Worth it to take advantage of hot lateral market to trade up firms before going in house? Say V60 to V10. Forum

[Anonymous User]

Anon because I’m obviously thinking about lateraling and some coworkers know my handle on here.

I’m currently a midlevel at a V60-ish firm. Never lateraled before. This is an extremely TLS/prestige whorey question, but assuming I have no desire to make partner or to go in house at any of my current clients (in which case staying put would obviously be the better move), what order of magnitude of trade up in firms would be necessary for a lateral to be worthwhile? Just from a pure career-long resume boosting perspective, since I plan to spend a year or two more in BigLaw.

I assume trading up from my V60 to, say, Morgan Lewis wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Where does it start to become worth it to get a certain caliber of firms’ name on my resume forever?

Again, I understand this is pretty vapid, but I just want to make sure I at least think about taking full advantage of the hot lateral market while it’s around.

[Sackboy]

Meh, most of the V60 are national firms that I associate with paying market and major clients. I wouldn't bother lateraling unless (1) you're getting below market comp, (2) your work conditions are really bad, and/or (3) you're not making the connections to the industries/areas of law you're going to want to transition into post-firm, some of which I imagine are the case at a place like Dentons on Dechert but less so at MWE, J&B, or V&E.

[Anonymous User]

No. If you want to go in house sooner rather than later, I'd just focus on that. A lot better to get an in-house job you want now than wait - you don't know what jobs will be available down the line.

I tried to go in house and failed, lateraled for the $$$, and now think I'm stuck for at least a year. Not really getting bites for in house jobs, which may be connected to the length of time I've been employed here. Keep in mind low level HR folks read your resume and screen you. They don't know biglaw and so they may just see "oh, they're trying to leave after a short time, maybe they suck" and throw you into the NO pile.

That being said, if you want to do biglaw for another year or two, there is a lot of money right now.

[Anonymous User]

That being said, if you want to do biglaw for another year or two, there is a lot of money right now.

This is certainly part of the calculus. Seems like firms that wouldn't look at me and my median grades in law school are willing to shell out multi-six figures to get me now (I'm in a hot practice, think corporate finance).

[Anonymous User]

That being said, if you want to do biglaw for another year or two, there is a lot of money right now.

This is certainly part of the calculus. Seems like firms that wouldn't look at me and my median grades in law school are willing to shell out multi-six figures to get me now (I'm in a hot practice, think corporate finance).

Same anon. IMO, that's the ONLY part of the calculus. If you can stomach this for at least a year, do it. Get paid fat stacks and move up. It does kind of suck to have to re-establish yourself, but whatever.