How can I learn what being a BL litigator would be like BEFORE going to law school? Forum

[thebroteinshake]

Hi all, I am an older prospective student with work experience in tech, and I'm entering law school (deferred at T6 with $$ if that matters) next fall. I am interested in litigation, particularly white collar, IP lit, antitrust, and international arbitration. A lot of my friends are lawyers, and I know real challenges exist in the field: demanding hours that don't end even as a partner, the unclear and uncertain promotion process, and the general stress of working on matters that are very complex as a service provider.

People often advise that one should only go to law school if they would love law, but does anyone have any advice on how I can find out before enrolling? I've talked to lawyers and got their takes, but it didn't help me decide whether I would enjoy the work. What could I do to actually learn about the work in litigation and see whether I would enjoy it? I've tried reading some publicly available court documents and some moot court briefs, but is there anyway I can refine this search? Law school is a huge investment, and I really want to answer whether I would love law before enrolling.

I already have a full-time job and only have 10 months until enrollment, so working as a paralegal is not an option unfortunately.

[peoplearehungry]

You could always try to be a paralegal/legal assistant somewhere. That's basically the best exposure to the practice of law short of being a lawyer. But it sounds like you already have a job, so...

I will say that the idea that you must love the practice of law to be a lawyer is a bit overblown. First of all, the practice of law is quite varied. One person's practice might look nothing like another's. It's really all about finding your niche when you do practice. Different specialties require different skills. Litigation skills don't make you a good transactional lawyer.

Second, the practice of law is like many other jobs - there are good and bad parts. Sure, there can be exalting and transcendent moments (if you're lucky), but there are also crappy parts that you will dislike. That's what juniors are for This is where practicing with the right people will make a huge difference. If you and your colleagues complement each other's skills, the bad parts can be mitigated. Practicing with the right people might even trump finding the right niche. It's very important.

If you like or can at least stand the basics of law - reading, writing, reasoning, being thorough, client service - then you can find a career in the practice of law.

[Anonymous User]

I realize this will be too late / non-actionable for you, but college students or other pre-law people out there who share OP’s question should consider expert witness consulting.

Basically whenever a law firm hires an expert witness for a case, there is usually a support team of “consultants” who actually run the analysis, write the expert report, prepare the expert for deposition & trial, etc. The actual analysis is usually fairly interesting — opining on brand/IP valuation in a transfer pricing (tax) case, doing market share analysis or econometrics for an antitrust case, figuring out damages in some patent infringement case, and so on. And while the work isn’t “legal” per se, you work hand-in-glove with lawyers, get front-row seats to depositions and trials, and are part of the adversarial process. I did this for three years before law school, and when I arrived at LS, I actually felt I had a better sense of litigation and more exposure to what litigators really do versus the pre-LS paralegals I met (or at least felt my work experience seemed more substantive). There’s a whole niche of firms that specialize in this work (Analysis Group, NERA, Keystone, etc.) and they hire smart kids straight out of undergrad. (Those same firms pay 21-25 year olds surprisingly well, too.)

As for you, OP. I’m not sure there’s a good answer to your question, since the only real way of knowing is by doing. And keep in mind that law school itself is several steps removed from the practice of law, so that’s another waiting period of sorts. I agree with peoplearehungry that the sheer variety of different practice areas mitigates this risk that you cannot find you like; in a sense, there’s something for (almost) everyone. For me, I knew I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer since, apart from the money, I just enjoyed thinking about legal issues, even though at that point I was completely untrained. But I’m not saying that it’s a red flag if you don’t feel that way.

Congrats on the T6 and $$, btw

[thebroteinshake]

I realize this will be too late / non-actionable for you, but college students or other pre-law people out there who share OP’s question should consider expert witness consulting.

Basically whenever a law firm hires an expert witness for a case, there is usually a support team of “consultants” who actually run the analysis, write the expert report, prepare the expert for deposition & trial, etc. The actual analysis is usually fairly interesting — opining on brand/IP valuation in a transfer pricing (tax) case, doing market share analysis or econometrics for an antitrust case, figuring out damages in some patent infringement case, and so on. And while the work isn’t “legal” per se, you work hand-in-glove with lawyers, get front-row seats to depositions and trials, and are part of the adversarial process. I did this for three years before law school, and when I arrived at LS, I actually felt I had a better sense of litigation and more exposure to what litigators really do versus the pre-LS paralegals I met (or at least felt my work experience seemed more substantive). There’s a whole niche of firms that specialize in this work (Analysis Group, NERA, Keystone, etc.) and they hire smart kids straight out of undergrad. (Those same firms pay 21-25 year olds surprisingly well, too.)

