Hueston Hennigan AMA Forum

[boutiqueassociate]

I was inspired by the Susman AMA, so I thought I'd start one for HH.

Go for it!

[Anonymous User]

Does HH have a similar clerkship requirement to Susman, or will HH consider applicants without clerkships?

How's compensation?

What's the average hours billed?

How does HH view lateral candidates from similar lit boutiques? Same as biglaw? Does HH consider more senior laterals (5+ years)?

How is working at HH different from being at Irell, if you are an associate who was formerly there?

Thanks for taking questions.

Switched to anon just in case.

[boutiqueassociate]

Does HH have a similar clerkship requirement to Susman, or will HH consider applicants without clerkships?

I wouldn't say we require clerkships per se, but we definitely place a premium on them. 99% of the applicants that we get are highly qualified Article III clerks, so relatively speaking it make the applicant pool much more competitive. That said, we would certainly consider someone without a clerkship, but they have to make up for the deficit in other areas.

How's compensation?

Fantastic. You will never leave this place because of compensation. Bonuses and fringe benefits (catered Wednesday lunches, comp'd Friday happy hours, 401k contribution, etc) are pretty sweet.

What's the average hours billed?

I don't know exact numbers. But to put it simply, this is not a lifestyle firm. You will easily work >2,000 hours. I don't know anyone that worked >3k hours. I guess average is 2200-2500.

How does HH view lateral candidates from similar lit boutiques? Same as biglaw? Does HH consider more senior laterals (5+ years)?

We place heavy emphasis on where a lateral is coming from, the circumstances surrounding their departure, etc. We are more likely to interview a lateral from a peer firm (Susman, MTO, WWE). Yes, we consider senior laterals but from my understanding we currently really want mid-levels. And on that topic, if someone wants to apply, feel free to private message me and I'll give you some tips.

How is working at HH different from being at Irell, if you are an associate who was formerly there?

Without divulging whether I previously worked at Irell, I can say that everyone who came from Irell to HH is very happy with their transition. There is a familial feeling at HH due to our size that makes the long hours bearble. The partners are also more accessible and approachable than at Irell. We frequently have Irell folks apply to HH.

That said, HH is not for everyone. But frankly, you get a great sense of our culture and environment when you interview because you interview with 10-12 associates throughout the day and get an office tour etc.

[Anonymous User]

Does HH have a similar clerkship requirement to Susman, or will HH consider applicants without clerkships?

I wouldn't say we require clerkships per se, but we definitely place a premium on them. 99% of the applicants that we get are highly qualified Article III clerks, so relatively speaking it make the applicant pool much more competitive. That said, we would certainly consider someone without a clerkship, but they have to make up for the deficit in other areas.

How does HH view lateral candidates from similar lit boutiques? Same as biglaw? Does HH consider more senior laterals (5+ years)?

We place heavy emphasis on where a lateral is coming from, the circumstances surrounding their departure, etc. We are more likely to interview a lateral from a peer firm (Susman, MTO, WWE). Yes, we consider senior laterals but from my understanding we currently really want mid-levels. And on that topic, if someone wants to apply, feel free to private message me and I'll give you some tips.

Same anon as above. I'm mainly asking because I'm currently working at an above-market lit boutique in NYC, which I am very happy with, but there's a real possibility that, for family reasons, I will be looking at a move to LA in a few years. I obtained my current job through the summer associate program, which is how I got it without a clerkship. I ended up choosing not to apply to clerk for a number of reasons (I finished 1L #1 at a T20, and graduated in the top 5%, so I think I had a decent shot at a d. ct. clerkship somewhere if I had the flexibility).

If, in the future, I do need to move to LA, I'd much rather continue working at a trial boutique than going to biglaw. If not HH due to a lack of a clerkship, are there other trial boutiques you'd recommend looking at in LA/So Cal?

[boutiqueassociate]

Does HH have a similar clerkship requirement to Susman, or will HH consider applicants without clerkships?

I wouldn't say we require clerkships per se, but we definitely place a premium on them. 99% of the applicants that we get are highly qualified Article III clerks, so relatively speaking it make the applicant pool much more competitive. That said, we would certainly consider someone without a clerkship, but they have to make up for the deficit in other areas.

How does HH view lateral candidates from similar lit boutiques? Same as biglaw? Does HH consider more senior laterals (5+ years)?

We place heavy emphasis on where a lateral is coming from, the circumstances surrounding their departure, etc. We are more likely to interview a lateral from a peer firm (Susman, MTO, WWE). Yes, we consider senior laterals but from my understanding we currently really want mid-levels. And on that topic, if someone wants to apply, feel free to private message me and I'll give you some tips.

