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Inquiring junior associate here. Of the litigation specialties, which have the most financial upside over the course of a career? I would guess complex commercial, IP, and antitrust are near the top and appellate and white collar are near the bottom, but that's just a guess.

Plaintiff's side work.

Personal injury.

Class action?

Start in biglaw doing some products liability/class action defense and then hop over to the plaintiffs side with that experience. One big win on the P side can net seven-figure bonuses at the right shop.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 19, 2022 1:10 pm

Inquiring junior associate here. Of the litigation specialties, which have the most financial upside over the course of a career? I would guess complex commercial, IP, and antitrust are near the top and appellate and white collar are near the bottom, but that's just a guess.

ADA, build rep in local community -> run for DA, get 1-2 high profile cases under your belt -> run for State AG, win, start building a statewide profile -> run for U.S. Senate, win -> insider trade like a mofo -> leave senate to peddle influence for billionaires

Do you mean on average, or for the highest earners? For the highest earners it's big-time plaintiff-side contingent fee work (mass torts, personal injury, or complex/commercial). On average afaik there isn't tremendous variation in either biglaw or exit option pay for any of the main biglaw litigation specialties (basically all of those you list minus appellate), with maybe IP being the highest because they're less likely to go into government.

As others have said, plaintiff side litigators just have a much higher potential earning cap than defense work (because contingency fees allow you to decouple the earnings from the billable hour essentially). Be warned though, they almost always have way lower salaries for associates and even non-equity junior partners compared to big law (source: moved from plaintiff side to big law because I was working big law hours for a fraction of the pay...)

I’m probably one of the few plaintiff side lawyers on this board. What’s been said is right. To really be successful, you essentially have to own the firm.

And it’s usually just the people with their name on the door that own the firm. Making partner isn’t really the same thing as that is most times just a title.

Then there’s a lot of things that go into it. When I take 40% of a six figure settlement, my hourly rate usually shakes out to like 800/hr for that case. But then there are thing like case acquisition costs, all the free consults I had to give to get the case, and any referral fees paid.

Then, there is the fact that you hear about these big verdicts and you think the plaintiffs firm got rich on it. In big PI cases it’s not unheard of to advance six figures on a case like that. Then, say you win, your verdict will get appealed and most likely slashed down by some tort reform judge.

Based on my info, the top PI lawyers in my market make like 8-20 million a year with some outliers upward.

There are biglaw partners that clear those numbers too. So, I have to say that the answer remains biglaw equity partner for most people. It takes way less skill, less risk, but is also more grueling.