One rainy Saturday, in my first year of law school, the Career Services Office had a big Career Day event. One of the presentations was by a lawyer who had recently gone solo after working first at a large firm and then at a mid-sized firm.
I’ll never forget it. The man laid out, in no uncertain terms, what life is like for a new associate. I still owe him thanks for that. He came across as an arrogant jerk. But one can forgive that if the jerk tells you important truths.
This is what I learned from the Man in the Grey Suit.
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These are dark days. While law schools and Biglaw continue business pretty much as usual, the good people at Law School Transparency continue to track how the lost generation of lawyers with no real job prospects grows every year.
Steven J. Harper, a Harvard Law grad and 30-year litigator at Kirkland & Ellis, has weighed in on the problems and suggested some solutions in The Lawyer Bubble. It’s the perfect book for a terrible time.
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Law firm hierarchies can be odd. I have a friend who works for a big law firm in St. Louis, and her office measures success based upon how many ceiling tiles your office counts. At a recent happy hour, I discovered another hierarchy of which I had previously been blissfully unaware—the email address ordering hierarchy.
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Happy New Year! It’s time for resolutions, predictions for 2013, and, for many firm attorneys, an annual review. I find the entire concept of a review stressful, and have been known to stay awake at night imagining terrible things people could say during a review. Over the years, however, I have assembled some coping tools which I humbly offer for your consideration.
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According to the ABA’s law school placement survey, “Nearly two-thirds of new grads who go into the private sector are going to small law firms rather than BigLaw, an analysis of ABA data shows.”
I’m not surprised, really. Big firms aren’t hiring, so new lawyers are left with few options. Not that going solo out of desperation is a particularly good idea. (Via Greedy Associates)
Guest post by Eric Christensen.
Many junior associates assume they could never land a whale of a big client for their firm, so they let this element of their practice slide, leaving rainmaking for the senior partners. Consequently, as these junior associates rise up in the firm, they are left scrambling to learn client development skills–on top of a rapidly growing workload. But a network is valuable only if it is in place before you need it. Build your network now, so you can rely on it later.
What many junior associates often overlook is that the future decision makers of a big client also start out low on the corporate ladder. By following this simple five-step plan, junior associates can start learning client development skills and building a network now. By forming relationships with peers at a variety of companies, junior associates can put themselves years ahead of their fellow associates and increase their long-term value to their firms.
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