Legal Career Options
In this section...
Private Practice
Private practice typifies the popular image of what a lawyer does. Each year, some 60% of I.U. graduates choose to begin their careers in some form of private practice setting. Within its boundaries are a wide variety of arrangements, commonly divided into solo practice and practice with small, medium and large law firms. Solo practice and small firms can be found anywhere, but medium and large firms are most heavily concentrated in urban areas. Throughout the nation, 85% of all attorneys work in law firms with 15 or less attorneys, 90% work in law firms with 10 or less attorneys, 8«% work in firms with 11-50 attorneys, and 1«% work in law firms with 50 or more attorneys.
Solo Law Practice
Solo practice offers the possibility of flexibility and independence. Some of the advantages are the ability to be one's own boss; to set one's own working hours; and freedom from hierarchical structures which many feel interfere with legal practice. Solo practice has disadvantages as well: the inability to rely on other attorneys to help with a heavy caseload; the restriction on free time when business is good or frustrated boredom when business is bad; and the lack of a support system such as is present in the hierarchical structure of a law firm. Many solo practitioners could easily be partners in prestigious firms but choose to practice law where they are the sole decision-makers. Solo practice attracts people who are self-starters, self-motivated, self-disciplined, and enjoy controlling their future.
Solo practice is often difficult to enter directly from law school. There are large start-up expenses and the need for enough clients to pay the bills until the practice can really get established and earn a reputation in the community. Since referrals from other lawyers are extremely important in most solo practices, most lawyers who go this route wait until they have some experience as an associate before venturing out on their own. This strategy gives the attorney the basic legal skills and familiarity with the business elements of law practice that are necessary in any practice, as well as the initial contacts necessary to survive. Some solo practitioners band together in what are called "space sharing arrangements". In these situations, a group of solo practitioners will jointly take office space and share the costs of libraries, support staff, computer, word processing and photocopying equipment. Many find that this type of arrangement is very cost effective and combines some of the benefits of working in a small firm with the independence of being a solo practitioner. For the recent graduate considering a solo practice, affiliation with lawyers in a space sharing arrangement would be the most highly recommended route to go.
The Small Firm
Small firms, generally defined as a firm of less than ten people, vary from large city to rural or suburban area and from general to specialized areas of practice. Most small firms engage in the general practice of law, but some firms, particularly in metropolitan areas, specialize in a particular practice area (some of these firms are formed by the defection of a segment, or even an entire specialty department from a larger established firm). These break-off firms who specialize in one or two areas are known as "boutiques".
A general law practice covers a wide variety of areas of law and may involve any matter that comes in the office door. Most small firms practice both trial and office work in estate planning, probate, tax, criminal law, divorce/custody and business law. Normally, the small firm will take any matter it is competent to handle unless there is a conflict of interest. Matters not handled may be referred to another firm or to a referral service. The attorney in a small, general practice does not ordinarily have the time to devote to a case that requires a large amount of time. Large, demanding cases can be referred to firms which can spread the workload and absorb the time loss. Some firms may reciprocate by referring cases back to the smaller firm.
The small-firm attorney may find him/herself specializing in a particular area after the first few years of practice, but may not be strictly limited to that area. A general practitioner must remain flexible and willing to learn. In comparison to a large firm, a smaller firm will have the greater number of individual and small business clients. Thus, the attorney in a smaller firm will have the opportunity to deal with more "human" problems, and to deal more with everyday issues. Additionally, the small firm will typically be involved with the client in all phases of his or her business or personal dealings and will often be asked for advice even in areas outside the firm's expertise. In most smaller law firms, the ability to generate business or, at the very least, the potential to develop that ability is extremely important to the firm.
One of the newer developments in smaller practices are the so-called "boutique firms". These small firms function and manage themselves much as large firms do. Some, because of the nature of their client base and practice, compete directly with large law firms for clients and many are spin-offs from larger firms. As corporations continue to develop their in-house staffs and do routine business and corporate work, the bulk of their "referable" business in the future may be tax, securities, patent, labor and similar matters which are beyond the general expertise of the in-house corporate lawyer and, therefore, worth the cost of an attorney in private practice. Since these firms are modeled on larger firm styles and philosophies, many of them make an effort to project their growth and plan their hiring. Some even compete head-on with the salaries offered by larger law firms and recruit on campus for summer clerks and associates. Many, however, choose to hire new lawyers laterally after they have had the benefit of training by another law firm.
There are a wide variety of ways in which new associates are brought into the smaller firm. In some cases, an associate may start for an initial trial period. This may involve a small initial salary, with raises gained on merit, skill, personal potential, and/or firm resources. Some firms provide incentives for bringing business into the firm or a percentage of the collected total billings of the associate. Nationally, for the Class of 1994, graduates taking positions in small firms (2-10 attys) earned a median salary of $32,000 and a mean salary of $33,851. The above mentioned "boutique" firms will represent the people earning the higher end of the spectrum. It is important that students understand that small law firms are businesses. The concepts of "cash flow" and overhead are important ones for students interested in smaller firms to grasp. Most smaller firms prefer to keep their set monthly expenses (overhead) as low as possible because the flow of money coming into the firm may be sporadic, especially if the firm is a litigation firm specializing in cases that are taken on contingency. It is very important that students have an understanding of the type of business that a firm has, what percent is hourly and what percent of revenue is based on percentage of settlements in cases in order to evaluate the salary offer being made.
