Sometimes I meet a young lawyer whose career goal is to work in Big Law. That path might not be my first choice, but as long as they know what they are getting into, they should go for it. This article is not about those folks.
Instead, I am writing about the young lawyers who I meet whose plan is to work at Big Law for a few years, make some good money, pay off their student debt, buy a house, and then move on to a smaller firm. I am not a great fan of this type of plan, but I do understand why it is attractive to some.
I have been thinking about the pros and cons of this approach, and here is what I have come up with:
Pros
- The money.
- The prestige.
- The perks.
- The opportunity to work on sophisticated matters.
- Big Law looks good on your resume and can open some doors for you in the future.
- Sometimes the training can be superb and pave the way to easily move to a boutique firm, a medium-sized firm, or even a specialized solo practice.
Cons
- Often experience in Big Law is not that easily transportable to a smaller firm.
- It may be difficult to develop a client base in Big Law that is portable to a smaller firm.
- After a few years, it may be problematic to transfer to a smaller firm without a client base. At the same time, learning business development skills at Big Law may have been sacrificed to billable hours.
- It is hard to adjust to a cut in pay, which you may have to do when you move out of Big Law. It may be particularly difficult if you have bought into the big lifestyle instead of saving your Big Law salary.
It is even difficult for Big Law partners to move to a medium-sized firm. Jim was typical of a Big Law partner who approached my medium-sized firm to explore moving his practice to us. Jim had a significant client base and made a great deal of money. He wanted to work fewer hours and was willing to take a pay cut.
As much as we would have loved to have Jim join us, we just could not make the math work. When we adjusted Jim’s numbers to reflect (i) those of his clients who were unlikely to follow him to a smaller firm; (ii) the fewer hours that he wanted to work; (iii) the lower hourly rate that his clients would expect to pay at a smaller firm; and (iv) some of the work that our firm would not be able to handle, Jim found that the pay cut was greater than he had contemplated and his compensation would likely not be sufficient to cover the lifestyle that he had enjoyed while working at Big Law. Even if Jim would have been willing to cut back on his lifestyle, he did not think that his spouse would be willing to do it. Jim was trapped where he was.
These days you hear a great deal about the importance of being able to “pivot” to address and overcome adversity, and I am all for that. On the other hand, I do wonder whether planning to have to pivot makes a great deal of sense. I kind of like the philosophy of Charles H. Spurgeon, who said, “begin as you mean to go on.”
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.