<p>This is down-right false. This statement may hold true for V10 NYC Biglaw, but especially for second-market Biglaw/ Midlaw, the risk of getting screwed over with no offer regardless of your individual performance is much greater than top NYC / DC Biglaw.</p>
<p>The general sentiment at my law school regarding this issues seems to be that the higher the Vault ranking of your firm and the larger the legal market in which your firm is located in, the less the risk of no-offer on individual basis, all-else equal.</p>
<p>One of my classmates got no-offered from LA Biglaw despite his claim that he didn’t screw up anything of significance. Top 25% of class, top 6 law school. Although, obviously I can’t verify his claims since we didn’t work at the same firm this summer.</p>
<p>1) Deal flow/ client list/ reputation of the firm in the line of law I was interested in:</p>
<p>The reasoning here is that since I am interested in getting exposure to M&A and deal-driven business and how law applies to that niche practice, I paid close attention to how much exposure I would get in that area of law for firm X vs Y.</p>
<p>My eventual career goal is to end up either as an in-house counsel at an investment bank (as a M&A lawyer) or switch over to Investment Banking within restructuring practice. Hence, I paid close attention to the Vault ranking - as that is a heavy implication of a law firm’s strength and the depth of the client lists within the M&A space.</p>
<p>2) Vault ranking:</p>
<p>As I addressed earlier in my above post, the higher the Vault ranking of a law firm, the less the risk of getting screwed over with a no-offer after summer internship. At my firm, out of dozens of summer associates, I can think of only one person who got no-offered. And I suspect this happened because this person made a couple of big mistakes during the firm’s happy hour. (I was there and I witnessed a couple of partners appearing to look mad at this individual’s behavior at the happy hour)</p>
<p>In contrast, although anecdotal evidence, I hear from my classmates who summered at lower-ranked firms that no-offer rate was significantly higher compared to my firm.</p>
<p>Lastly, it is my opinion that the importance on the ‘fit’ or ‘culture’ thing is blown way out of proportion when it comes to major market Biglaw. At each NYC Biglaw shop, there are hundreds of attorneys. There are bound to be people you may like or dislike working with, regardless of which firm you end up at. The key thing is being able to tolerate working with wide range of personalities, otherwise you won’t ever become successful in your professional career.</p>
<p>S is not interested in NYC. DC offices looked much more homogenous. As to Vault, if the firms are in the same range, one has to look beyond that.</p>
<p>NYULawyer, your friend would never be told why he was no offered and I would be very curious as to how many people in his firm were no offered. And as someone who has been in hiring at BigLaw (not medium law) for almost 30 years, I can tell you that if he can’t come up with a single thing that he did wrong, then may very well be oblivious and that could be why. A few years ago my firm at the time no offered one person. He was no offered because he was an oblivious jerk who annoyed everyone he came in contact with. Of course, he had no idea because he was oblivious.</p>
<p>When I refer to fit, I’m not just referencing intangibles relating to culture. There is generally not one “culture” at a firm. It can vary from department to department. However, you are able to discern if the people in charge treat the people who are not in charge with respect. I don’t mean that the partners need to be your friends. You can tell if mentoring is a priority at the firm or if the associates all find themselves in a “sink or swim” environment. </p>
<p>I talk to associates every day who want to leave their firms. The reasons for leaving very rarely have to do with the type of work they’re doing. It almost always has to do with the way they “feel” at work everyday. Their colleagues would never know this. Many did not have choices among firms. The ones who did almost always ignored warning signs when they made their choice. When associates do complain about their work, it is often because they went into the firm believing, and very often being told, that they would get one type of work, but never did. Quite often, it is through a lateral move that the practice area is fine tuned.</p>
<p>Every year it is decided of each associate whether he or she has a future. Every one of them must have someone affirmatively in his or her corner. Those who don’t are usually the first to go because everyone else does. This jockeying goes on every year, as do the client introductions that are so critically important. One needs to view partners as chairs in a game of musical chairs. If you don’t have one, you are out. And the politics goes on across years. Like “I gave you Jane this year, but you need to remember Joe in two years.”</p>
<p>Corporate law at the senior level is a sales job. If you can’t sell work and bring in clients, you won’t make partner. At the senior level, being an attorney at a law firm is all about having good schmoozing skills and salesmanship. </p>
<p>Same holds true for virtually any professional services firm, including Investment Banking, Consulting, and even Accounting firms. People who are just smart and hard working but who lack sales acumen won’t make it to the top level in any of these fields.</p>
<p>Even if you don’t make partner at a firm, if you know how to sell and have a rolodex of clients with you, many smaller firms will happily take you as a senior counsel or junior parter. Being pushed out of Biglaw doesn’t mean that one’s legal career is over. It largely depends on the individual’s networking and sales skills at that point.</p>
<p>This is the reason why I try to discourage certain people who are not cut out for a law firm career from going to law school. If you are introverted, feel uncomfortable with a wide range of social situations, aren’t willing to learn how politics are played in a corporate setting, or don’t have proper networking skills, law may not be the career for you.</p>
<p>Maybe I am being naive, but how it ‘feels’ at a Biglaw shop won’t differ much from a firm to a firm. The reason being, many Biglaw partners hop around different firms over time, and many Biglaw shops have similar clients and do similar work. </p>
<p>There are both nice and rude people everywhere. Not just Biglaw. Even in high school, I had my favorite teachers while some other teachers were pure evil and I absolutely loathed going to those classes. The key, again, is to develop a high tolerance for taking crap and build a thick skin. Being flexible enough to tolerate working with a wide range of personalities and not make any enemies, as the partner at my firm told me, was the key to his successful career.</p>
<p>I know only what my S told me. He went to 7 callbacks, came out of 6 of them perfectly happy and 1 just rubbed him the wrong way. He wanted to like it, but just couldn’t. The more he thought of it, the less he wanted to spend next few years of his life grinding his teeth for the sake of opportunities which may or may not be unique to this firm.
