Biglaw

The Offer: Go Biglaw Or Go Home

In our first installment, our subject weighs New York Biglaw versus hometown charm.

By and  
on

Welcome to our new series, The Offer. Here, people who burned out on Biglaw will give advice to people about to start their careers in Biglaw. The irony is not lost on us. Clickity-click your concerns in the comments.

Let’s start with a classic #firstworldproblem. Our guy went to a top 10 law school, and has offers from some of the most respected law firms in New York City. But he longs for home:

I’ve narrowed down my offers to K&E and Skadden in NYC and Jones Day in Cleveland, my hometown. I think my biggest question is whether there is a tangible difference between starting my career at a NYC firm over a firm in a regional market. I don’t think I’m unique enough to survive the burnout rate at large NYC firms, nor do I really love New York — so the exit options I would get out of each place is important to me. I’m more interested in litigation than corporate (so maybe lol at exit opps for litigators) FWIW. Also, I would love to have some semblance of a life outside of work — so if that is much more prevalent in Cleveland than NYC that would likely tip the scales.

Look buddy, just because LeBron went back to Cleveland doesn’t mean you have to. You have more talent than Mike Miller. Though dinners by the trash fire on the Cuyahoga are no doubt alluring, you’ve got a shot at the big time here and you should probably take it. Besides, if “home” were that important to you, you would have gone to Case Western instead of a top out-of-state law school.

You can’t really go home again anyway. Your experiences, education, and opportunities have gentrified you from your own people. Could ‘Liza Doolittle just go back to selling flowers? No. Her fancy accent and training meant that the only thing she could do at the end of My Fair Lady was to go be a sex slave to a snooty professor. So it will be with you. I have some experience with this. After my parents split, I lived for 13 months and nine days (give or take a couple of hours) in Indianapolis. But a couple of degrees and some New York City living later, cruising around the Ripple just wasn’t the same.

In terms of exit strategies (and I like how you are planning your burnout before you even start, smart!) the thing about Cleveland is that it’s always gonna be there as an option for you. You could run screaming from Skadden wearing the office aquarium for pants, and some firm in Cleveland would hire you. Maybe not Jones Day, but still. But try being a third-year associate in Cleveland and saying, “Now I’d like to try New York.” The door tends to swing one way on this kind of thing. If you ever want to try New York, now might be the only opportunity you’ll ever get.

If you want a taste of Cleveland, try living in Corona Park. It’s like Cleveland but with more Dominicans.

Sponsored

Oh, and given your other concerns, I’d probably go for Skadden. Everybody burns out from Skadden after a few years. It’s expected. You’re there so somebody else who wants it more can climb over you to get it. There won’t be any hard feelings if you walk in while keeping one foot out of the door, provided that the other foot stays in the door for 3,000 hours a year. At K&E, they expect you to drink the Kool-Aid.

Good luck, let’s catch a Cavs game when they come to the world’s greatest arena.

JOE PATRICE

I like how Elie made the first installment of this professional rip-off of ATL’s long-running “The Decision” series by blatantly ripping off ESPN’s famous “The Decision.”

By and large, I agree with Elie that if there’s any interest lingering in the back of your mind that you might want even a couple years in the Big Apple, then you have to take your talents to Midtown. In fact, my biggest quibble with Elie is that the appropriate C-Town stand-in is Battery Park City. It’s such a perfect facsimile of a soulless downtown “revival” that 30 Rock used it as the set for Cleveland scenes. If you want the douchebaggery of the West 6th Street experience, we have Turtle Bay. And if you want terrible football, we have the Jets and the Giants.

Sponsored

Where I want to dwell for a minute or two is on the question of working for Jones Day. Jones Day has become something of a personal punching bag for me. It’s not like I set out to hate on Jones Day, they just kind of waltzed gingerly into my ire. They throw public hissy fits over perceived slights, they’re utterly humorless, and they earn the most deliciously spiteful benchslaps. It’s a hard-driving firm of former Supreme Court clerks and lawyers who think they can get into fights with Judge Posner.

Don’t get me wrong, people can have great careers working for Jones Day. My point is, litigating at Jones Day in Cleveland takes most of the unpleasantness of Biglaw litigation in New York and then also limits your future options to Cleveland.

And that may be okay. Litigating — and joining bar associations, attending rubber chicken events, etc. — in the market you eventually want to work in will help you build the connections in your practice area for a future move. I went to NYU and while most of my colleagues stayed in New York, my friends who went back home to middle America seem quite happy and are local legal hotshots. While being a superstar from a New York firm will open doors, there’s no substitute for proving yourself in front of some co-counsel whose practice you want to join. But this still only makes sense if you know with absolute certainty that Cleveland is where you want to be, and remember that Cleveland’s most famous citizen couldn’t muster such absolute certainty for four seasons.

If you do, then you should go for it and jump in full force to build your career in the Cleve. But I’d feel so much better for you if the Cleveland option weren’t Jones Day.

You’ve heard our takes. Readers, what’s your opinion?

Little LeBron should go to:

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Earlier: Biglaw Firm Throws Even Bigger Hissy Fit
Jones Day Does Not Have A Sense Of Humor
Judge Uses Cartoons To Benchslap Jones Day
The Benchslap Dispatches: I Pity The Fool Who Tries To Talk Over Judge Posner

Topics

, , , , , ,