Top Law Schools

I’m a rising 4th year at a Chambers Band 1 commercial litigation firm in a secondary market. Although we have no name recognition outside our market, the firm’s small size has provided me early substantive experience, including a couple bench trials, a dozen depositions, and a couple oral arguments. I’ve worked on one, large bet-the-company case alongside V10 firms. All my other matters are much smaller and are typically in state court. I enjoyed the complexity of the bet-the-company case and want to lateral to an AmLaw100 firm that pays market (my firm doesn’t) and continue working on larger and more complex cases.

Although coming from a smaller firm and market, would I be a competitive lateral candidate in a major market? I did speak to a recruiter, who said I need to pick a market, get barred, then test the waters.

If it helps, I graduated at the top of the local school in my market, did law review, and have a federal district court clerkship.

Your resume should be sufficient to get meaningful looks, though unfortunately the quality of your law school will impact things (there would be a real difference between, e.g. Texas / Georgia / Arizona) and the reality is that there are a good number of people with more conventional backgrounds (peer firm laterals) who will also be in-market and will be more appealing on paper. If you had positive interactions with co-counsel, would recommend re-connecting with the people you worked with who liked you as the recruiting process will go much faster if 2-3 people at the shop say "we worked with this person, they were a real asset, we should get them on the team." At that point, with an offer or two in hand, it's a lot easier to hit the market. Would also check in with your judge and the clerk network to see if you have an in at some firms you're interested in. Depending on how your current firm feels about you, it's not crazy to me that your partners would call the firms you're looking at on your behalf. (Have seen this happen before, but more commonly when someone leaves a large jurisdiction for a smaller one for personal reasons.)

Separately, you'll need to be able to convince the firm you're moving to that you're likely to stay in whatever city you'd go to (this sort of background would make me wonder about flight risk) but wouldn't think you'd need to get barred there beforehand.