Public Interest to Private Sector Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm thinking about trying to make a leap from the Legal Aid Society to an Amlaw 200 firm or Big Law firm. Can anyone who has made the transition talk about how you were able to do so? What were some helpful resources?

I know that the transition will be hard, but I am willing to do the work. I do believe that I have formed some transitional skills in this position. I mostly work with employment and consumer related claims.I also have a ton of litigation experience. For personal reasons, I do not want to work in employment law.

Background info: I graduated from a top 10 school in 2019, I have a BSBA and I focused on business/ transactional work in law school. I did not work with a law firm during my time in law school (struck out).

[jotarokujo]

should be able to go to corp pretty easily if you were doing transactional stuff at your public interest job

[gottagetouttahere]

Curious if folks think going from PI lit to private practice lit would be easier? Certainly seems so.

[jotarokujo]

i think if someone were doing PI lit instead of transactional, it would probably be harder to go to a transactional position. then again, firms are looking for bodies in transactional so making the switch might not be too hard

[CanadianWolf]

May depend upon what makes up your less than 2 years of litigation experience.

For Example: My guess is that discovery was not a major part of that experience. Also, I suspect that not much money was spent on these matters which may mean that expert witnesses were not utilized & that there were few complicating issues such as multiple parties & jurisdictional issues & complex evidentiary issues, etc.