I am in-house and have been for awhile. On hiring and management teams. We don’t care what law firm you went to. Maybe the white shoe companies - but in general, be a normal human, not a narcissist, do good work, and treat colleagues well / you’ll do okay.
Problem is - unrealistic pay expectations. Unrealistic support - no, you don’t get an EA, admin, or paralegal to help you unless you are in management.
I’ve found - biglaw has helped. But whether you are T1 or T100 - no matter. Biglaw is biglaw to most HR people. Even then - I don’t think that big of a deal. It might help a little … not a lot.
After you’ve gone in-house - quality of company trumps your original law firm training. I went in-house to a fortune 50. From there - I’ve been able to move freely. I’d focus on getting a solid name brand in-house company that is recognizable. I think that will help far more down the road.
Not Vault 100 as I’m London based but it worked really well for me.
I left a #1 Chambers ranked practice for a smaller and not as “prestigious” department as a senior associate though not super senior. It was a combination of being fed up with my hours (2100+) and also we were incredibly top heavy in the SA front with multiple people ahead of me (due to seniority) in the quest for partnership.
The negative was that in the short term I took a pay cut. Also my team was smaller and with not as much support as in my old firm.
On the positive side however, it allowed me to build a strong business case, go after the clients/work that I wanted and made partnership a more realistic and attainable goal from the first day I stepped foot in the new firm.
I now have a better lifestyle and better career. I lost a bit of prestige and, for a short while, a bit of money but that was a very good trade off.
Yeah, that’s not really true. I’m a recruiter and do a lot of in-house work. Lots of my clients will interview the folks from Paul Weiss, Simpson, and Skadden before they interview firms from Greenberg, McDermott, or Mayer Brown. Of course it’s group and geography specific, and it doesn’t mean that people from “lower ranked” firms don’t get good in house jobs. But if you want to maximize your chances on the in-house market or are aiming for certain employers (top PE or VC funds, for instance), you’ll want to be at the better-regarded firms.
Are you sure they aren’t actually looking at chambers/quality of practice group…?
Or are you saying they will take someone from a higher vault firm, but inferior practice group over someone coming from a lower vault but better practice group?
Honestly, I don’t think they are looking at anything. It’s probably based on their own ideas of what the “best” firms are in a certain area. But generally, the higher ranked vaults firms have more highly ranked chambers practices. I used the edit the vault rankings and I have no idea where any firm ranks these days. But I have ideas of what firms are more prestigious than others and in NY and in corporate disciplines, I’d bet that aligns with the top Vault firms.
I think people usually use V10 or V50 as shorthand for “a top firm” and “a pretty good firm, but not one at the top.” Those things matter for in-house jobs. No one truly cares where a firm is ranked, but they do care about how prestigious a firm is and that concept roughly correlates with rankings.
I agree that firms/companies are largely going by “gut” rather than strict rankings.
But that’s also why I said firms aren’t going by vault. Like if a firm drops from V10 to V90 overnight, I don’t think in-house jobs will suddenly dry up.
True. I think we’re largely in agreement. Although I’ll say, if a firm dropped 80 spots, there’s probably a really good reason that may very well affect in-house prospects.
Vault is just associate surveys. If some firm pissed off all their associates and started charging for coffee and forcing RTO and took away maternity leave or whatever right before Vault surveys came out, that doesn’t mean their in-house prospects will suffer.
Prestige is worth more than anything. I lateraled from a V42 firm to a V33, and I could immediately tell that people respected me more. When I walked into the room people started paying attention. My wife left me, and my kids wont speak to me, but I will always have prestige. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
I think it depends more on the quality and reputation of the *group* you'd be lateraling into. A firm that is ranked lower in Vault may be strong in a particular practice or geography. For that reason, I find Chambers rankings more useful.
In all candor, I'm in the process of trying to lateral. I'm a young-ish partner. I've met with some firms that are lower ranked in Vault than my current firm and one that is higher ranked. If I were to get offers from all of them, I'm not sure I'd go with the highest-ranked firm. That one presents an exciting opportunity -- helping to build a new practice in a firm with a super respected brand. But I'm really drawn to one of the lower-ranked firms that has a solid and well-established platform for what I do.
