DOJ Honors or Latham DC? Forum

[ChicagoHeat99]

Offer in hand from the firm but very strong DOJ connections from summer spent at civil. T14; magna; secondary journal; strong recommendations

Money is some factor, but not saddled with a full load of debt thankfully.

What would be a better experience do you all think?
Would it be stupid to not take honors if given an offer?
And what would the exit opportunities look like if you went the DOJ route?

[Anonymous User]

Offer in hand from the firm but very strong DOJ connections from summer spent at civil. T14; magna; secondary journal; strong recommendations

Money is some factor, but not saddled with a full load of debt thankfully.

What would be a better experience do you all think?
Would it be stupid to not take honors if given an offer?
And what would the exit opportunities look like if you went the DOJ route?

Depends on what section of the civil division at DOJ. If you are going to litigate veterans benefits or immigration, then go to Latham obviously. If you are joining Fraud/National Courts/Civil Appellate/Federal Programs/Consumer Protection, then go with DOJ because the exit opportunities are vast and experience you'd get is superior to whatever you'll be doing at Latham (research memos and deposition summaries for partners for the first 3 years). People love to say that biglaw provides great training, but for litigation this is just flat out wrong.

[Anonymous User]

Bump

[ChicagoHeat99]

What would the exit opportunities coming from National Courts look like? Would I be pigeonholed or could I do more general litigation? And would a V10 firm ever want me back after such a stint?

And would that be a slam dunk take over Latham?

[Anonymous User]

What would the exit opportunities coming from National Courts look like? Would I be pigeonholed or could I do more general litigation? And would a V10 firm ever want me back after such a stint?

And would that be a slam dunk take over Latham?

Yes, you would be pigeonholed into govcon litigation (and whatever they do at the Court of International Trade, I have no idea). Govcon litigation is not that different from your general commercial litigation, however. The only v10 with strong govcon practice group is GDC. The rest of elite govcon practices are at the firms in v11-v70. So you could exit to those firms. The other exit option is in-house govcon counsel at Lockheed/Boeing/Raytheon or any other major government contractor.

If you want to first chair multimillion $ trials by year 4-5 against biglaw - National Courts would be a slam dunk take over Latham. If you are more concerned with keeping your options open and working at the most prestigious place - go to Latham.

[Anonymous User]

This is more a philosophical take than a practical one, probably, but I kind of don’t see the point of doing honors if your long term goal is biglaw. If your goal is to get government experience for the purpose of a private sector career, I think it makes more sense to start in big law, lateral into government at some point, and then come back. Starting in honors is tricky because if you stay long enough in DOJ to get a useful amount of experience, you’re a weird candidate for biglaw - not senior enough to go for partner, but senior enough that it can be hard to show you’d function well as a senior associate without previous firm experience (or connections).

You could stay in DOJ a good 10-15 years and then move into the private sector as a partner, of course, but that’s going to be contingent on what work you do, experience you get, connections, etc. It’s pretty hard to predict at this point where your work will take you.

It’s maybe worth mentioning that the unspoken intent of the honors program is to create lifer government attorneys. Obviously there’s nothing requiring that of you, at all, so I’m not saying there’s anything wrong (morally/practically) with going to honors and then to the private sector, and I’m sure other people have done that, just wanted to comment on the culture of it.

Also, this is my completely anecdotal take from going through honors and staying in government. If anyone has more concrete examples of how this worked from their own firms/experience making that transition, then you should probably weigh that more heavily. But thought I’d chime in.

Last thing about the National Courts question, main justice work tends to get pretty specialized. You will get great experience/full responsibility for stuff that you wouldn’t in a firm, so it’s great training in that respect. But you will probably be most marketable for jobs related to the subject matter of what you did, certainly the more senior you get.

(And that said, careers are long and take winding paths and people definitely move around in practice areas, so you’re not at all doomed to do only National Courts-adjacent work forever if you get placed there through honors. It’s more that where you are 10-15 years from now will probably depend on factors that you can’t remotely predict at this point.)

[Anonymous User]

This is more a philosophical take than a practical one, probably, but I kind of don’t see the point of doing honors if your long term goal is biglaw. If your goal is to get government experience for the purpose of a private sector career, I think it makes more sense to start in big law, lateral into government at some point, and then come back. Starting in honors is tricky because if you stay long enough in DOJ to get a useful amount of experience, you’re a weird candidate for biglaw - not senior enough to go for partner, but senior enough that it can be hard to show you’d function well as a senior associate without previous firm experience (or connections).

You could stay in DOJ a good 10-15 years and then move into the private sector as a partner, of course, but that’s going to be contingent on what work you do, experience you get, connections, etc. It’s pretty hard to predict at this point where your work will take you.

It’s maybe worth mentioning that the unspoken intent of the honors program is to create lifer government attorneys. Obviously there’s nothing requiring that of you, at all, so I’m not saying there’s anything wrong (morally/practically) with going to honors and then to the private sector, and I’m sure other people have done that, just wanted to comment on the culture of it.

Also, this is my completely anecdotal take from going through honors and staying in government. If anyone has more concrete examples of how this worked from their own firms/experience making that transition, then you should probably weigh that more heavily. But thought I’d chime in.

Last thing about the National Courts question, main justice work tends to get pretty specialized. You will get great experience/full responsibility for stuff that you wouldn’t in a firm, so it’s great training in that respect. But you will probably be most marketable for jobs related to the subject matter of what you did, certainly the more senior you get.

(And that said, careers are long and take winding paths and people definitely move around in practice areas, so you’re not at all doomed to do only National Courts-adjacent work forever if you get placed there through honors. It’s more that where you are 10-15 years from now will probably depend on factors that you can’t remotely predict at this point.)

I think this is a very reasonable take and correct IMO. I’ll add on my anecdote: As someone hired through Honors, I think a big part of it was that joining the federal government was my end goal. I never want to have to go to BigLaw if I can avoid it, and I was a lot more excited about doing public service in this capacity. I think for someone like OP who seems more interested in BigLaw partnership long term or chasing that as an exit opportunity, it makes more sense to start in BigLaw to build those connections.