Downsides of leaving big-law for boutique litigation firm Forum

(On Campus Interviews, Summer Associate positions, Firm Reviews, Tips, ...)
Forum rules
Anonymous Posting

Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are revealing sensitive employment related information about a firm, job, etc. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.

Failure to follow these rules will get you outed, warned, or banned.
Anonymous User
Posts: 428301
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Downsides of leaving big-law for boutique litigation firm

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:07 pm

Hi all - I am at a junior litigation associate at a V10 and have a few interviews lined up at boutiques in the city. Obviously caveating this is very premature, I was curious what advantages people felt Big Law had over the elite boutiques. From my understanding, my pay would be the same (if not better) the work would be far more hands-on. To me, it seems like a win-win, but fear I'm missing something... maybe future job opportunities or job security? Anyway, interested in hearing the community's thoughts.

Anonymous User
Posts: 428301
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Downsides of leaving big-law for boutique litigation firm

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Apr 23, 2018 2:23 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Hi all - I am at a junior litigation associate at a V10 and have a few interviews lined up at boutiques in the city. Obviously caveating this is very premature, I was curious what advantages people felt Big Law had over the elite boutiques. From my understanding, my pay would be the same (if not better) the work would be far more hands-on. To me, it seems like a win-win, but fear I'm missing something... maybe future job opportunities or job security? Anyway, interested in hearing the community's thoughts.

I certainly wasn't at an elite litigation firm, but I was somewhere where there was no document review. I did get a lot of hands on work, although less than I would at an elite litigation firm. The one drawback was that I could never really cost. From my understanding of working lit at a V10 or place with a lot of doc review, you could sort of bill like 6 or 7 hours to that a day and then do like 3 or 4 hours of real legal work. Billing 8-10 hours a day with no documents review, where you aren't in depositions or otherwise doing something court facing/speaking, is really, really, draining. Everything required a lot of attention to detail, and I really couldn't just log on for a couple of hours at night and review some documents while watching TV. I don't know if this is helpful at all. But it was definitely a downside to my previous firm that was very leanly staffed.

Post Reply Post Anonymous Reply  

Return to “Legal Employment”