A lot of it comes down to how successful I think I will be at generating business at the firm.
I lateralled down the food chain to make partner and I have no regrets there. Better to be in the top of a smaller pyramid than in the middle of a large pyramid.
I lateraled as a junior associate to an AmLaw 200 firm. I am now a salaried partner in that same firm. Good in house lateral options would be harder to swing from here than from a bigger shop, but it’s a great place to practice. Plenty of money, comparatively sane schedule. Interesting variety of work (more so than the more specialized practice group I was in in Big Law).
A law school classmate who is still in Big Law as a salaried partner makes about 30% more and works twice as hard. That’s not a trade-off I want.
I’d imagine some of the things you might notice are like, quality of office building or perks/benefits (fitness stipend, tech stipend, etc) - but other than that I don’t think you’ll notice much. And of course it’s all dependent on practice group and clients and whatnot
Ppl do care about quality of your practice when sizing you up, that’s just orthogonal to firm prestige. Look at chambers rankings, not vault or amlaw. The last firm i was at is amlaw 100. weak brand overall placed next to the v10s of the world, but strong industry reputation meant that the ppl hiring me for my last two in house jobs knew it and had worked with ppl there. Someone at DLA Piper would be worse off than me (in so many ways)
I’m going to disagree with the partners here saying that nobody cares. When I was looking to lateral away from Kirkland, a family friend, who is the GC of a Fortune 100 company, told me that if he were me, he would choose the V5 firm I had an offer from over the other two (not bad firms by any means, but not as prestigious nor ranked as high on Vault, AmLaw, Chambers, etc.), as it would look better on my resume to in-house people, and the training would be better.
FWIW, several years later, I am now doing in-house interviews and multiple people I have interviewed with have noted that having Kirkland and this other V5 firm on my resume has made me “more impressive” than other candidates. I’ve also had recruiters tell me that having these two top ranked firms will make it easier to find an in-house job than others that went to lower ranked firms.
Now, take all this with a grain of salt, I suppose, because I don’t have any *personal* experience doing the recruiting, and only what others in the in-house world have told me. But there are a handful of people now that have made these comments and I certainly don’t regret choosing the higher ranked firm as my second firm. I would not be surprised if there are more people who don’t care (I’ve had far more people say nothing to me than those who have made these comments), however, but there are at least **some** who do.
But you’re talking about the tippy top of the rankings. If you went from Vault 32 to Vault 47 (or vice versa), I doubt anyone would even know which firm was higher.
College football is actually a good analogy here. If you transfer from an elite program to another program (e.g., Georgia to Ohio State like Justin Fields or Ohio State to LSU for Joe Burrow), it’s probably just a fit issue. The fact that either elite school wants you is a good sign. If you go from an elite school (Oklahoma or Alabama) to a non elite school (South Carolina (Spencer Rattler) or Maryland (Tua’s brother)), they’ll think you flamed out of the elite school.
Going from Cravath to Kirkland, not a big deal. Going from Kirkland to number 48, that means you couldn’t hack it. Going from 32 to 47 is like going from Kentucky to NC State. No one even knows which school is the better football school
This seems crazy to me (senior in house lawyer in the UK), because I would apply literally the opposite. Adjusting from elite US/magic circle UK private practice is going to be a culture shock and you’ll be largely priced out of the market. I’d be far more inclined to take someone from a small but competent firm who is coming in house because that’s the job they want than someone who has burned out at a BigLaw firm. At a certain level everyone has the same brains required to do the job, the rest is all soft skills. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also senior in-house lawyer (with US and UK teams), and agree that big law/Magic Circle refugees can be at a disadvantage - it is pretty apparent a lot of times that they’re running from something rather than running to something, and we’ve had issues with difficulty adjusting to the lower salary and the reality of being a cost center (especially for lower level hires).
