Junior Associates

You spend three years of your life going to law school. You spend over a hundred thousand dollars on getting that education. You take a difficult entrance exam to prove that you are qualified to practice law. You'd think that after all that you'd be able to convince sophisticated clients of your value as a lawyer. You would, of course, be wrong....

Are your Millennial associates busy IM'ing, Facebooking, and streaming music while at work? Small firm columnist Jay Shepherd has some advice on what you should do....

My first job out of law school was at a five-lawyer employment-law boutique: two partners, two other associates, and me. (OK, it was my only job out of law school; I started my firm after four years at this boutique.) The other two associates were third-years when I started. To be sure, they were both […]

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s new column for in-house counsel. When I moved in-house ten months ago, my phone started to ring off the hook — and not just from folks I hadn’t spoken to in years, who thought that I’d now be itching to retain them. […]

Members of the “lost generation” who managed to snag those elusive Biglaw offers are generally being viewed as welcome additions to their firms.  According to our survey results, the majority of respondents report that Class of 2009 and 2010 associates started on time, and have enough billable work. Although most of the more senior associates […]

Law schools — as Elie likes to remind readers on a frequent basis — are businesses. Like any good CEO should, Duke Law School dean David Levi has written an editorial defending his product: young lawyers. In the National Law Journal, he starts off by acknowledging that the legal market for young lawyers is in […]

It’s pretty tough being a first-year associate these days. You’re working hard, you’re terrified of getting Lathamed, and you can’t even complain, because everybody thinks you should be grateful to have a job. But at least you don’t have to deal with bright and unbroken summer associates, rolling through your office with smoke billowing up […]

In the movie The Untouchables, Sean Connery counsels Kevin Costner: “If you don’t want to get a rotten apple, pick one fresh off the tree.” Apparently, Hewlett-Packard is taking the same advice; instead of hiring in-house attorneys seasoned in Biglaw firms, HP is getting its next crop of legal help directly from the nation’s top […]

There’s a reason why our weekly column by Law Shucks has been retitled from “This Week in Layoffs” to “This Week in Biglaw.” The pace of law firm layoffs has slowed dramatically. They haven’t stopped completely, and we suspect that many firms are still conducting “stealth layoffs” (which we welcome tips about — just email […]

It’s been a while since we checked in with the coming junior associate apocalypse that is legal outsourcing. Rest assured, LPOs around the globe are working hard to make sure that the Biglaw junior associate becomes extinct — at least as we know it. There’s a fascinating article on Law21 that discusses the evolution of […]

Welcome to the next article in our Expert Insights series, brought to you by the ATL Career Center. This week, we spoke with Katy Lewis, Associate Director at Lateral Link, who works with associate candidates on law firm searches in Chicago and the Midwest, and with candidates seeking in-house positions. Katy has worked closely with […]