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Hi everyone,

I am a 1st year associate at a L&E Specialty firm on the West Coast (Littler, Jackson Lewis, Ogletree, etc.). I had initially wanted to do Biglaw L&E, but unfortunately did not get any offers. This was the best option through OCI. I wanted to check if there's a typical timeframe I can expect to work before I can start attempting to lateral to a larger firm. Is there a possibility of doing a lateral move after two years? Or is more realistic to wait four to five years?

Not sure if this affects timeframe, but for information purposes I went to a T30, graduated top third, was on law review. Thanks for any help you can give!

I'm in the same boat as you, except I was a 2020 grad (so soon-to-be third year). I started my lateral search end of my first year (late 2021) and had a screener interview at Paul Hastings. This was probably due to the hiring frenzy at that time. I took a break from lateral searches as I was told by many recruiters that once you hit the 3rd year mark, you become way more marketable. I'm still technically at the end of my 2nd year and have seen some success with getting screener interviews. If any of these screeners work out, I'll definitely update.

TLDR; you can start as soon as the end of your first year but looks like third year might be the sweet spot.

If either of you is still looking, please send me a note. K&E and a few others are hiring pretty aggressively so I can put you in touch.