Got any leads on how to be a good lawyer? Put them here.

Boutique Firms

- I think boutique firms might be the way to go. I spoke with an associate at a boutique firm the other day who much preferred his current situation to his previous employment at a big firm. He said that there was a palpable culture of fear in his previous office; the lawyers lived at the mercy of their clients and everyone was sort of afraid to move for fear of angering them. In contrast, he his current firm was one which encouraged him to take responsibility for his cases, and he said he was doing things now that he would have been made to feel was beyond him at the big firm because the firm didn't want the clients getting mad at them for giving work to an associate.

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Michael, I think providing practical opportunities is a great idea for a thread. However, our examples are predicated on a definition of good lawyering that may not be agreed upon. For instance, the boutique firm surely promotes less fear than at a big firm. But is a good atmosphere necessary to being a good lawyer? If the big firm's clients are parties with justice consistently on their side, does the culture of fear make that work any less "good"?

I do think that working without a fear of clients correlates with having (or being able to choose) worthy clients. Still, I believe being a "good lawyer" is slightly different. A proper atmosphere certainly facilitates a happier lifestyle. But this might be a different goal. (This thread discusses the distinction between a "meaningful" and "happy" life, analogous to my distinction of being a "good lawyer" and working in a "positive atmosphere.")

-- KeithEdelman - 25 Feb 2009

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I would say that a culture of fear makes the work less good. Because what are the lawyers afraid of? Lack of promotion? Lack of job security? Being yelled at by the boss, or the client? If you have a lawyer who's primarily focused on avoiding that, I think s/he'd do a bad job. I would want a lawyer who isn't too scared to exercise independent judgment, if I needed a lawyer. I appreciate the distinction between "good lawyer" and "positive atmosphere," but I would guess there's a correlation.

Something else we might want to consider is the ability to choose your clients, which people are discussing in the "Is Being a Corporate Lawyer Immoral?" thread. Robinson prides himself on choosing his clients. How important is that? Is there any organization you can really trust to choose your clients for you, and be willing to surrender your autonomy to? Is a boutique law firm more trustworthy than a big one? (Maybe. I don't know.)

-- AnjaliBhat - 26 Feb 2009

M&A

- M&A doesn't seem particularly stimulating. I recently spoke with a former associate in M&A who said that it was just drudge work. She said that any enjoyment to be derived from it came purely from the mystique of being part of a big deal, which didn't do it for her and I don't think would do it for me. My suspicions grew when I went to a talk by the head of Cravath's Environmental practice last week. I really liked the guy because he was very animated and obviously cared about his work, but when he described the actual work that he does it didn't sound like much more than giving the green light (no pun intended) to clients' big deals.

Pro Bono and biglaw

- If I was going to work for a big firm right now, I'd probably want it to be Simpson Thacher. In ThoughtsOnCommunity, Gavin suggested that big firms can be their own community. If this is the case, I think it probably looks like this. What a creative program! Also, they are helping to pay for my spring break trip to do legal work down in New Orleans, so I'm grateful for that. What do you guys think about this, though—is sponsoring a service trip for law students just a ruse, or the sign of a legitimate commitment to pro bono?

-- MichaelDreibelbis - 24 Feb 2009

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I think pro bono is just a safety valve for biglaw so the associated don't feel that their whole law school studying is a total waste.

-- XinpingZhu - 24 Feb 2009

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If a corporation (or LLP) is a person, and people are rational actors, and rational actors won't do a "deal" unless they believe they are getting a "bargain", then Simpson Thatcher must believe that enough law students will believe that they have a legitimate commitment to pro bono to enhance their recruiting ability and pay for itself in the long run.

Of course, if you don't believe that an LLP is a person, I still think this holds true.

-- WalkerNewell - 24 Feb 2009

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Thanks for organizing this thread, Michael. I think it is useful in allowing us to formulate concrete ideas concerning what we can all do with our degrees upon graduation.

The Simpson Thacher approach seems like a genuine commitment to community development and pro bono work, but I guess what's troubling we can never really know for sure. While it may just be a recruiting tool that survived a cost-benefit analysis, I would suggest that it is a good one at that. The firm, just as easily, could have spent its money on another reception with free food and drink.

I'm wondering what you all think about the firms that designate associates to do pro bono work or that, alternatively speaking, bill the pro bono work of a general associate in the same way it would be billed for a paying client? I went to a panel the other day where a woman from a top New York firm (designated a 'Pro Bono' Associate) mentioned that the economic downturn and subsequent lack of work has caused a lot of firms to push their associates to keep busy by doing pro bono work. I'm sure we would all prefer that the firms were pushed to this level on their own, but in the case where they treat the work of the needy in the same energized and precise manner as they treat the work of the corporate client, are they doing enough?

-- UchechiAmadi - 25 Feb 2009

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I agree with Walker. Law firms support programs like the spring break service trip because it makes their firm more visible. Similar to the reasoning behind the numerous invites we receive to fancy firm luncheons, dinners, and cocktail events, the firms’ incentive is simply to persuade us to select their firm over their competitors. Whether they genuinely have a commitment to public service is possible, however the underlying motive is to attract us to their firm.