As for you, OP. I’m not sure there’s a good answer to your question, since the only real way of knowing is by doing. And keep in mind that law school itself is several steps removed from the practice of law, so that’s another waiting period of sorts. I agree with peoplearehungry that the sheer variety of different practice areas mitigates this risk that you cannot find you like; in a sense, there’s something for (almost) everyone. For me, I knew I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer since, apart from the money, I just enjoyed thinking about legal issues, even though at that point I was completely untrained. But I’m not saying that it’s a red flag if you don’t feel that way.

Congrats on the T6 and $$, btw

I actually worked in one for 3 years Still, I never got do what the lawyers do, so I was one step removed.

I also have been interested in law school forever, but I just have so many people in the industry saying it sucks and it's not what it looks like that I want to do as much diligence as possible. Even after working on expert testimonies in litigation for 3 years and doing a whole lot of research, people always tell me I don't know what I am talking about, I am too romantic, etc. I guess some people will always be doubtful, but I also worry I am still missing something.

[bretby]

Like with everything, it is almost impossible to know what something will be like day-to-day until you actually do it. Reading briefs won't give you any sense of what the life of a lawyer is like, though if you find them impossibly boring, that's probably a sign that the field isn't for you. I think more broadly, you want to consider whether the conditions of the job and the general substance of the job would be interesting to you. I think older students have an advantage of sorts because they generally have a better sense of what kind of work they actually enjoy, as opposed to ideas about what kind of work they might like in the abstract. I also think that people who are motivated mostly by money are less happy because it's harder to swallow the bad parts of the job if the only good part to you is the paycheck.

As to conditions, you identified a lot of what makes the job challenging -- long hours with little control over when those hours will arise. That can be harder for people with a lot of commitments outside of work (family, etc.), which can be more challenging for older people who are more likely to have such commitments, but even without that variable, some people are bothered less by the unpredictability than others -- where do you fall on that scale?

As to the general substance of the work, that will vary depending on what kind of law you practice and where you do it. But very generally speaking, if you want to do litigation, you have to like research, reading, writing, and working independently much of the time. What kind of firm you go to will impact what that mix looks like for you, but overall that's mostly what you will be doing. In BL, you'll start out doing a lot of less intellectually challenging things (and some people get stuck doing grunt work for longer - not sure how that happens, but it does). At a boutique, you will be doing more stimulating work earlier on, but you generally have to have at least clerked or put in a year or two at a big firm to get into the top boutique litigation firms.

[12YrsAnAssociate]

You could always try to be a paralegal/legal assistant somewhere. That's basically the best exposure to the practice of law short of being a lawyer. But it sounds like you already have a job, so...

I will say that the idea that you must love the practice of law to be a lawyer is a bit overblown. First of all, the practice of law is quite varied. One person's practice might look nothing like another's. It's really all about finding your niche when you do practice. Different specialties require different skills. Litigation skills don't make you a good transactional lawyer.

Second, the practice of law is like many other jobs - there are good and bad parts. Sure, there can be exalting and transcendent moments (if you're lucky), but there are also crappy parts that you will dislike. That's what juniors are for This is where practicing with the right people will make a huge difference. If you and your colleagues complement each other's skills, the bad parts can be mitigated. Practicing with the right people might even trump finding the right niche. It's very important.

If you like or can at least stand the basics of law - reading, writing, reasoning, being thorough, client service - then you can find a career in the practice of law.

Virtually every year my firm brings in a new crop of paralegals that want to see what biglaw is going to be like before they go off to law school. They basically all go to law school the next year, which is shocking to me, because we don't sugar coat what the job is like. A nice thing is that they have things to talk about at OCI and usually get a nice letter of recommendation or reference.

[logical seasoning]

Take a look at the "day in the life of" topic in this forum.

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=228583&sid=abec8dc ... 551b06fa9d

Most posts go into detail what they do each hour of their day. If that sounds acceptable to you for $200-$500k, then BL could work for you

[johndhi]

This is what litigation is:
-you either represent a plaintiff suing someone, or or a defendant being sued.
-lawsuits follow fairly structured rules ('federal rules of civil procedure' are the representative ones here) where you provide evidence and arguments to a court or jury as to why your client should win the case. in the early stages of a lawsuit you're 'in discovery' which involves a lot of paperwork and coordination. later it involves more writing and presenting arguments.
-if you're doing white collar you're probably doing 'investigations,' which have less formal rules and the prosecutor kind of gets to do whatever they want
-in all cases your job is to understand the rules and the facts of your case well so that you can present your side of the case as effectively as possible. anything written down can be spun or read differently, so you try to read and describe things in the light most favorable to your client.