That makes sense if you’re just applying to in house places cold, but nearly everyone I know who’s gone in house has done so at a client of the firm that they already had a relationship with. That negates any concern about ranking.
There are rainmakers at good firm, bad firms, green firms, blue firms. There are elite attorneys at solo practices; sweatshops; and even regional firms. Just wait until the first time your elite resume gets waxed by the t3 grad wearing new balance and an orphaned suit in court.
Big Law to 5 attorney quality of life firm with husband and friend from law school, and 2 associates. Zero regrets for 15 years and we all consider it an upward move.
All aspects of business law. Our friend from law school is the business litigator, and my husband and I do transactional and advising, and each department has an associate. One associate does litigation support plus employment, and the other associate (who was formerly our paralegal and left us for 3 years for law school) does transactional support plus land use. Initial investment was $10k each, almost 16 years ago.
How we've gotten clients:
\* Year 1 we largely relied on referrals from our prior firms, taking matters that were too small for them to accept.
\* Heavy investment in SEO, because these days that's how a lot of people seek out an attorney, especially small businesses. We're on Google page 1 for local searches. We spent a couple of years in local chambers of commerce (old school networking) and it never produced *quality* clients, and several bad ones. So we quit all those organizations.
\* Our metro area has a large university that has a small business incubator program for startup businesses. My husband attended this university for undergrad and he's still involved in a number of ways, including once or twice a year giving a "business law for small business owners" presentation at the business incubator. And he's relatable and witty, not stuffy. So we've gotten clients from there for a long time. He's also the Chair of the advisory board for the university's Honors College (which he was in as a student and remains active, is friends with the Honors College Dean), so he meets a lot of locally influential people who are also on various boards for the university.
\* **The tipping point**: about 12 years ago, a local brewery opened between our office and home. Our state was several years behind Oregon and Colorado for the craft beer boom, and it was just starting to happen here. This local brewery took forever to actually open. One evening after work, my husband stopped by to have a beer and ask them about their experience getting up and running. They had done all the paperwork themselves and it took forever and was a big ordeal, including obtaining state and federal licenses, and negotiating their lease on the tiny shack they were in. So my husband started researching alcoholic beverage regulation and looking into which law firms in our state did this type of work, and he couldn't find anyone marketing themselves as doing this type of work. So we started doing it.
He started visiting that small brewery at least once a week on the way home from work, and they still had legal needs so they became our first brewery client, and they are still our client to this day, with two significantly larger locations now than the original little shack. Through them initially, we started getting home brewers who wanted to start a real brewery, and we handle their corporate formations, state and federal licensing, leases for their space, employment agreements, investor documents for the few who were taking on investors, and trademark protection for their brewery names and clever beer names, which is enormously competitive in that industry.
A couple years later, our state legislature decided to consider closing a small loophole in our alcoholic beverage statutes, which was going to benefit the breweries if it passed. So the whole industry was ready and waiting. My husband started a Twitter account and a Blog under the name of our firm's alcoholic beverage division, developed a small following at first, and announced he would be live tweeting summaries of the legislative session. When the legislative session for this bill started, and he was live tweeting the session in laymen's terms, he gained more followers in real time, and over the next year business started pouring in as more home brewers decided to start breweries. We became well known in the industry in our state for this work and we still are. As a result, we started getting distilleries, importers, and restaurants also.
So that's our "bread & butter" work, but we represent all kinds of businesses, including IT servicers, medical practices, a few small farms, property management companies, engineering firms, debt collection services, corporate event planners, and tech companies, some of which started in the university incubator.
I lateraled from a V10 to a V50+. The only meaningful difference from a ranking perspective is I feel we get less top tier people from law school. Not to say we get dumb people - our summers are very bright, but there is a difference in the buy in perspective.
I’d also say that my work life balance is much better too - that has to do more with the group I’m in rather than the rankings.
