My Life at a Big Firm: The First Three Weeks

My name is Laura, and I recently started at Bryan Cave LLP in St. Louis, Missouri.  Bryan Cave has over 800 attorneys in 15 offices worldwide, the largest office being in St. Louis with around 275 attorneys.  My summer class consists of 22 other summer associates from a variety of schools.  All of these numbers totaled up to one feeling the night before I started:  utter panic.  How was I going to fit in?  How was I going to keep track of things like client matter numbers and billable hours?  What are client matter numbers and billable hours?!

 I was always one of those kids who wanted to be a lawyer at a very early age.  I guess I saw A Few Good Men too many times back when we all still thought Tom Cruise was normal...just kidding to all you die-hard TomKat fans.   However, as time went on, I began to love the law because it was challenging and I was constantly encountering something new.  I've always worked hard, and I wanted to work at a place that handled big clients with complex issues.  A big firm just seemed like the right fit, so I figured this was my chance to find out whether I was right or just completely crazy (or maybe a little bit of both).

 My first day was kind of a blur, and I alternated between euphoria and complete mental exhaustion.  The morning started with a meet and greet in the lobby, where I had the opportunity to meet my fellow summer associates and several other attorneys.  They really do a great job of easing you into things, but there is so much to learn in the first week.  We had a full morning of orientation, where we were given a run-down on everything from billing hours to filing tax forms to library resources...oh yes, there is a library and you are expected to at least try to use it before racking up the time on Lexis or Westlaw.  I've come to discover that Westlaw is a lot like free cable.  Law schools give it to you just long enough to get you completely hooked, and then you realize how much those premium channels cost you when you have to start paying for it, but you're completely addicted!  Anyway, after a full morning of orientation, we were taken around to our offices.  After working at a cubicle last summer where I shared one computer with three other interns, I wasn't prepared to see where I would be working this summer.  My office is located on the 33rd floor of the MetLife building downtown, with a huge window overlooking the Arch!  I had a moment similar to Melanie Griffith in Working Girl or the Jeffersons, where I had that rush of adrenalin and I was like, "I have arrived!"

How Men and Women Can Work Together at Law Firms [Clippings]

Jennifer Bluestein, director of professional development for the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie, observes that most training to remedy gender inequalities at firms is geared toward women. Presentations teach female associates how to climb upward. Bluestein argues that male partners also need to learn how to reach downward. There are three ways that senior men can offer a hand up:

Managing partners, practice group chairs and senior partners can help women have the same chance of succeeding as the men do. First, women need mentors, just as men do. Second, women need flexibility and career choices, just as men do. Third, women need to be involved in building client relationships as part of succession-planning, just as men do. These three necessities are important for all attorneys; however, when these needs go unmet for women, it has a more negative impact.

In the body of the article, Bluestein explains obstacles and solutions to improve women's access to mentoring, flexibility, client development and succession planning. It's worth a read. It's worth an email to your firm's senior partners--or, if that's too direct, to your firm's professional development director.

Five Big Law firms ranked in Fortune's 100 best companies to work for

Five of the biggest Big Law firms are ranked in Fortune magazine's 2008 ranking of the 100 best companies to work for. The issue hits newsstands today, February 4th. Arnold & Porter comes in at #19, Alston & Bird at #31, Bingham McCutchen at #41, Perkins Coie at #55, and Nixon Peabody at #66. [The full list of companies is here--I tripled-checked, but tell me in the comments if I missed mentioning any legal employers on the list!]

To compile the ranking, Fortune and the Great Place to Work Institute surveyed just over 400 companies that are at least 7 years old and have more than 1,000 U.S. employees. So only the biggest of Big Law were eligible to be ranked. Writing up yet another Big Law ranking, I feel compelled to link to some of the best solo and small practice blogs at the same time--just to keep another option on the horizon for readers. Because for some lawyers, the answer to "where's the best place to work?" is surely "for yourself!" No matter what Fortune magazine says.

More on methods and highlights of the ranking, after the jump...

Clippings: NYT on Law Firms' Changing Attitudes towards Work/Life Balance

Lisa Belkin interviews Deborah Epstein Henry and details the recent and rapid transformation of many law firms' policies in today's New York Times article, Who's Cuddly Now? Law Firms.

Among other signs of change, Belkin noted this touching vignette:

A harbinger of changing times might well be the brief filed by the hard-driving white-shoe firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges of New York, asking a judge to reschedule hearings set for Dec. 18, 19, 20 and 27 of last year.

“Those dates are smack in the middle of our children’s winter breaks, which are sometimes the only times to be with our children,” the lawyers wrote.

The judge moved the hearings.

A Note on the Democratic In-Fighting and the Image of Corporate Counsel

So in the scuffle that was the Democratic Presidential Debate last night Clinton and Obama exchanged a number of accusations including that Clinton served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart; Obama worked for a law firm that represented an inner-city slumlord. Whether or not those barbs are accurate, in good taste, or relevant has generated a lot of media coverage. But the accusations that really caught my attention were the references both Clinton and Obama made to their opponent's service with "corporate law firms."

Who Will Listen?

Okay, so yesterday I posted a little about how it is foolish to not give young women attorney's a seat at the table of discussion about work/life balance. Perhaps I could've made it clearer but I just don't get why law firm decision makers would listen to scholars, "experts" and other partners about what it is that the current generation is looking for in life and exclude the opinions of the very people they are trying to recruit and retain.

Does earning a biglaw salary mean that there is no room for my voice in the discussion on work/life balance?

I had the chance today to engage some law firm partners and others in a discussion about worklife balance. The focus of the discussion was whether or not law firm management should listen to the concerns of law students and young associates when determining business practices and trying to attract and retain women attorneys.

A funny thing happened. The partners kept bringing the discussion back to the fact that I, and others like me, now earn(ed) $160,000 as first year associates at big law firms. When I said to one person that I wasn't talking about money and that I didn't understand why the conversation had to keep returning to that issue she said to me, "it is what it is, associates make decisions about where to work based on money."

What does BigLaw Mean to Women?

There is an interesting story on the front page of the Washington Post today about a female 3L at Georgetown that is torn between taking a big firm job that could really help her pay off her debt or turning it down to try for a public interest fellowship that she really wants but that doesn't hire until March of next year.

The story portrays this woman as really distraught by the idea of working for big law. She all but casts the position as a sell-out job for somebody like her that wants to change the world, help the little guy and maybe be an academic. The story is entitled, "A mixed blessing for aspiring lawyers." I assume the mixed blessing is the high salary combined with the crappy work.

Because I wasn't torn at all by my decision to work in biglaw I can hardly relate to the subject of this story. However, it got me thinking about the recent NAWL survey of women in law firms that I posted about here and here. The underlying assumption of that survey and the related report is that the presence of women at law firms is something important, good, and an indication that we women have sort-of "made it" in the legal profession. The report classifies a higher percentage of women at a firm as favorable and women leaving firms as bad. However, the WaPo story indicates something very different.

Maybe success (or even a job at) biglaw doesn't matter to women. Maybe even such a job is seen as inferior to many women and they take such jobs reluctantly as some sort of punishment or sentence until their school loans are paid off and they can pursue what they truly love about the law.

NAWL’s National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms, Part II

In a previous post, I talked about some of the results recently reported by NAWL for their annual national survey. For the first time, NAWL asked firms questions about the retention policies and efforts to retain women lawyers. The survey focused on three structural issues: large minimum hour requirements, poor part-time policies, and the existence (or not) of a women’s initiative within the firm.

My stay-at-home father