Tips to survive a long time in Biglaw? Forum

[Anonymous User]

OP here.

Great responses, thank you all —!

[Anonymous User]

Also if you dont care about making partner you should lateral 2-3 times after 1.5-2 year stints. This way you got some ramp up time and some grace for being new at each spot. Optically probably doesnt look bad to leave after ~2 years. Might be harder to pull this off with the market slowing down tho.

[Anonymous User]

Also if you dont care about making partner you should lateral 2-3 times after 1.5-2 year stints. This way you got some ramp up time and some grace for being new at each spot. Optically probably doesnt look bad to leave after ~2 years. Might be harder to pull this off with the market slowing down tho.

Yup. Plus the signing bonuses can really stack up.

[Anonymous User]

Also if you dont care about making partner you should lateral 2-3 times after 1.5-2 year stints. This way you got some ramp up time and some grace for being new at each spot. Optically probably doesnt look bad to leave after ~2 years. Might be harder to pull this off with the market slowing down tho.

Yup. Plus the signing bonuses can really stack up.

Big time. Counting my signing bonus and guaranteed year end bonus that I negotiated for, I got 100k+ to lateral as an (almost) third year.

[Anonymous User]

Delete

[Anonymous User]

Also if you dont care about making partner you should lateral 2-3 times after 1.5-2 year stints. This way you got some ramp up time and some grace for being new at each spot. Optically probably doesnt look bad to leave after ~2 years. Might be harder to pull this off with the market slowing down tho.

Is it harder to make partner as a lateral? Or only if you lateral every 1.5-2 years?

[Anonymous User]

I am worried that these economic dark clouds may impede my frequent lateraling plan. Not only could it make it more difficult to do so, the reputational hit you take for lateraling frequently would be more likely to show up with future opportunities. You can do it every year when they just need warm bodies.

I'm a 3rd year who has lateraled once and have intended to lateral Q1 2023 after getting my bonus. Buy a little ramp down/ramp up time, get rid of legacy work and try to survive one more year to 2024. By then as a 5th year debt associate I should be marketable for decent exits. Three job changes from 2019-24 sounds like a lot. ...

[vegas]

Big Law NYC, best case scenario, how long to make partner?

[Anonymous User]

Big Law NYC, best case scenario, how long to make partner?

Six years. Go to Kirkland.

[Anonymous User]

Big Law NYC, best case scenario, how long to make partner?

Six years. Go to Kirkland.

NSP doesn't count.

[Anonymous User]

Which practice areas and groups utilize which skills the most? In other words, when you think "this is the kind of person/student who really has what it takes to succeed (or at least survive) in my practice area," what natural skills and traits do they have?

Some background: in my 1L grades, for all the classes where the exam was graded analytically -- as in, there was a certain "right" answer the professor wanted you to reach -- I got something like a B+. These classes tended to have long time limits and short word limits. For the classes where the professor was grading with a checklist, and the exam was just about retaining as much as possible, recognizing the places the professor wants you to spit it out, and spitting it out as fast and in as much detail as you can, I got As and/or booked the class. These tended to have short time limits and long word limits. I also got an A in Legal Writing (no analytical element, just a class about following the format the professor wanted).

What this implies in my opinion is that I am not an especially talented or deep legal thinker, but am a faster typing monkey than most of my class and am good at slavishly following rules. Where am I primed to make the big bucks?

[Anonymous User]

I am not an especially talented or deep legal thinker, but am a faster typing monkey than most of my class and am good at slavishly following rules. Where am I primed to make the big bucks?

Corporate work is going to love you

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Literally nothing about a law school exam is applicable to being a long-lasting associate in the average corporate Biglaw practice.

As a junior, in order to build up professional capital you can bank over time, you'll need to:

-Respond to emails quickly
-Generally be aware of the status of all the docs on your deals
-Learn what changes in docs you regularly come across (names, dates, key economic terms, some structural stuff) and what's just regular boilerplate
-Find good precedent/become a good DMS searcher (if you don't have seniors who give you good precedent to start with)
-Listen in for key terms they want you to draft on calls (if you don't have good seniors who send you notes or good clients who just put the things they want in an email)

You'll fuck up every one of those at one point or another and because no one has any expectations of you, it won't matter, unless you're doing it regularly and/or it blatantly looks like you didn't try.