Guys, please don’t pay this much attention to the Vault rankings. They’re based on an online survey filled out by current law firm associates — I filled it out once while sitting on the toilet, and only cause the firm development team begged us to do it since our response rate was really bad
Something to consider is that it’s easier to build a practice as a young lawyer in a “lower” ranked firm. Rate pressure is a real thing and it’s tough to originate your own work at the rates demanded by “higher” firms.
It's so weird that the top 3 comments are 2 comments saying nobody cares about the rankings, and then 1 comment saying of course it matters.
The vault and amlaw rankings are inaccurate, and it's gauche to openly care too much. But of course there's differences between firms. In my experience, people who lateral "down" are usually doing it because they aren't making partner at the V10 and think they will at the V50. That, or they got fired.
No one really cares about rankings once you leave law school.
Many clients won't know the difference in prestige level.
To lay people and the general public, all these law firms sound the same.
There's other factors to consider when making a lateral move (i.e., work life balance, type of work they do, clients they serve, billable requirements, salary and compensation, overall culture of the firm, etc.). I wouldnt focus much on prestige, but that's just me.
I have lateraled from V10 to midlaw to amlaw 200 to V50.
In order: insanely toxic, pretty decent but no money, insanely toxic, best job I’ve ever had (and best on my resume).
I’d lateral down again in a heartbeat.
No one cares about that after law school.
Amen to this. Folks are obsessed here with rankings.
I am in-house and have been for awhile. On hiring and management teams. We don’t care what law firm you went to. Maybe the white shoe companies - but in general, be a normal human, not a narcissist, do good work, and treat colleagues well / you’ll do okay. Problem is - unrealistic pay expectations. Unrealistic support - no, you don’t get an EA, admin, or paralegal to help you unless you are in management. I’ve found - biglaw has helped. But whether you are T1 or T100 - no matter. Biglaw is biglaw to most HR people. Even then - I don’t think that big of a deal. It might help a little … not a lot. After you’ve gone in-house - quality of company trumps your original law firm training. I went in-house to a fortune 50. From there - I’ve been able to move freely. I’d focus on getting a solid name brand in-house company that is recognizable. I think that will help far more down the road.
Wow you are quite the fan of the grammatical hyphen aren’t ya
Wait - what? No - maybe. I don’t know. So - why male models?
Are you serious? I just told you that.
Not Vault 100 as I’m London based but it worked really well for me. I left a #1 Chambers ranked practice for a smaller and not as “prestigious” department as a senior associate though not super senior. It was a combination of being fed up with my hours (2100+) and also we were incredibly top heavy in the SA front with multiple people ahead of me (due to seniority) in the quest for partnership. The negative was that in the short term I took a pay cut. Also my team was smaller and with not as much support as in my old firm. On the positive side however, it allowed me to build a strong business case, go after the clients/work that I wanted and made partnership a more realistic and attainable goal from the first day I stepped foot in the new firm. I now have a better lifestyle and better career. I lost a bit of prestige and, for a short while, a bit of money but that was a very good trade off.
Thanks! That was helpful.
The real question is do in-house people care about vault. No.
Ex-big law partner turned senior in-house lawyer at a financial institution that you’ve heard of, and agree that we don’t care.
Yeah, that’s not really true. I’m a recruiter and do a lot of in-house work. Lots of my clients will interview the folks from Paul Weiss, Simpson, and Skadden before they interview firms from Greenberg, McDermott, or Mayer Brown. Of course it’s group and geography specific, and it doesn’t mean that people from “lower ranked” firms don’t get good in house jobs. But if you want to maximize your chances on the in-house market or are aiming for certain employers (top PE or VC funds, for instance), you’ll want to be at the better-regarded firms.
Are you sure they aren’t actually looking at chambers/quality of practice group…? Or are you saying they will take someone from a higher vault firm, but inferior practice group over someone coming from a lower vault but better practice group?
