Biglaw, Job Searches, Law Schools

Reinventing The Law Business: How To Select A Law Firm Out Of Law School

What are the five things law students should be asking themselves when choosing a firm for their first job?

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Many times I am asked informally, or even formally, what is the best way for a law student to decide where she/he should go to start a career. I recall (not proudly, actually) when I graduated law school and how I was almost ridiculously unsophisticated. No one told me what to do, so I went through the then-printed-out-hard-copy of the “book” in the career center. In the book were a couple of hundred law firm brochures.

I aimlessly but dutifully (I was a good soldier) went through almost all of them and they all looked the same to me. I am embarrassed to admit this but I guess I could reveal now, 32 years later, that the only thing that seemed different to me were the starting salaries. Most of them paid the “going rate,” which I think was $43,000. I assumed that those must be the “best” law firms. However, I still remember one firm that stood out because it was paying more and it was Seward & Kissel LLP. Funny that 32 years later, this is the only thing I can remember. To be clear, I am not proud of this or advocating this; indeed, I was saying I was dumb and this was not an intelligent process. I am just saying what happened.

I know that law students today are a ton more sophisticated than I was, as I have interviewed many of them and the insightful questions they ask and the answers they give often completely floor me. Among other things, it provides me with awkward comparisons as to how much better prepared they are than when I was figuring out what to do.

With the theory that, after muddling through my career for 32 years, perhaps I might be of some use to these students coming down the pike, I offer the following thoughts on how I would select a law firm:

If I knew what I wanted to do (i.e., be a litigator, corporate, real estate, etc.), I would ask myself the following questions about the firms I was speaking to:

First, I would do my best to ascertain whether I would be going to work at the absolutely “best” law practice in the world in the specialty I am seeking. Or, if I cannot get to the “best,” am I getting as high up as possible. Of course the word “best” is somewhat subjective and there is no easy way to gauge the “best”; however, I would try my hardest to assess this by talking to as many people as possible, reading as much as possible, and whatever else I could think of.

Second, I would ask whether the place I will be going to will give me excellent training to become a “complete” lawyer in my specialty. I would be very careful here in avoiding a place where I would be pigeonholed in a subspecialty of my desired practice area. For example, some law firms have a practice where they only represent securitized mortgage lenders or only handle patent litigation, etc. This is incredibly dangerous to a young lawyer as the only certainty you will have in your career is that the area in which you start your career will not be what you are doing in 10, 15, 20, or 30 years. Ultimately, all you will have to “sell” to the world is your experience and training and developed brainpower. If you start your career learning to do super work on a production line you will be setting yourself up for likely failure when your narrow area of expertise stops being in vogue. You will then not only be useless but, worse yet, your brain likely will have atrophied because you will have been deprived from the heart of what training should really be, which is the ability to solve new and different problems.

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Third, I would ask whether my target law firm is one in which I will make a ton of industry contacts. At the beginning of a career this may not seem that important but as you become more senior you will start to believe more and more in that old adage: “It’s not what you know — it’s who you know.” If you go to a firm where your specialty is a service arm of the firm’s main practice (e.g., real estate at a corporate firm), you will likely be setting yourself up for severe career failure, as you simply will not get to meet the “players” in your industry. As an aside, I note that a law firm that teaches associates about marketing is a particular plus, as this allows an associate to develop an important part of being a lawyer early in her/his career.

Fourth, just playing the odds, you have to assume that things “might” not work out where you are going. The firm could fold; you could have a personal run-in with the wrong person; the practice you are working in could fall apart; partners could leave; and a myriad of other things could go wrong. Is the place you are going to one where you will be super-marketable if things do not work out?

Fifth, are you going to a place with a great culture and nice, sweet, decent people? Now please don’t skewer me here for being too honest, but this is simply not as important as the first four items above when you are starting a career. Being straightforward, you “want” a nice friendly place to build a home, friends, and even a family feeling; however, you “need” the four items above. If you have a choice, I would advocate putting the items above as most critical. Having said that, a great culture is a secret sauce that will enhance the other items. This is because a firm with a great culture is often one where the people there sincerely care about you as a person, which means they will care about your training and marketability, etc.

The foregoing is what I would do if I knew what specialty area I wanted. If I did not know that, then I would pick the highest branded name firm in the largest city possible in which I was able to get a job. The reason for this is that this would give me the most mobility when I do in fact figure out what I want to do. If I don’t know what practice area will interest me, I have to assume that it is more likely that I will end up wanting to move from my “starting” firm, so the fourth item above becomes more important. In this regard, as is probably obvious, it is easy to move from Biglaw in a major city to almost anywhere else, but extremely difficult to move in the reverse direction.

Finally, I realize that I have focused herein solely on law firms and I have not spoken about government service, clerkships, and similar opportunities. This is because, on reflection, I think I am simply not qualified to speak about these kinds of opportunities. I have not worked in government service, nor have I had a clerkship or similar employment. So I will leave thoughts on these important careers choices to others with more knowledge and expertise.

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Bruce Stachenfeld is the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, which is an approximately 70-lawyer law firm based in midtown Manhattan. The firm is known as “The Pure Play in Real Estate Law” because all of its practice areas are focused around real estate. With over 50 full-time real estate lawyers, the firm is one of the largest real estate law practices in New York City. You can contact Bruce by email at [email protected].

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