After a year or two, you'll have learned enough by osmosis/trial and error/emulating successful seniors to vaguely be able to answer medium-level questions about your deals. That's where some other skills will come into play, but they will all be what you've been picking up and law school will be a distant memory.

I'm a corporate sixth year. People who coast a long time in transactional work, and are not ripping their hair out to make partner or meeting their own personal high standards, are usually either doing things that (1) less commonly, offer enough creativity or novelty to keep them engaged and feeling mentally active or (2) more commonly, turn their brains on autopilot and churn deals that are largely cookie-cutter and are nearly always the same except for the parties, dollar amounts and the same 25 points that are always the subject of a slapfight, knowing that the partners will step in for anything truly new and are happy to fade into the background as long as the docs keep moving on the assembly line.

By then, the only skill you'll be using from law school is how to avoid the annoying people as much as possible.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a corporate sixth year. People who coast a long time in transactional work, and are not ripping their hair out to make partner or meeting their own personal high standards, are usually either doing things that (1) less commonly, offer enough creativity or novelty to keep them engaged and feeling mentally active or (2) more commonly, turn their brains on autopilot and churn deals that are largely cookie-cutter and are nearly always the same except for the parties, dollar amounts and the same 25 points that are always the subject of a slapfight, knowing that the partners will step in for anything truly new and are happy to fade into the background as long as the docs keep moving on the assembly line.

how would a senior associate do this?

[Anonymous User]

I'm a corporate sixth year. People who coast a long time in transactional work, and are not ripping their hair out to make partner or meeting their own personal high standards, are usually either doing things that (1) less commonly, offer enough creativity or novelty to keep them engaged and feeling mentally active or (2) more commonly, turn their brains on autopilot and churn deals that are largely cookie-cutter and are nearly always the same except for the parties, dollar amounts and the same 25 points that are always the subject of a slapfight, knowing that the partners will step in for anything truly new and are happy to fade into the background as long as the docs keep moving on the assembly line.

how would a senior associate do this?

I know a 9th year corporate associate in biglaw who just made counsel who created a little cottage pro bono practice for himself doing asylum cases. It really fulfills him and although he only spends a small percent of his time on it, it allows him to break up the monotony and keep going.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I'm a corporate sixth year. People who coast a long time in transactional work, and are not ripping their hair out to make partner or meeting their own personal high standards, are usually either doing things that (1) less commonly, offer enough creativity or novelty to keep them engaged and feeling mentally active or (2) more commonly, turn their brains on autopilot and churn deals that are largely cookie-cutter and are nearly always the same except for the parties, dollar amounts and the same 25 points that are always the subject of a slapfight, knowing that the partners will step in for anything truly new and are happy to fade into the background as long as the docs keep moving on the assembly line.

how would a senior associate do this?

It’s hard to define what it might be. Some people like working with certain types of industries, or with certain assets. Some people get a rush out of work that’s Big and Important and Journal Front Page.

In general, my experience is that working in areas that are more novel tend to be more mentally challenging (for better or worse), mainly because sometimes problems arise that have never been dealt with by anybody, compared with something like an SPA or PPM where every clause has long been litigated to death. A senior has probably been around long enough to know who is doing something new vs the same old shit. You may have already “made your bed” in the group to some degree, but getting involved with desired work and people always starts with just asking and giving a shit about it.

I have long preferred the autopilot work, as it takes longer to tire me out and they want 2000 from me either way. The only deal that I ever found structurally interesting was a construction client who bought credit default swaps on its project’s bonds (which I didn’t know was even legal, much less had an underwriter willing to do it) with language ever so slightly different than what caused a default on the project, and asked us to confirm they could do A, B, and C and then clean the fuck up. We expressed “reservations” but agreed to write some long memos anyway. Got pretty far in before an abrupt pencils down due to the SEC apparently going scorched earth on the client for something similar previously.