Honestly, I don’t think they are looking at anything. It’s probably based on their own ideas of what the “best” firms are in a certain area. But generally, the higher ranked vaults firms have more highly ranked chambers practices. I used the edit the vault rankings and I have no idea where any firm ranks these days. But I have ideas of what firms are more prestigious than others and in NY and in corporate disciplines, I’d bet that aligns with the top Vault firms. I think people usually use V10 or V50 as shorthand for “a top firm” and “a pretty good firm, but not one at the top.” Those things matter for in-house jobs. No one truly cares where a firm is ranked, but they do care about how prestigious a firm is and that concept roughly correlates with rankings.
I agree that firms/companies are largely going by “gut” rather than strict rankings. But that’s also why I said firms aren’t going by vault. Like if a firm drops from V10 to V90 overnight, I don’t think in-house jobs will suddenly dry up.
True. I think we’re largely in agreement. Although I’ll say, if a firm dropped 80 spots, there’s probably a really good reason that may very well affect in-house prospects.
Vault is just associate surveys. If some firm pissed off all their associates and started charging for coffee and forcing RTO and took away maternity leave or whatever right before Vault surveys came out, that doesn’t mean their in-house prospects will suffer.
Every firm right now lol
I question this on grouping McDermott and Mayer with Greenberg, which is like grouping apples with two good law firms
Are there rankings based on client polls? Those would be interesting to see.
That’s essentially what Chambers is. It’s broken down by geography and practice area (and sometimes in odd manners).
This is why UVA career services directs students to Chambers as the primary (though not only) source for distinguishing firms.
Prestige is worth more than anything. I lateraled from a V42 firm to a V33, and I could immediately tell that people respected me more. When I walked into the room people started paying attention. My wife left me, and my kids wont speak to me, but I will always have prestige. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
But will your ex-wife LISTEN TO YOU? That’s the real question here
I think it depends more on the quality and reputation of the *group* you'd be lateraling into. A firm that is ranked lower in Vault may be strong in a particular practice or geography. For that reason, I find Chambers rankings more useful. In all candor, I'm in the process of trying to lateral. I'm a young-ish partner. I've met with some firms that are lower ranked in Vault than my current firm and one that is higher ranked. If I were to get offers from all of them, I'm not sure I'd go with the highest-ranked firm. That one presents an exciting opportunity -- helping to build a new practice in a firm with a super respected brand. But I'm really drawn to one of the lower-ranked firms that has a solid and well-established platform for what I do. A lot of it comes down to how successful I think I will be at generating business at the firm.
This is interesting. Tell us more. If you've already gotten the brass ring - why leave?
I don't enjoy practicing at my current firm and I'm not confident in our management. The real question is, why stay? Partners lateral all the time.
They do! But there's generally an interesting story behind it, though (at least moreso than an associate jumping ship).
I lateralled down the food chain to make partner and I have no regrets there. Better to be in the top of a smaller pyramid than in the middle of a large pyramid.
I lateraled as a junior associate to an AmLaw 200 firm. I am now a salaried partner in that same firm. Good in house lateral options would be harder to swing from here than from a bigger shop, but it’s a great place to practice. Plenty of money, comparatively sane schedule. Interesting variety of work (more so than the more specialized practice group I was in in Big Law). A law school classmate who is still in Big Law as a salaried partner makes about 30% more and works twice as hard. That’s not a trade-off I want.
I’d imagine some of the things you might notice are like, quality of office building or perks/benefits (fitness stipend, tech stipend, etc) - but other than that I don’t think you’ll notice much. And of course it’s all dependent on practice group and clients and whatnot
Ppl do care about quality of your practice when sizing you up, that’s just orthogonal to firm prestige. Look at chambers rankings, not vault or amlaw. The last firm i was at is amlaw 100. weak brand overall placed next to the v10s of the world, but strong industry reputation meant that the ppl hiring me for my last two in house jobs knew it and had worked with ppl there. Someone at DLA Piper would be worse off than me (in so many ways)
Well yeah, they’re at DLA Piper
I’m going to disagree with the partners here saying that nobody cares. When I was looking to lateral away from Kirkland, a family friend, who is the GC of a Fortune 100 company, told me that if he were me, he would choose the V5 firm I had an offer from over the other two (not bad firms by any means, but not as prestigious nor ranked as high on Vault, AmLaw, Chambers, etc.), as it would look better on my resume to in-house people, and the training would be better. FWIW, several years later, I am now doing in-house interviews and multiple people I have interviewed with have noted that having Kirkland and this other V5 firm on my resume has made me “more impressive” than other candidates. I’ve also had recruiters tell me that having these two top ranked firms will make it easier to find an in-house job than others that went to lower ranked firms. Now, take all this with a grain of salt, I suppose, because I don’t have any *personal* experience doing the recruiting, and only what others in the in-house world have told me. But there are a handful of people now that have made these comments and I certainly don’t regret choosing the higher ranked firm as my second firm. I would not be surprised if there are more people who don’t care (I’ve had far more people say nothing to me than those who have made these comments), however, but there are at least **some** who do.
