Plaintiff's Side Mass Tort Litigation Firms Forum

[pamphleteer]

Forgive me if these are really stupid questions but how difficult is it to become an associate at an established, national plaintiff's side mass tort litigation/class action firm (Lieff, Cohen Milstein, Girard Gibbs, etc.)? Do they only hire laterals or do they come to some schools' OCIs and/or accept 2L SA applications? Do you need to have done a federal clerkship in order to be seriously considered? Is hiring more about grades, school prestige, showing demonstrated interest in class action litigation/general public interest work or all of the above? Are any of these positions LRAP eligible? Hoping to learn more about these firms and the search function on here didn't turn up much. Thanks.

[tomwatts]

Plaintiffs' firms typically hire like public-interest employers, not like big law firms. That is, they're not at OCI, generally, and while you can summer with them — and, unlike most PI internships, they'll even pay you — there's no expectation that they'll give you an offer at the end of the summer. To get an offer for a permanent job, assume that it's similar to any other (high-end) PI position: school prestige and grades matter a lot, clerkships and prestigious extracurriculars (e.g., law review) help, and demonstrated interest in public-interest litigation is pretty much a requirement most of the time. Some plaintiffs' firms will view you with some skepticism if you've worked on the other side (i.e., biglaw), while others will value that experience; I don't know how much this cuts each way. Networking helps, starting with professors and alumni networks, etc.

The positions may be LRAP-eligible depending on your school. I really only know HLS's LRAP (called "LIPP"), and junior associates at plaintiffs' firms are likely to be eligible if they have a lot of debt. You may or may not remain eligible all the way through being an associate, because you can make pretty good money as a senior associate at one of these firms, and you're definitely not eligible if you make partner.

(Also, all of the above can vary from firm to firm and from school to school.)

[twenty]

I don't feel comfortable/experienced enough to answer anything else, except:

Are any of these positions LRAP eligible?

Law firms are almost universally for-profit institutions. As such, associate positions at these firms are not LRAP eligible. The only real exceptions to this are Harvard and Yale's LRAPs.