Good luck toshiba

Yeah no hate from me AGame. If that's what you want to do then by all means, it would just be the absolutely wrong choice for me.

More like jones days nights and weekends Amirite

never heard of that. Sounds better than Latham off at least.

To be clear, I definitely see the appeal of big law and I did give it serious consideration but OCI convinced me big law isn't for me.

as someone who takes pro bono clients, and a lot of them:

choose very, very carefully. pro bono clients can incredibly difficult to handle. we vet ours closely before signing.

I heard that guy checks back full houses on the river.

Lol that was sick but very good, I'm never calling with worse there!

Congratulations. I really like stories like this and can relate to a lot of what you said here.

Don't sweat the haters, litigation is better 90% of the time. More consistent hours and more broadly applicable skillset. Exit opportunities are slightly less plentiful but much more diverse.

What makes you say exit options are more diverse?

Pretty sure litigation you will end up putting in way more hours then corporate for the same pay.

I probably bill more than my corporate peers, but it's predictable and more manageable. If you're doing M&A you're putting 0-3 hours a day up at times, but (a) you're still in the office and (b) your bad days are going to be brutal and unpredictable.

I have friends in M&A who bill 1500 hours a year but still get all of the downsides of biglaw.

Depends on what type of corporate work you're doing, but a lot of it just doesn't scale down. If you're doing regulatory work for large public companies or hedge funds, you can get great in house gigs within your niche, but outside of that you're going to struggle.

Litigation is just a broader set of skills. If you get decent experience (never a guarantee in biglaw, obv), you can join a lit firm of any size and be fairly comfortable. The in-house options are also broader, especially if you specialize at all. Any medium to large sized company is going to want someone who can handle litigation around. There aren't going to be 100 companies in NYC that each have a department consisting entirely of litigators, but you're not as tied to your niche.

Ah, sounds like our perspectives are different in part based on geography. I'm LA, doing corporate entertainment/sports. The work seems to easily translate and the move in-house is a well-worn path.

cant spell litigation without L-I-T

This right here. I wouldn't go so far as to say that no good deed goes unpunished. However, a hell of a lot of them do.

If you go into ligitation, another important thing to remember--Clients lie. Pretty much everybody involved in an adversary proceeding lies to their lawyer. Full. Stop.

My brother was sworn into NY today. Tomorrow he is on the schedule handling arraignments by himself.

Prosecution or Defense?

Long time lurker of this thread, finally taking the plunge and going to law school this fall. Any advice on doing well in school is definitely appreciated. I've wanted to be a lawyer for a long time so I'm excited that I'm finally doing it.

Also, any anecdotes about people turning down a lot of money at one school to go to a higher ranked school for much less money? I'm fairly comfortable with my decision but I'm always interested to hear other's experiences.

Representing the good guys, he is Defense. His organization only accepts felonies because misdemeanors are handled by private bar. The part of the County he is assigned to though is quite wealthy. Very rarely any violent felonies, other than domestic violence. He texted me today all he had was forgery and ID theft.

I am rising 2L. Biggest advice would be to just treat it as a job during the semester from 9-5 Monday through Saturday. All you really have to do as a 1L is read, and if you are not lazy you can get all your reading done by 5 or 6 pm every day. I had a ton of down time because I was up early every day and started reading by 8am.

I briefed cases for about 2 or 3 weeks before I realized that was the biggest waste of time in law school. My advice would be not to brief a case under any scenario. You might think it's a crutch for when you get cold called, but so many students fall on their face when the teacher asks them about something not in the brief. Just book brief and you will be fine. If you get embarrassed one day on a cold call it literally means nothing as there are not participation grades.

I think the second biggest waste of time is outlining. I did it my first semester, and though I did very well, I did not outline my second semester and did even better. While it's almost universally accepted that briefing is a waste of time, my opinion on outlining is not as accepted. You may want to try outlining your first semester, see whether or not its a waste of time, then make your own choice.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice!

If you don't outline, how do you normally prepare for exams? Just take lots of practice tests?

Any advice for how to secure a good job for 1L summer? Are 1L summer associate jobs still possible or are they just for people with connections?

They exist, I had one a couple summers ago. They're obviously rarer though.

Lotta good advice in there by CB.

Yep, lot's of good advice in CB's post.

I did, however, employ a slightly different strategy. I read less and less semester over 1L and 2L year, and have been doing increasingly better. Instead of reading, I spend a lot of time looking over outlines, and combining and optimizing them for use on that professor's specific exam.

Might be results oriented, but I literally read 0 pages of assigned reading this past semester, and my GPA was in the top 5%.

While advisors and professors might stress the importance of approaching law school in a certain way, whether explicitly or implicitly (through cold-calling, etc), make sure that you do what is best for you.

My experience is similar to maddog's.

Last semester I just pulled old outlines and old exams before class even started and just skimmed the "attack" portion of those outlines and then fleshed them out in my head when listening to professor in class.

(top 10%)

Yup, probably did 50% of 1L reading, less of 2L, and maaaaybe 10% of 3L before finals. Top 10% as well.