Difference of biglaw labor and employment vs. boutique (Littler, Ogletree, Fisher, etc.) Forum

[Anonymous User]

I currently do labor and employment at one of the many boutiques. Besides my work consisting of mostly EPLI, a heavy caseload, and far below market pay, what are the other differences between what I do and a biglaw L&E associate? From what I understand, biglaw L&E has a smaller caseload with less EPLI, sometimes do transactional work, and do more class action work. It almost sounds like biglaw L&E is "easier" than the boutiques because the caseload is less. But its biglaw, so I assume the work is more intense in some way (curious what that actually means though). Welcome any and all thoughts.

[Anonymous User]

I’m a senior associate in BigLaw L&E. I haven’t worked at a boutique, so I can only speak to my BigLaw experience. I’m essentially an L&E generalist and do about 70-80% litigation. I usually have only 2-3 large cases at any given time (think cases where the associate bills 800+ hours to that case). These are usually wage and hour class or collective actions or executive non-compete cases. Then I usually do a few EEOC charges a year and occasionally an OSHA matter. We don’t do any EPLI cases because our rates are too high.

The rest of my time is drafting employment agreements and severance agreements, advising on layoffs, sending cease and desist letters, or handling the employment aspects of corporate deals. I’ll note, however, that not everyone in my section does corporate work; it’s mostly the NY office and a few other people. I’ve done a few employee handbooks, but clients don’t usually want to pay our rates for those.

[Anonymous User]

I’m a senior associate in BigLaw L&E. I haven’t worked at a boutique, so I can only speak to my BigLaw experience. I’m essentially an L&E generalist and do about 70-80% litigation. I usually have only 2-3 large cases at any given time (think cases where the associate bills 800+ hours to that case). These are usually wage and hour class or collective actions or executive non-compete cases. Then I usually do a few EEOC charges a year and occasionally an OSHA matter. We don’t do any EPLI cases because our rates are too high.

The rest of my time is drafting employment agreements and severance agreements, advising on layoffs, sending cease and desist letters, or handling the employment aspects of corporate deals. I’ll note, however, that not everyone in my section does corporate work; it’s mostly the NY office and a few other people. I’ve done a few employee handbooks, but clients don’t usually want to pay our rates for those.

Do you like what you do? Do you think it'd be a tough gig for someone who's not totally passionate about the field?

[Anonymous User]

SA from above. Yes, I generally enjoy L&E, at least more than other practice areas. The discrimination and non-compete cases generally have interesting facts. The wage and hour class/collective actions aren’t particularly juicy but can involve a lot of strategy if you like that (although I dislike wage and hour cases in California—I don’t like dealing with the unique laws/penalties or PAGA actions).

If you’re wanting to make partner, that can be challenging in BigLaw L&E, at least at my firm. There’s a lot of rate pressure, so our practice group is not as profitable as other sections. My true billable hours have never been over 2,000 (excluding pro bono and other soft billables). I prefer the litigation matters and would be less happy if I did primarily corporate L&E work, but the corporate work has less rate pressure.

I previously did general lit at another firm and had a much higher case volume. I definitely prefer working on a handful of large matters instead.

One last thought. Aside from a couple California wage and hour cases, I haven’t had any cases dealing with the exact same issues. This is good and bad. It means I’m not bored by the cases, but each time you’re basically starting from scratch on research/briefs. This is likely because of the low volume of EEOC charges and because my non-compete cases are all over the country, so you’re dealing with new laws each time. Sometimes it would be nice to copy/paste from a prior case and tweak the facts.

[Anonymous User]

SA from above. Yes, I generally enjoy L&E, at least more than other practice areas. The discrimination and non-compete cases generally have interesting facts. The wage and hour class/collective actions aren’t particularly juicy but can involve a lot of strategy if you like that (although I dislike wage and hour cases in California—I don’t like dealing with the unique laws/penalties or PAGA actions).

If you’re wanting to make partner, that can be challenging in BigLaw L&E, at least at my firm. There’s a lot of rate pressure, so our practice group is not as profitable as other sections. My true billable hours have never been over 2,000 (excluding pro bono and other soft billables). I prefer the litigation matters and would be less happy if I did primarily corporate L&E work, but the corporate work has less rate pressure.

I previously did general lit at another firm and had a much higher case volume. I definitely prefer working on a handful of large matters instead.

One last thought. Aside from a couple California wage and hour cases, I haven’t had any cases dealing with the exact same issues. This is good and bad. It means I’m not bored by the cases, but each time you’re basically starting from scratch on research/briefs. This is likely because of the low volume of EEOC charges and because my non-compete cases are all over the country, so you’re dealing with new laws each time. Sometimes it would be nice to copy/paste from a prior case and tweak the facts.

Thanks for the helpful response. Are the exits good?

[Anonymous User]

SA again. In my time at the firm, we’ve had about 5 L&E associates leave for other BigLaw firms and about 5 go in-house. A few of them were pushed out. A couple other attorneys have left for government positions like the DOJ. We actually have several senior associates right now, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years because no way will everyone make partner, and we don’t really have any senior counsel in our group. I don’t know what exit opportunities are like at the boutiques, but it actually wouldn’t surprise me if you have more experience with day-to-day counseling issues, investigations, or other issues that are useful for going in-house.

[Anonymous User]

I am a CA associate at one of the L&E boutiques. I would say we spend a lot of time in litigation, with just some advice and counsel sprinkled here and there. A lot of PAGA. Discrimination cases always there too. My case load consists of 20-30 cases, and it always seems like a firedrill (but that may be do to my lack of organization skills too). The people at my firm are great so that does make it nice, but it is a bummer to have a salary that is much lower than biglaw. We do a lot of EPLI, and the billing isn't honestly that big of a deal because of the way intapp is set up. Appeals are annoying for sure. And I don't like doing the litigation reports and budgets for insurance, but I imagine you have to do some variation of that anyway when working with a client. My billable is just 1850 though. I imagine biglaw I would be working more (so I assume, maybe more manageable if only a handful of cases vs 20 cases).

[Anonymous User]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I have a related question. I'm pivoting from general commercial litigation to L&E as a senior associate and am curious whether it would be better to start out doing strictly L&E at a litigation boutique or in a regular biglaw shop. I feel like the training at an L&E boutique and breadth of cases would be much better, but the pay differential, especially at more senior levels, is hard to get over. If I was theoretically weighing an L&E offer from Littler vs. an L&E offer from somewhere like Winston Strawn (ie. a biglaw shop that has a decently sized L&E department), which would be the prudent choice? I feel like the biglaw shop would be less forgiving about the learning curve, whereas, the L&E boutique would have way more people to "fall back" on so to speak, since they only focus on L&E.