Same anon as above. I'm mainly asking because I'm currently working at an above-market lit boutique in NYC, which I am very happy with, but there's a real possibility that, for family reasons, I will be looking at a move to LA in a few years. I obtained my current job through the summer associate program, which is how I got it without a clerkship. I ended up choosing not to apply to clerk for a number of reasons (I finished 1L #1 at a T20, and graduated in the top 5%, so I think I had a decent shot at a d. ct. clerkship somewhere if I had the flexibility).

If, in the future, I do need to move to LA, I'd much rather continue working at a trial boutique than going to biglaw. If not HH due to a lack of a clerkship, are there other trial boutiques you'd recommend looking at in LA/So Cal?

Sorry! I completely missed your post.

Why don't you send me a PM and we can discuss more. I think at your year, which trial boutique you apply to will depend on your experience.

[Anonymous User]

Would someone need to be order of coif at UCLA to be considered? I likely right outside the cutoff, but have been very interested in HH. I am currently applying for fed clerkships, and have had several interviews, but I am thinking ahead, as I would love to return to LA eventually.

[boutiqueassociate]

Would someone need to be order of coif at UCLA to be considered? I likely right outside the cutoff, but have been very interested in HH. I am currently applying for fed clerkships, and have had several interviews, but I am thinking ahead, as I would love to return to LA eventually.

Order of the coif is not mandatory, but it would help. Other factors (fed clerkships, law review EIC, otherwise great grades etc) would also help.

[LBJ's Hair]

Would someone need to be order of coif at UCLA to be considered? I likely right outside the cutoff, but have been very interested in HH. I am currently applying for fed clerkships, and have had several interviews, but I am thinking ahead, as I would love to return to LA eventually.

Order of the coif is not mandatory, but it would help. Other factors (fed clerkships, law review EIC, otherwise great grades etc) would also help.

Lol @ "law review EIC." What, normal law review AdBoard isn't good enough for HH?

did a search on the firm's website and can't find a single lawyer at the firm who was the EIC of the primary journal at her school, and only three EICs of (not notable) secondary journals.

which is fine, like who cares, most legal scholarship is nonsense anyway. but no need to cultivate this aura of ~exclusivity~. this is HH, not the Supreme Court lmao

[leavingfirm]

How long have you worked there

[boutiqueassociate]

Would someone need to be order of coif at UCLA to be considered? I likely right outside the cutoff, but have been very interested in HH. I am currently applying for fed clerkships, and have had several interviews, but I am thinking ahead, as I would love to return to LA eventually.

Order of the coif is not mandatory, but it would help. Other factors (fed clerkships, law review EIC, otherwise great grades etc) would also help.

Lol @ "law review EIC." Where do you guys come up with this stuff, I did a site search and can't find a single lawyer at your firm who was the EIC of a primary journal

I'm not sure what that proves. I didn't say EIC position is a prerequisite to working at HH. Nor did I say that being an EIC would guarantee you an offer. I said being an EIC is one of several factors that would mitigate less than stellar grades.

[LBJ's Hair]

Would someone need to be order of coif at UCLA to be considered? I likely right outside the cutoff, but have been very interested in HH. I am currently applying for fed clerkships, and have had several interviews, but I am thinking ahead, as I would love to return to LA eventually.

Order of the coif is not mandatory, but it would help. Other factors (fed clerkships, law review EIC, otherwise great grades etc) would also help.

Lol @ "law review EIC." Where do you guys come up with this stuff, I did a site search and can't find a single lawyer at your firm who was the EIC of a primary journal

I'm not sure what that proves. I didn't say EIC position is a prerequisite to working at HH. Nor did I say that being an EIC would guarantee you an offer. I said being an EIC is one of several factors that would mitigate less than stellar grades.

is law review membership alone insufficient lol, because that seems like (a) what you're implying, and (b) is not borne out in the hiring practices. maybe you didn't mean anything by it, but it's an irritating qualifier

[boutiqueassociate]

Would someone need to be order of coif at UCLA to be considered? I likely right outside the cutoff, but have been very interested in HH. I am currently applying for fed clerkships, and have had several interviews, but I am thinking ahead, as I would love to return to LA eventually.

Order of the coif is not mandatory, but it would help. Other factors (fed clerkships, law review EIC, otherwise great grades etc) would also help.

Lol @ "law review EIC." Where do you guys come up with this stuff, I did a site search and can't find a single lawyer at your firm who was the EIC of a primary journal

I'm not sure what that proves. I didn't say EIC position is a prerequisite to working at HH. Nor did I say that being an EIC would guarantee you an offer. I said being an EIC is one of several factors that would mitigate less than stellar grades.

is law review membership alone insufficient lol

If you don't have good grades? Yeah, likely it's insufficient. But isolating one factor and saying whether or not it's sufficient is silly. Like any other firm, HH takes a holistic look at a candidate. Law review membership can be sufficient if the candidate is otherwise strong. There's not one qualification that will trigger an offer. Not sure what else to say about that.

