BigLaw: The Good, the Bad, and a Lot of Caveats
We recruiters hear it all the time: “I only want BigLaw.” Or, almost as often: “Get me out of BigLaw - I only want to look at boutiques.” Sometimes our candidates have deep, well-thought-out reasons for wanting to confine their searches to a particular size of firm. But other times, these requests for particular firm sizes are based only on vibes. (Nothing wrong with following a good vibe, but something as weighty as a career move seems like it should have a little more to back it up.)
Today we’ll start with the elephant-sized firms in the room. We’ll look at the advantages (and possible disadvantages) of BigLaw.
First, a little background: “BigLaw” refers to the law firms with the most lawyers, the highest revenue, and the most offices. In 1986, American Lawyer started publishing a list of the country’s largest firms (by revenue). The top one hundred firms on that list are now called the “Am Law 100.” BigLaw firms include old, elite firms that have been on the Am Law 100 list for decades, as well as newer firms - perhaps these firms ascended to the list via merger, or maybe they began as regional powerhouses.
There are entire books, subreddits, and careers devoted to helping lawyers secure coveted jobs in BigLaw. And for good reason! BigLaw has many things to recommend itself.
It’s prestigious (usually). Most BigLaw firms range from “prestigious” to “really, really prestigious.” The name of most BigLaw firms on your resume, alone, is enough to signal to others in the legal industry that you know your (legal) stuff. You can use that firm name to springboard later to a cushy in-house job or a smaller firm with a better work-life balance. You can impress your annoying uncle at Thanksgiving. You can put the firm name on your tombstone (I mean, I wouldn’t, but you could).
(Side note about that pesky little word “most” in the previous paragraph. Because the Am Law rankings are derived purely from revenue, the list includes different types of firms. Some handle very complex, news-worthy sorts of cases and deals. Others handle work like medical malpractice or asbestos - still very lucrative work, but not the same sort of work. A good recruiter can help you untangle what sorts of work different BigLaw firms do, so that you’re making the choice that’s best for your long-term career trajectory.
As long as we’re here in this parenthetical caveat, it’s worth noting that all of the descriptions in this article are generalizations. Every single BigLaw firm isn’t x, y, or z. In other words, don’t come for me!)
BigLaw pays big bucks! With only a handful of exceptions, the highest paying associate jobs are at BigLaw firms. When lawyers talk about “market pay,” they’re referring to the base salary that associates earn at the most prestigious BigLaw firms. Right now (2024), the pay scale at the highest paying Big Law firms is:
So, you know, you can pay off your student loans, get a pretty nice mortgage, send the kids to private school, and still have enough left over to take your recruiter out to dinner (kidding! Lunch is easier for recruiters!).
In addition to paying their associates huge salaries, most BigLaw firms can spend more money on perks - think great snacks in the break room, great meals out with clients and your partner-mentor, great firm outings with summer associates, etc.
Similarly, BigLaw firms have vast resources to spend on firm resources. These resources range from technology and infrastructure (the software and hardware you’ll be using every day, the office space you’ll go into…probably not every day) to support services (paralegals, secretaries, word processing staff - you name it). Don’t discount how much easier your job as a lawyer can be when you’ve got a wealth of resources backing you up - you can get more done more quickly, which means you can bill more and stress less. (Except - well, more on the stress later.)
Finally, most BigLaw firms are full-service firms, which means that a client can go to a BigLaw firm for all types of legal woes. As an attorney, it can be easier to bring in business if you can pitch your firm to a potential client as a solution to more than just one of their problems. It can be harder to bring in business if you’re at a strictly-labor-and-employment shop, for instance. It’s also just nice to have colleagues who do a range of work; there are often opportunities for cross-collaboration and education that you might not have expected.
“Okay,” you might be thinking, “this all sounds fantastic, sign me up!” And for many lawyers, it is fantastic. But there are some drawbacks to working for a BigLaw firm. Much like when you’re choosing a school or a home or a spouse or a hiking backpack, it’s always important to know what you’re getting yourself into - the good and the less good.
Most BigLaw firms have high billable-hour requirements. Most BigLaw firms require, on paper, somewhere between 1900 and 2000 billable hours per year, and at many BigLaw firms, associates are working many, many more hours than 2000. I’ve spoken to some associates for whom this hours requirement isn’t even a drawback - there are associates out there who want to work, because they love what they do and they know that by doing a lot of it, they get better. But there are also lots of associates who love what they do and don’t need to do quite so much of it.
At many BigLaw firms, there can be greater competition and thus higher pressure to perform. The stark truth is that every associate at a BigLaw firm won’t make partner. Many associates don’t want to make partner - they have their sights set, down the road, on an in-house job, a government job, a smaller firm, or a bartending position (I’m not kidding. I once spoke with an utterly lovely fellow who planned to switch to bartending once his loans were paid off.). But the associates who want to be BigLaw partners have a lot of highly qualified colleagues who want the same thing they want, and thus the pressure to perform.
Similarly, it can also be harder to bring in business if you work at a large firm. Most BigLaw firms already have most companies you’ve heard of as clients, or there are insurmountable conflicts standing in the way of representing those potential clients. If you meet a potential client with more modest resources, that client won’t be able to pay BigLaw rates (usually upwards of $1,000 per hour), so business you might have been able to bring in at a smaller firm with lower rates just won’t be business for you at all. Again - no aspirations to make partner? Then this drawback isn’t really a drawback at all for you. Carry on happily with your BigLaw job search.
Sometimes, you’ll get less client contact or less complex assignments as a junior or mid-level BigLaw associate. The “sometimes” is key in that sentence, but it’s still true: sometimes BigLaw is so big that more senior associates, counsel, and partners will have most of the client contact, and they’ll do the more complex work. Thus, instead of, say, deposing a witness, you’ll be stuck in doc review. This is not always true (are you sick of hearing that caveat) - it depends not only on what firm you’re at, but which practice group you’re in.
Which brings us to another (neither inherently negative nor inherently positive) aspect of BigLaw: Your experience can depend heavily on which practice group and which office you’re in. A small satellite office of a behemoth firm can be a very different experience from that firm’s headquarters; a niche practice group with only a few partners can be a very different experience from a general litigation practice with hundreds of lawyers. These are the sorts of differences a recruiter can help you explore in your initial firm research and while you’re interviewing.
Whether it sounds to you like BigLaw is a big nah or a big hoo-rah (sorry, I couldn’t help myself), it’s always worth exploring whether there’s an option out there that matches your needs. Please be in touch any time, and stay tuned for our next installment, an exploration of the world of midsized and boutique firms.