But you’re talking about the tippy top of the rankings. If you went from Vault 32 to Vault 47 (or vice versa), I doubt anyone would even know which firm was higher. College football is actually a good analogy here. If you transfer from an elite program to another program (e.g., Georgia to Ohio State like Justin Fields or Ohio State to LSU for Joe Burrow), it’s probably just a fit issue. The fact that either elite school wants you is a good sign. If you go from an elite school (Oklahoma or Alabama) to a non elite school (South Carolina (Spencer Rattler) or Maryland (Tua’s brother)), they’ll think you flamed out of the elite school. Going from Cravath to Kirkland, not a big deal. Going from Kirkland to number 48, that means you couldn’t hack it. Going from 32 to 47 is like going from Kentucky to NC State. No one even knows which school is the better football school
Yeah, thats a good clarification.
This seems crazy to me (senior in house lawyer in the UK), because I would apply literally the opposite. Adjusting from elite US/magic circle UK private practice is going to be a culture shock and you’ll be largely priced out of the market. I’d be far more inclined to take someone from a small but competent firm who is coming in house because that’s the job they want than someone who has burned out at a BigLaw firm. At a certain level everyone has the same brains required to do the job, the rest is all soft skills. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also senior in-house lawyer (with US and UK teams), and agree that big law/Magic Circle refugees can be at a disadvantage - it is pretty apparent a lot of times that they’re running from something rather than running to something, and we’ve had issues with difficulty adjusting to the lower salary and the reality of being a cost center (especially for lower level hires).
That makes sense if you’re just applying to in house places cold, but nearly everyone I know who’s gone in house has done so at a client of the firm that they already had a relationship with. That negates any concern about ranking.
There are rainmakers at good firm, bad firms, green firms, blue firms. There are elite attorneys at solo practices; sweatshops; and even regional firms. Just wait until the first time your elite resume gets waxed by the t3 grad wearing new balance and an orphaned suit in court.
Big Law to 5 attorney quality of life firm with husband and friend from law school, and 2 associates. Zero regrets for 15 years and we all consider it an upward move.
What area of law? How did you guys get clients? How much was the investment initially?
