Courts

Judge Goes Out Of His Way For Junior Associates

Great opportunity for junior associates.

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kid suitIt can be a challenge for junior associates to get meaningful experience. Sure, there are always hours to be billed, but not every legal task is created equally in terms of resume building. Of course, there are lots of factors that determine who gets the “sexy” work like arguing motions — demanding clients, the risk adverse nature of the profession, and old-fashioned experience means these high-level tasks often get pushed to senior associates or partners.

But Illinois federal judge Gabriel A. Fuentes is making a move to help the newer members of the profession get the experience they need. As reported by Law360, in a multidistrict litigation about price-fixing turkey, Fuentes is making sure junior associates have something impressive to put on those resumes:

Judge Gabriel A. Fuentes said Thursday that the hearing to discuss expert discovery and argue motions to preclude a witness and amend scheduling that was originally scheduled for Oct. 26 has been converted to a video hearing on Nov. 1, under the condition that attorneys with less than four years of experience are allowed to argue.

Judge Fuentes said that although senior attorneys will be allowed to attend in a supervisory role, if the participating firms are unable or unwilling to allow junior attorneys to argue the motions, the expert discovery portion will be held via telephone and the court will make its decision on the motions based on the paper submissions.

Judge Fuentes knows it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure the next generation of legal stars is properly trained up.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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