-- UchennaIbekwe - 25 Feb 2009

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For what it's worth, a while back I contacted a number of associates about their firms' commitment to pro bono activity. The general consensus seemed to be that pro bono is encouraged so long as it is conducted on your own time. How feasible of a significant commitment to public interest work is after an 70+ hour work-week is certainly questionable.

Associate at McKee? Nelson: "As an associate at a private firm, I have been able to participate in some pro bono international human rights work. However, pro bono work at large law firms is something that is intended to be ancillary to the money-making cases. That's why typically only 50 hours of pro bono work may be dedicated to an associate's annual billable hours requirement, which ranges from 2000 - 2200 minimum billable hours. So, even with a good amount of pro bono work, large firm practice really isn't regarded as a legal career in public service."

It seemed there were a few outliers, though: "Crowell & Moring has an amazing pro bono program under which I was able to spend incredible amount of time representing an indigent criminal defendant, being a part of a fair election awareness campaign and filing taxes for indigent DC residents. Crowell & Moring also enabled me to tutor a middle school student every Tuesday for an hour who otherwise will not have resources to afford such tutoring"

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I just wanted to point out that Simpson Thacher's public service fellowship program for its associates impresses me as much for creativity in dealing with problems as for their commitment to public service. They have taken a problem--what to do with all of these associates during a downturn--and turned it into a way to cut costs while providing a great opportunity for their associates. Their motivation is certainly just as selfish as other firms, but I'd rather go work for a firm that has a track record of dealing with their problems by finding a way to give me meaningful work rather than just firing me.

-- MichaelDreibelbis - 03 Mar 2009

Government

Also, who else went to that "Life After Law School" talk a few weeks back? The one where the professor from UVA presented a longitudinal study on the satisfaction of lawyers 20 years after graduating. The study had all the standard problems of getting people to self-report on their own happiness, but otherwise I thought it was well done and well explained. One of the more interesting results was the government lawyers were the most satisfied. Public interest was second and small law firms a close third (with large firms a distant last).

Anyone know any government lawyers who have good things to say about their jobs?

-- AnjaliBhat - 26 Feb 2009

I know a number of 'happy' government lawyers, most of whom work for the City of New York, some of whom work for the federal government. However, I again think we have to distinguish between 'most satisfied' and 'good things to say about their jobs.' Government work can be very frustrating, because results come slowly, and you have very little control over your own work (I have close friend who has a high-ranking city government lawyer job and is nevertheless planning a move back to his small New England hometown to hang a shingle). Most of them are 'happy' not because of the work that they do, but because the geometrically smaller burden government work puts on them -- they can still see their spouses, their children, and their friends from time to time.

-- AndrewCase - 27 Feb 2009

I found my experience as a government lawyer to be very positive. While the lack of resources were occasionally frustrating, this was more than outweighed by the satisfaction derived from believing in the value of my work and the opportunities to take significant responsibility at a junior level. Fortunately the State of Western Australia also pays its top recruits starting salaries that approximate those of top corporate firms, so at least in the first couple of years there is little reason not to take a government job.

-- PetefromOz - 01 Mar 2009

Anjali, I went to that "Life After Law School" talk. I'm not sure which standard problems of self-report you are referring to; Dr. Monahan received over 80% return on his surveys and used a standard survey that has been normalized over millions of individuals. In terms of government lawyers being the most satisfied, I think that the differences in satisfaction scores were so close that they were probably not statistically significant. Also, since these surveys were taken 20 years after law school, it's hard to extrapolate whether a government job right out of law school would also achieve very high satisfaction scores.

I think that there are certainly pros and cons of government work which have been touched on by Andrew and Pete. The bureaucracy and the inability to select your cases would be quite frustrating. Better hours and quality of life are certainly important benefits, especially a few years out of school when a majority of people have families. I think that the most important question is whether the type of work you are actually given is personally stimulating, and that seems to be an idiosyncratic question.

-- LaurenRosenberg - 01 Mar 2009

I'd thought for a while that government lawyering was the way to go, since I want to be a litigator for a while before getting into reform activities. The idea of prosecutorial discretion appealed to me most; while I may not agree with criminal sentencing in this country, at least I could add and drop charges as the evidence and the individual criminal warranted. The more I learn, however, the more I suspect that "big law" work and DA/USA work might not be that different. I have never worked in a prosecutorial capacity, but it seems like government bureaucracy and political pressures (to get convictions, to over-charge, to be "tough on fill-in-the-blank") might combine to create a similar culture of fear as we see in big firms, as others have mentioned. If not fear, then it would at least create the sense that, unlike Robinson, you have little to no control over your workload or your clientele.

-- MolissaFarber - 05 Mar 2009

Lauren, the standard problems are what Dr. Monahan himself referred to: there's just no way of knowing how many people answering the survey are lying to themselves or making rationalizations to convince themselves they're happier than they really are. Or, conversely, how many are self-dramatizing and describing themselves as less happy than they really are. I believe Dr. Monahan also said that the differences were statistically significant--perhaps not between government and public interest, but certainly between those two and firm work.

Molissa, that's probably true. I've heard things about the culture of prosecutor's offices, at least in big cities, that are not unlike large law firms. However, there's a sense of righteousness that prosecutors seem to have, of being on a mission, that may contribute to their job satisfaction. But that can create a different problem if the righteousness becomes self-righteousness.

-- AnjaliBhat - 05 Mar 2009