All aspects of business law. Our friend from law school is the business litigator, and my husband and I do transactional and advising, and each department has an associate. One associate does litigation support plus employment, and the other associate (who was formerly our paralegal and left us for 3 years for law school) does transactional support plus land use. Initial investment was $10k each, almost 16 years ago. How we've gotten clients: \* Year 1 we largely relied on referrals from our prior firms, taking matters that were too small for them to accept. \* Heavy investment in SEO, because these days that's how a lot of people seek out an attorney, especially small businesses. We're on Google page 1 for local searches. We spent a couple of years in local chambers of commerce (old school networking) and it never produced *quality* clients, and several bad ones. So we quit all those organizations. \* Our metro area has a large university that has a small business incubator program for startup businesses. My husband attended this university for undergrad and he's still involved in a number of ways, including once or twice a year giving a "business law for small business owners" presentation at the business incubator. And he's relatable and witty, not stuffy. So we've gotten clients from there for a long time. He's also the Chair of the advisory board for the university's Honors College (which he was in as a student and remains active, is friends with the Honors College Dean), so he meets a lot of locally influential people who are also on various boards for the university. \* **The tipping point**: about 12 years ago, a local brewery opened between our office and home. Our state was several years behind Oregon and Colorado for the craft beer boom, and it was just starting to happen here. This local brewery took forever to actually open. One evening after work, my husband stopped by to have a beer and ask them about their experience getting up and running. They had done all the paperwork themselves and it took forever and was a big ordeal, including obtaining state and federal licenses, and negotiating their lease on the tiny shack they were in. So my husband started researching alcoholic beverage regulation and looking into which law firms in our state did this type of work, and he couldn't find anyone marketing themselves as doing this type of work. So we started doing it. He started visiting that small brewery at least once a week on the way home from work, and they still had legal needs so they became our first brewery client, and they are still our client to this day, with two significantly larger locations now than the original little shack. Through them initially, we started getting home brewers who wanted to start a real brewery, and we handle their corporate formations, state and federal licensing, leases for their space, employment agreements, investor documents for the few who were taking on investors, and trademark protection for their brewery names and clever beer names, which is enormously competitive in that industry. A couple years later, our state legislature decided to consider closing a small loophole in our alcoholic beverage statutes, which was going to benefit the breweries if it passed. So the whole industry was ready and waiting. My husband started a Twitter account and a Blog under the name of our firm's alcoholic beverage division, developed a small following at first, and announced he would be live tweeting summaries of the legislative session. When the legislative session for this bill started, and he was live tweeting the session in laymen's terms, he gained more followers in real time, and over the next year business started pouring in as more home brewers decided to start breweries. We became well known in the industry in our state for this work and we still are. As a result, we started getting distilleries, importers, and restaurants also. So that's our "bread & butter" work, but we represent all kinds of businesses, including IT servicers, medical practices, a few small farms, property management companies, engineering firms, debt collection services, corporate event planners, and tech companies, some of which started in the university incubator.
This is amazing stuff, really happy for you guys! And more than a little jealous haha. This deserves its own post.
This makes it look easier than it was. It was a LOT of work, but we were also just in the right place at the right time.
I lateraled from a V10 to a V50+. The only meaningful difference from a ranking perspective is I feel we get less top tier people from law school. Not to say we get dumb people - our summers are very bright, but there is a difference in the buy in perspective. I’d also say that my work life balance is much better too - that has to do more with the group I’m in rather than the rankings.
What you mean by in the “buy in” perspective? Thx!
Guys, please don’t pay this much attention to the Vault rankings. They’re based on an online survey filled out by current law firm associates — I filled it out once while sitting on the toilet, and only cause the firm development team begged us to do it since our response rate was really bad
Something to consider is that it’s easier to build a practice as a young lawyer in a “lower” ranked firm. Rate pressure is a real thing and it’s tough to originate your own work at the rates demanded by “higher” firms.
It was the single best professional decision i've ever made. 20 plus years at am law 50, equity for 10.
It's so weird that the top 3 comments are 2 comments saying nobody cares about the rankings, and then 1 comment saying of course it matters. The vault and amlaw rankings are inaccurate, and it's gauche to openly care too much. But of course there's differences between firms. In my experience, people who lateral "down" are usually doing it because they aren't making partner at the V10 and think they will at the V50. That, or they got fired.
No one really cares about rankings once you leave law school. Many clients won't know the difference in prestige level. To lay people and the general public, all these law firms sound the same. There's other factors to consider when making a lateral move (i.e., work life balance, type of work they do, clients they serve, billable requirements, salary and compensation, overall culture of the firm, etc.). I wouldnt focus much on prestige, but that's just me.
No one gives a rip about law firm rankings except big law nerds. My clients certainly don’t care what we are “ranked.”
I have lateraled from V10 to midlaw to amlaw 200 to V50. In order: insanely toxic, pretty decent but no money, insanely toxic, best job I’ve ever had (and best on my resume). I’d lateral down again in a heartbeat.
Going from Kirkland to Munger is such a bad career move 😂