[beepboopbeep]

yea i don't really get your bone-picking here LBJ. like of course EIC is a sparklier gold star than normal law review member.

[Joachim2017]

Is the final compensation amount (base+bonus) based on hours, lockstep, or revenue generated? Some combination? I'm assuming it's not quite as high as WLRK or Susman, but maybe around the same as BSF? Am I in the right ballpark?

[Anonymous User]

Is the final compensation amount (base+bonus) based on hours, lockstep, or revenue generated? Some combination? I'm assuming it's not quite as high as WLRK or Susman, but maybe around the same as BSF? Am I in the right ballpark?

Piggybacking off this question. How does compensation compare to other smaller boutiques such as Bird Marella, Miller Barondess, Greenberg Gross, etc? I know some of these firms typically don't hire out of law school.

[boutiqueassociate]

Is the final compensation amount (base+bonus) based on hours, lockstep, or revenue generated? Some combination? I'm assuming it's not quite as high as WLRK or Susman, but maybe around the same as BSF? Am I in the right ballpark?

Piggybacking off this question. How does compensation compare to other smaller boutiques such as Bird Marella, Miller Barondess, Greenberg Gross, etc? I know some of these firms typically don't hire out of law school.

Final compensation is generally based on a combination of lockestep, hours, contributions to the firm, and financial health of the firm. So you get:

-Market base
-Mid-summer bonus (fixed amount depending on firm health)
-Year-end bonus (30%-50% depending on hours billed and contributions to firm; most people get 30%, some get 40%, few get 50%. But the firm will always make sure your bonus is higher than market.)
-Fringe benefits (Tech budget, summer event budget, 401k contribution,etc).

I'm not sure how other small boutiques compare because I don't know their compensation structure.

[LBJ's Hair]

yea i don't really get your bone-picking here LBJ. like of course EIC is a sparklier gold star than normal law review member.

Totally, that's why it's so silly to name EIC specifically as a "plus" factor and not "law review membership." Unless you're trying to imply that "law review membership" generically is not a plus because it's so common in your applicant pool, and thus convey a sense of particular exclusivity.

(Which if it is, fair, but that does not seem to be the case at HH.)

[beepboopbeep]

I think it's probably right to be skeptical to claims of crazy exclusivity even at a place of HH's level of selectivity, which I take to be quite high (meaning: comparable to MTO/Irell/Susman/etc in SoCal, if not quite the selectivity crapshoot of really small selective boutiques like Dovel & Luner or specialty boutiques like Horvitz & Levy). But it also would not surprise me if basically every serious applicant is a LR member or has some equivalent gold star sticker (e.g. federal coa clerk) such that someone with lower grades than the typical competitive candidate would need an even sparklier sticker to have a serious shot, which could be EIC or could be something else. I also have no idea whether you can get all this off the website; I don't think my law firm bio listed law review membership, though could be misremembering, and either way it certainly did not list my (non-EIC) e-board position.

(On a related note, but one that's a bit off-topic itt: I have always found it silly that the distinction is always EIC vs normal member rather than some sort of gradation depending on what you did on e-board. There were probably 5-7 e-board positions on my law review that were much harder to get and required much more work than the rest, and getting e-board itself was not at all a guarantee even for people who took normal 2L staffer positions relatively seriously. But firms / judges / etc do not seem to take that all into account for whatever reason.)

[LBJ's Hair]

I think it's probably right to be skeptical to claims of crazy exclusivity even at a place of HH's level of selectivity, which I take to be quite high (meaning: comparable to MTO/Irell/Susman/etc in SoCal, if not quite the selectivity crapshoot of really small selective boutiques like Dovel & Luner or specialty boutiques like Horvitz & Levy). But it also would not surprise me if basically every serious applicant is a LR member or has some equivalent gold star sticker (e.g. federal coa clerk) such that someone with lower grades than the typical competitive candidate would need an even sparklier sticker to have a serious shot, which could be EIC or could be something else. I also have no idea whether you can get all this off the website; I don't think my law firm bio listed law review membership, though could be misremembering, and either way it certainly did not list my (non-EIC) e-board position.

(On a related note, but one that's a bit off-topic itt: I have always found it silly that the distinction is always EIC vs normal member rather than some sort of gradation depending on what you did on e-board. There were probably 5-7 e-board positions on my law review that were much harder to get and required much more work than the rest, and getting e-board itself was not at all a guarantee even for people who took normal 2L staffer positions relatively seriously. But firms / judges / etc do not seem to take that all into account for whatever reason.)

Yeah sure, not casting aspersions on the firm. Just OP's framing of it lol

To your second point -- I agree that EIC, and frankly Law Review membership generally, is increasingly a sort of useless distinction. It's totally politicized. But when the boomer partners were in school, membership was solely grades + writing/bluebooking, so I guess as long as they have a say in hiring it sorta matters.

