" I think as a 1L, all you can do is try to get into a top firm with people you like. Then you work your way into a top area. Am I wrong?"Anonymous User wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 11:06 amI agree that when you look at a Firm, you can tell what it's top area is. For example, Weil is known for restructuring. But that doesn't mean I want to go into restructuring. However, it does mean that if I got a job at Weil, I'd pursue restructuring. I think as a 1L, all you can do is try to get into a top firm with people you like. Then you work your way into a top area. Am I wrong?jotarokujo wrote: ↑Mon Apr 17, 2023 3:01 pmSince you don't know what you want to do, I'd go to a firm with rotations like milbank or cravath.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Mon Apr 17, 2023 10:11 am
I appreciate you leading with the acknowledgement of my disclaimer — I think this is really reasonable. One of the reasons I am turning to the multipliers is that I’m having a hard time “picking” an area — a lot of the advice (which I think is good) seems to be that you shouldn’t worry too much about a practice area too soon. So that’s why I look to multipliers since I’m genuinely interested in basically everything that big firms do so long as there is ample work to do in the area. I don’t mean to downplay that the firms have different strengths. For me it’s just that whatever a firm’s strengths, I’m fine going that route or at least reasonably believe I will be fine doing so based on knowledge of myself.
"you shouldn’t worry too much about a practice area too soon" is not very good advice. Firms have pretty acute areas of strength (which, btw are pretty obvious just by googling the firm and going to this forum and chambers, so I don't think it would take too much time to do this). Since people pick their firm quite early, 1L summer, it's good to know what practice area you want to do quite early. If you want litigation, you'd go for completely different firms than if you wanted to do m&a (or at least you should)
99% of the time, that order of operations is the opposite of correct. I think that path only makes sense if you literally have no substantive preferences between practice groups (even a preference that is yet to be revealed) which is not very common imo. It also doesn't make sense because if there isn't a substantive preference, why even go to law school if you can, accounting for opportunity cost, make more money elsewhere (unless you somehow enjoy "the law" in the abstract with no regard for practice area). If the real goal is to make your financial goals, then I would probably drop out of law school and go into finance or sales because you wouldn't have to pay tuition and wouldn't have 0 income for 2 years
Otherwise, you can absolutely afford to target the firms that are good at what you like, that's what most people did at my OCI. Your best way of figuring out what practice area you like is figuring out what you like in law school. Are there any classes you enjoy? I loved one of my 1L doctrinals and that totally changed my career trajectory. And if you love law school generally, you probably prefer litigation and if you hate law school, then probably you prefer transactional
Of course, it's possible to do that analysis and still not be sure at the moment. That's not to say you have no preferences, but it's just that the preferences will reveal themselves later. So if you still have no revealed preference going into OCI, again I recommend going to firms that are generally strong and also allow you to try multiple things like Cravath rather than looking at what has the highest bonus at 2400 hrs because the flexibility of being able to react when your preference becomes known is much more valuable