This is the particulars of litigation at a big firm:
-you do the above but also manage the process of how many of these cases you can handle at one time, and the politics of getting assigned to cases that you want to work on. as a partner, you bear the burden of bringing in the cases and clients -- i.e., convincing people with litigation that you are the right person to represent them in a case.

[nixy]

That's all perfectly correct, but it doesn't really at all convey what it feels like to do all that.

[Anonymous User]

As a biglaw litigator, you're hardly a litigator until you're a relatively senior associate or partner. I'm a fourth year, so I'll break down what my day-to-day was for my first three years:

First year:

- Lots of long term doc review and research projects (i.e. prepare a memo on X, review this set of 1,000 documents and tag them based on the issues they relate to). I consider something long term if you have more than 3 days to do it.

- Short term doc review and research (i.e. find a case that says X; find the document where our client tells so and so to fuck off). Essentially you'd have your long term projects in the background, and then these short term zingers popping off throughout any given day.

- Later in the year depositions started happening. There was a solid 4 months I was just preparing deposition kits. This is basically glorified document review. You review X number of documents which hit on search terms for your deponent, and compile the top 50 or so documents which relate to them. If it's an offensive depo these are used as exhibits, and if it's a defensive depo these are used to prepare the witness. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend all these depositions as second-chair (glorified way of saying "monkey-scribe"). My role was basically to show up with the exhibits (which often involved travel), and take notes so I could summarize how it went for the client. Partner did all the questioning.

Second year:

- Your one-off research tasks turn more into you actually taking the first crack at writing the motions and brief.

- You're still doing document review.

- You're starting to now get eased into some of the more managerial aspects. Mostly related to document review. There was a good 5 month period my second year where my primary workstream was managing the process of producing documents. Productions are generally 10k to 50k documents. I basically needed to work with an outside vendor to compile the right subset of documents we want to produce, review every single document in that subset tagged as "hot," summarize especially interesting documents for the partners/clients, and run additional checks to make sure nothing sensitive was going out. This is the worst workstream I've had in all my years as an associate and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

- Deposition kits are still a thing, no real change responsibility in terms of your role here.

Third year:

- More of your time is spent writing now. If there's a brief/motion, you can expect to take the first draft of at least a section of it.

- One-off research assignments are still a thing, but more often than not, you're involved in drafting the thing the research is for.

- Less real nose in the dirt doc review - now you're mostly managing the document review process. This means making sure others are reviewing documents, making sure the right docs are being reviewed, coming up with plans and schedules to produce them, etc.

- Deposition kits are still a thing, no real change responsibility in terms of your role here.

Fourth year and beyond:

Like I said, I'm just a fourth year. But from my limited perspective, I see the amount of real "litigating" you do as a biglaw associate plateauing around third year.

- I don't often see fourth, fifth, or sixth years taking depositions in billable matters. Senior associates sometimes do, but rarely. It's almost always the partners.

- I never see associates arguing motions or talking in court in billable matters.

- Trial rarely happens.

- From what I can tell, you're just more in charge of day-to-day case and client management. You'll have a lot more client contact, and it's on you to be aware of the case deadlines and make sure everyone is working to meet those deadlines. But that's it.


To sum:

If you're imagining being a litigator to be highly glamorous or exciting at a biglaw firm, think again. But if what I described above seems okay to you for the $$$, it might be worth it.

It's funny, litigation is one of those practice groups that biglaw will NOT give you the best experience. Arguably, it gives you the worst. If you want good experience, go to a boutique or a small/midlaw lit practice. If you want great experience, become a public defender or prosecutor.

[thebroteinshake]

Thanks for the replies - super helpful.

[johndhi]

That's all perfectly correct, but it doesn't really at all convey what it feels like to do all that.

maybe you're right -- I think in combination with the next guy's post (nitty gritty of doc review and management), that's basically what it is, with one missing part, which I'll describe here.

there are incentive structures within law firms that promote stress. those include: (1) the general lawyer mindset of competitiveness and wanting to be better than others, being graded on a curve; (2) being required to bill your time, which is degrading at worst and annoying at best; (3) aiming to hit minimum hours requirements to get a bonus or keep your job, which create an ever-present stress that you're working too little unless you're working way too much (which creates its own stress).

We all talk about this last component a lot on this forum, and it's the reason I left biglaw, so fair enough, but the basics of the job (which I think the original post was about) aren't talked about in simple terms often.

good luck to all