[boutiqueassociate]

I think it's probably right to be skeptical to claims of crazy exclusivity even at a place of HH's level of selectivity, which I take to be quite high (meaning: comparable to MTO/Irell/Susman/etc in SoCal, if not quite the selectivity crapshoot of really small selective boutiques like Dovel & Luner or specialty boutiques like Horvitz & Levy). But it also would not surprise me if basically every serious applicant is a LR member or has some equivalent gold star sticker (e.g. federal coa clerk) such that someone with lower grades than the typical competitive candidate would need an even sparklier sticker to have a serious shot, which could be EIC or could be something else. I also have no idea whether you can get all this off the website; I don't think my law firm bio listed law review membership, though could be misremembering, and either way it certainly did not list my (non-EIC) e-board position.

(On a related note, but one that's a bit off-topic itt: I have always found it silly that the distinction is always EIC vs normal member rather than some sort of gradation depending on what you did on e-board. There were probably 5-7 e-board positions on my law review that were much harder to get and required much more work than the rest, and getting e-board itself was not at all a guarantee even for people who took normal 2L staffer positions relatively seriously. But firms / judges / etc do not seem to take that all into account for whatever reason.)

Yeah sure, not casting aspersions on the firm. Just OP's framing of it lol

To your second point -- I agree that EIC, and frankly Law Review membership generally, is increasingly a sort of useless distinction. It's totally politicized. But when the boomer partners were in school, membership was solely grades + writing/bluebooking, so I guess as long as they have a say in hiring it sorta matters.

Lol my framing of it? Literally all I said was if you don't have order of the coif, other factors like fed clerkship or EIC would help. How is this a controversial statement? Of course we will value EIC over a normal member. Just like we value a fed clerkship over a trial court clerkship.

Normal grades + normal law review membership = baseline of everyone who applies to HH. I don't know why you're hyper-analyzing this.

And sure, other executive positions would similarly help. But EIC is the one constant at every law school that's why I mentioned it and not other positions. Also, an executive position on law review at one school may not be as prestigious as an executive position at another.

[Anonymous User]

Is LR typically a prereq? Or would good grades and secondary journal EIC still be considered?

[boutiqueassociate]

Is LR typically a prereq? Or would good grades and secondary journal EIC still be considered?

There's no prereq for applying. LR is better than no LR like EIC is better than regular LR member. But neither is mandatory and would capitulate to someone with 2 fed clerkships and high grades. If you graduated summa/magna from a top school, that would also make up for lack of other factors, like LR.

It's hard to give a general answer because we don't hire that many people and we get diverse candidates with all sorts of unique resumes. In general, LR membership alone does not hold much weight in terms of giving someone a call back.

[anonbanker]

I think it's probably right to be skeptical to claims of crazy exclusivity even at a place of HH's level of selectivity, which I take to be quite high (meaning: comparable to MTO/Irell/Susman/etc in SoCal, if not quite the selectivity crapshoot of really small selective boutiques like Dovel & Luner or specialty boutiques like Horvitz & Levy). But it also would not surprise me if basically every serious applicant is a LR member or has some equivalent gold star sticker (e.g. federal coa clerk) such that someone with lower grades than the typical competitive candidate would need an even sparklier sticker to have a serious shot, which could be EIC or could be something else. I also have no idea whether you can get all this off the website; I don't think my law firm bio listed law review membership, though could be misremembering, and either way it certainly did not list my (non-EIC) e-board position.

(On a related note, but one that's a bit off-topic itt: I have always found it silly that the distinction is always EIC vs normal member rather than some sort of gradation depending on what you did on e-board. There were probably 5-7 e-board positions on my law review that were much harder to get and required much more work than the rest, and getting e-board itself was not at all a guarantee even for people who took normal 2L staffer positions relatively seriously. But firms / judges / etc do not seem to take that all into account for whatever reason.)

Yeah sure, not casting aspersions on the firm. Just OP's framing of it lol

To your second point -- I agree that EIC, and frankly Law Review membership generally, is increasingly a sort of useless distinction. It's totally politicized. But when the boomer partners were in school, membership was solely grades + writing/bluebooking, so I guess as long as they have a say in hiring it sorta matters.

Just stop. Please.

No need to keep shitting up this thread with your inanity

[LBJ's Hair]

Just stop. Please.

No need to keep shitting up this thread with your inanity

you're right, I derailed the thread. maybe you can give everyone the investment banker's perspective on HH, that'd be super intersting

[Anonymous User]

How flexible is hh with working outside of the office (pre covid)? Do associates head home and log back on later on? Think the hours are manageable while having a spouse/family? Not sure if there are LA/OC differences here.