is biglaw that bad? Forum

[Aldo_Raine]

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[dabigchina]

If investment banking is a realistic outcome for you, I would go do that for a couple of years and see if you like it. Investment banking is a great soft for law school and law firm recruitment. Heck, you might find that you like it enough that you want to skip law school altogether.

[TFALAWL]

IMHO it depends on whether you consider biglaw as a stepping stone or a career. For the latter, yeah biglaw would be pretty rough for most -- a lot of partners aren't actually happy (that's assuming you get that far).

As far as being a stepping stone, I've personally adopted the attitude that the pain is only temporary and as a result, I've had a pretty good experience. It can be very stressful. There are also down times. If you do it solely for the money, though, you will be miserable.

[Npret]

Currently in undergrad considering my options after graduation. Been thinking about law school for quite some time now. I have yet to take the LSAT, but I have the gpa to get into a T14 (obviously I will have a better idea after I take the test). If I were to go to law school, my goal would be biglaw, probably something finance related (M&A, cap markets, etc.). My major is Finance and if I chose not to go to law school a career in investment banking or something similar is a path I would likely follow. I have a general idea of what corporate lawyers do and in all honesty it doesn't sound all that bad. But I constantly hear horror stories of how miserable people are in biglaw. How will I have any idea if biglaw is something I would enjoy before taking the leap and paying for law school?

1. Do you need sleep to function well?
2. Are you extremely well organized?
3. Are you meticulous in your work, no typos, grammar, keeping track of change to documents, etc?
4. Can you handle tight deadline pressure? Can you work quickly but flawlessly?
5. Can you cope with being available 24/7? Checking your phone and email regularly in the evening and weekends?
6. Do you mind cancelling plans frequently at the last minute for work?
7. Can you work well at home?
8. Do you like turning around documents overnight after an all day meeting?
9. Do you have good mental health and systems for maintaining it?
10. Are you a workaholic who gets their identity from work?
11. Are you self satisfied with seeing mega deals you made a closing checklist for in the news?
12. Do you need or expect much training for the job?
13. Will you cope with partners and associates getting frustrated with you because you don't know what you are doing even though no one explained it to you?


Just some thoughts off the top of my head.
I would do investment banking first. It's easier to switch to law than to go to investment banking from biglaw.

I'm sure others have better ideas.
There are hundreds of threads discussing this question. You could spend an entire day searching for them and reading them. Here one called"so you want to be a NY corporate associate"

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 4&t=261392

Also note that despite numbers and assumptions on this forum, no one is guaranteed biglaw. You don't even have an LSAT score yet. You don't know what schools you will get into and how you will fair against the mandatory curve.