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Tips and Litigation Law Careers:

About this book

Litigation can be an exciting career. It certainly is a demanding one. America is the most litigious country in the world, with hundreds of lawsuits filed every few minutes. The American court system is complicated and very few people enter into a lawsuit without a lawyer by their side. The litigator's job is to navigate the legal system and interpret the relevant laws, to ensure the fair treatment of, and try to obtain the best result for, her client.Litigators shoulder enormous responsibility; at stake may be a large sum of money, a client's livelihood or freedom, and possibly even his life.

Read an excerpt from the Vault Guide to Litigation Law Careers

Litigation Career Paths

Those considering a career in litigation have a range of employment options before them. Litigators work in private practice and in the public sphere. They may specialize in a particular field of law or run a general litigation practice.They might concentrate on either appellate work or trial-level practice, handle civil litigation or criminal work. Government agencies, nonprofit organizations and law firms of all sizes are always in the market for good litigators.

Civil Litigation

Mid-sized and large firms

What constitutes a large firm varies from state to state and city to city. A firm of 20 people may be considered large in Monterey, California, while in New York it's considered pretty small. Really large, general practice firms have offices of hundreds of lawyers, with branches not only around the United States but also in Europe, Asia or South America. These large, multi-office firms have substantial marketing and hiring budgets and are the firms most likely to conduct on-campus interviews They also tend to have a higher profile than their smaller counterparts. Most well-known national rankings or surveys of law firms, like the Vault Guide to the Top 100 Law Firms and the "NLJ 250" published by The National Law Journal, focus on these big firms. Some large law firms have litigation specialties (patent law, for example), but most are "full-service" firms, offering a mix of transactional and litigation practice, with groups including corporate, intellectual property and real estate law. The structure in these firms is highly organized and extremely competitive. A first-year associate is usually assigned to the practice area of his choice and often has the opportunity to rotate into one of the other departments. The litigation associate usually is assigned to one or more cases, under the supervision of at least one senior associate and a partner. For the purposes of this section, a firm is mid-sized or large if it has at least 20 attorneys and usually more than one office. Although there are notable differences among mid-sized and large firms in terms of their practice, clients, location and firm ethos, there are certain characteristics many big firms have in common.

High pay
Big firms generally offer the best salaries and benefits packages to graduates right out of law school. The really large firms tend to be competitive with each other in many areas, including compensation, and salaries therefore tend to be very uniform among the largest firms. "I'm making more money than my father," says one associate at a large New York firm. "It's a weird feeling. And I already know what I'm going to be making next year, because it's all pretty much set in stone." The exception to this rule is the yearly bonus. While firms do keep a close eye on the bonuses paid by their competitors, these figures are not as rigidly set as salaries because bonuses usually reflect the financial success of each particular firm. One firm might offer huge bonuses, while another firm that pays its associates the same salaries but didn't have as profitable a year might offer little more than nominal bonuses. Large law firms in the same city pay almost identical salaries. The average starting salary in a large, general practice law firm in New York is currently $125,000 a year. This figure will probably be lower is smaller cities, perhaps $105,000 in Philadelphia or $100,000 in Atlanta.

Long hours
Attorneys at some big firms might manage to have quite an active social life, but big firms usually expect to get their money's worth from their associates, and few first-year attorneys will work only from 9 to 5. Associate attorneys at large law firms experience a great deal of pressure to work and bill as many hours as possible, and many firms require a certain minimum number of billable hours each year. Requirements at top firms might range from 1,800 to 2,200 hours. At first, a 2,200-hour billable requirement might seem reasonable -after all, that's about 42 hours a week, and isn't that little more than a 'normal'job? But bear in mind that billable hours means ONLY hours that can be billed to a client and therefore can't be anything other than legal work actually performed on a particular case. Lunch hours, casual conversations, organizational work, waiting for a partner to get back to you, training seminars, administrative tasks are not included. If you are very efficient, take no lunches and are rather lucky in the people you work with and the cases you are assigned, you might meet that 2,200 annual billable hour requirement by working from 9 to 7 every weekday and only five hours every Saturday. And that's not counting time lost on vacation and holidays! Most new lawyers won't be so lucky or so organized. Litigation cases can be very light and then get extraordinarily busy. The bigger firms have showers in the offices, late night car services, cafeterias and a drawer full of menus for ordering in. It is possible to work everyday , including weekends ,for several weeks. The simple truth is that the litigation workload in a big firm is nearly impossible to predict but will probably be much heavier than that at smaller firms. "Here's a tip, offers a junior associate in a large litigation firm. "If you're doing litigation in a relatively large firm, say, at least over 50 people, you're going to be working all the time. If I get out at seven, I'm lucky. Some firms like to say that they're more lifestyle-oriented, but I think they're mostly the same when it comes to billables."

High attrition and slim partnership prospects
Large firms tend to have very regimented hiring practices. A firm may hire 40 new first-year associates in a given year, yet promote only two seventh-years into partner position. What are the other 38 lawyers in the class expected to do? In all likelihood, they're no longer even there. The attrition rates at big firms is very high. Many mid-level lawyers , attorneys in their third, fourth and fifth years , go to smaller firms where they'll have a better chance of making partner or a better balance of family and work. Some lawyers leave for public service; others go to work as in-house counsel to a corporation. Those who do stick around in their original firm have a lot to prove, because merely being in a large firm for seven, eight or nine years is usually not enough to make you partner. "It's getting harder and harder to make partner," says one partner at a large litigation firm."We're making our decisions more carefully than we did during the boom years." You have to have a proven track record of working very hard, as well as positive results in many of your cases. Additionally, the other partners must recognize in you the potential to bring in new clients, since 'rainmaking'is one of the duties of a partner. Partnerships in major law firms are incredibly lucrative and considered rare prizes. And, because the current partners decide who will be promoted, the process can also be very political. "You need to get on the right sides of the right partners," says one senior associate. "They're the ones deciding whether you're going to make it." There are no guarantees early in your career of where you will end up, and sadly, hard work is just not enough. Because of this situation, many litigators treat their time at a large law firm as a relatively short-term opportunity to get a good name on their resume and favorable experience. Those seventh - or eighth - years who do not make partner occasionally become 'of counsel.' Some firms have other non-partnership track options, like 'senior attorney' or 'special counsel.'

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