He haven’t made up his mind yet, but it looks like that one firm is a definite no( he has to release one offer right away).
And it’s not like he will be choosing between a really wide range of rankings, all his choices are in the same neighborhood on the Vault ladder.</p>
Respectfully, you either naive or you aren’t understanding what Cartera and I are saying. The market is even tougher for smaller firms because they don’t have the lines of credit or the capital reserves. Some people who are smart and plan all along will get another job. A good job wherer they will be happy and successful. People who don’t plan very carefully often will not. And unfortunately, in this market, some of the people who plan carefully and do everything right will find themselves with no options other than to hang out a shingle and pray. It doesn’t always work out and there are no firms, none, who are happy to take any lateral in this economy. They certainly do it because it makes business sense, but after the implosion, no lateral moves are made on either side without significant anxiety. There are more people than we would like to think who are graduates of good law schools who have appropriate experience and evaluations who find themselves in their early 30s at a point where they may not be able to make a living as a lawyer anymore. As far as having a rolodex of business, (a) the book of business that will let you kill enough to eat like a senior associate is very hard to come by by year seven, and (b) is a very fickle mistress.</p>
<p>I’m not talking about someone being nice or rude. Attorneys, and everyone else in the business world, need to know how to get along with rude people. They need to let lots of things roll off their backs. That’s small potatoes. I’m talking about “feeling” that no one cares whether you meet with any success at the firm or not. Maybe it’s best described as Zoosermom did with regard to “having someone in your corner.” That feeling can differ greatly from firm to firm. For example, some partners are quite protective of their associates’ time. Assignments are not given directly to associates but must be cleared by a partner, who is ideally acting as a mentor. That can help significantly with time management, a struggle for many young associates. Now, some partners protect their associates to their detriment and don’t allow the associates to do interesting work with other partners, even if they have time. That is not good mentoring. Some partners offer no guidance at all to their associates regarding taking assignments and the associate’s time is subject to a free for all. Saying no to a project is very difficult but taking on more than can possibly be done can be worse. Granted, these things are difficult to judge as a summer associate but knowing what to look for helps.</p>
<p>Although those things are certainly desirable, they are by no means what being a senior level attorney is all about. Your expertise and the quality of your work is going to be number one.</p>
<p>The thing about having a book of business is that the good long-term clients don’t exist in a vaccuum…Whether you are schmoozing people at charity events or your kids’ school or on vacation, you aren’t the only lawyer they know or come in contact with unless they live in Wyoming and just won the lottery…and probably not even then. Institutions all have preexisiting relationships. And even if you are hooked-up due to family/strong school ties, all THOSE people likely have relatives in law too.</p>
<p>This is why one’s networking skills / efforts are so important in one’s career. There are tons of ex-Biglaw attorneys who parlayed their corporate law experiences to switch over to other lucrative areas and became hugely successful. Or, they founded multi billion dollar PE fund, based on their track record, network, and intellect. Check out Goldman Sachs’ CEO or KKR’s founder. These guys were all lawyers who started out in Biglaw and switched over to high finance after like 2-3 years in Biglaw.</p>
<p>After your first job out of school, how stuff pans out is entirely up to you. Yeah sure, there are ex-Biglaw people who end up getting screwed over. But, that is not just exclusive to lawyers. I know a couple of traders at top prop shops who were making 400k a year at age 25 who got fired and haven’t had much other good job opportunity materialize in the past year they’ve been looking, so they are looking to go get an MBA to get smoother transition to other careers.</p>
<p>So, when you choose your first job out of school, you choose the job based on the experience, skills, networks, and potential exit options it provides. The rest is all how an individual takes advantage of these given opportunities.</p>
<p>They said all the obvious things IMO. Pick the highest ranked firm where you feel the mosh comfortable. Duh.
S narrowed his list down to 2 finalists, almost identical. It’s almost over!</p>
<p>I’ll just point out that for all the marketing and talk about work/life balance and reasonable billable hour requirements at one firm or another (particularly when that is a selling point for a particular firm), that all goes out the window when a client calls and needs something ASAP or a matter is time sensitive or a trial is ongoing. You will do the work you have to do to satisfy your clients regardless of the day, date, time, hour or your previous plans for that evening or weekend. Count on it.</p>
<p>So how do you all feel about a London firm vs. a NY firm? Are there any pro’s and con’s to starting in London? Will it limit the connections for the future?</p>
<p>I don’t have strong advice on this…maybe others do…Where is she planning on practicing? Each state has convoluted procedural rules and as for NY even the court structure (eg what is the supreme court)…might be nice to stay in NY unless she is thinking out of the country long-term.</p>