45 PM and this isn't a hill worth dying on, so, you know, whatever.

[Hopefullitassociate]

I think switching from litigation to corporate is way easier than switching from corporate to litigation, simply because there are far more jobs per interested associates for corporate than there are for litigation, at least in biglaw (meaning, that there are a lot of incoming associates wanting litigation but not as many litigation slots). I think it's far more common for litigation-hopefuls to be put in corporate positions, at least based on my experience of that exact thing happening to me and speaking with many others during my experience lateraling.