In most cases there will be little formal training available to the new associate in the small firm, although advice will be available if the other attorneys are willing to spare the time. For this reason, the law student planning to seek employment in a small firm would do well to become involved in clinical programs or have clerking experience, which would give a working knowledge of some legal basics. The associate may work for one or for all the partners and some small firms give new associates primary responsibilities for the firm's legal research.
Partnership agreements vary from firm to firm. The goal is to allow all partners to benefit in relation to their contribution to the firm. A new partner is expected to "buy into" the firm, and generally starts out with a smaller share than the existing partners. All partners have a salary draw which is based upon their seniority or their contribution to the firm. In an established firm, the offer of partnership could come within the first five years, perhaps sooner at a growing firm, or longer depending on geographic region.
An associate is expected to produce sufficient billable hours each month to cover personal salary, chargeable percentage of office overhead, and contribution to the profit of the firm. If the firm plans to expand or remodel, the partners must generate fees or contribute funds to cover the additional expenses. Expansion is generally a response to excessive firm workload. A new associate should be aware of the potential frustration that can occur if the work is insufficient to occupy the expansion staff or to generate sufficient income and profit. In addition, since growth is a reactive rather than proactive decision, a new associate can plan to reach a point of complete over-work before the partnership will decide that adding another lawyer makes good economic sense.
The job search for smaller law firms can be a frustrating experience since most smaller firms have trouble projecting their needs. There is no good time to contact them - the decision to hire could be made at any time in the year. Although firm requirement concerning academic performance vary, the academic record is often given secondary importance to the overall competency and personality of the applicant. In evaluating various firms, remember that personality is extremely important. In a small work setting, it is essential that all parties get along; personality conflicts are one of the key causes of dissatisfaction at a smaller firm.
While some firms do let the Career Services Office know of available job openings, very few conduct on-campus interviews. The applicant needs to plan on an organized, targeted, letter writing and contact-making campaign to gather the majority of his/her leads. Small law firms tend to be very disorganized in their hiring process. Since they generally only hire every few years, they do not have an organized structure for hiring like larger firms. Most smaller firms are interested in people with some experience - judicial clerkship, prior practice or summer clerking/clinical experience. One of the best doors into a smaller firm is through a summer or part-time job. These firms tend to look to "hometown" students or students with ties to the area to fill these positions. These positions frequently lead to permanent positions at graduation time.
Medium Size Law Firms
A medium sized firm generally has somewhere between 11-50 members and, depending on the firm, could resemble a small firm or larger firm in many respects. For the practitioner in the medium sized firm, business can no longer be conducted over lunch and committee structures need to be in place to run the firm. Depending on the personalities involved, however, you often find firms in this size range run more "ad hoc" than probably should be the case or are run by a dominant senior partner who still calls the shots. Once a firm reaches 20-25 lawyers, a firm administrator is often hired. The firm becomes concerned with growth through on-campus interviewing rather than casual hiring practices. However, because of the size of the firm, it is very difficult for the firm to predict its needs and these firms are sometimes vague about their needs and frequently find the need to hire outside the fall process, or to hire laterally to fill their unprojected needs.
Medium sized growth-oriented firms seek to be competitive with larger firms for clientele and for outstanding law students. National starting salaries in 1994 for firms with 11-25 attorneys showed a median salary of $40,000 ($41,604 mean) and for firms with 26-50 attorneys the median was $48,000 ($49,324 mean). Generally, the structure of the medium sized firm is more flexible than a larger firm. Departments and sections emerge and specialties are fostered but there is more cross-over and they are less formal than in a larger firm. The medium sized firm may let a new lawyer try on more areas of law than a large firm would be in a position to do. Medium sized firms tend to have smaller profit margins than larger firms, since there are fewer partners and associates generating work. At the same time, the medium sized firm has had to invest substantial amounts of dollars in overhead related costs such as prime office space, computers, word processing, libraries and the like, these costs may be a bigger proportionate factor in the firm's earnings. Medium sized firms need to be well-managed.
Some medium sized firms tend to be highly-specialized operations, such as labor law firms, tort litigation firms, insurance defense firms, etc. while others are general practice firms. Depending on the nature of the practice and the backgrounds of the lawyers, the academic qualifications required and salaries for new associates can vary substantially. Training practices will vary from a casual mentor-type system to a sophisticated well thought out training program. Length of time to partnership can also vary but, in general, at medium sized firms most hiring is done with the expectation that an associate who does good work, shows good judgement and the potential for developing clients, will become a partner.
Medium sized law firms, if they can project their needs and recruit on campus, almost always limit their recruiting to schools regionally and locally. It is extremely unlikely, for example, that a medium sized New York firm will travel all the way to Indiana to recruit law students. The economics of the recruiting process just don't allow that kind of large scale recruiting. Students seeking positions outside the immediate region will need to contact firms on their own and, normally, take the initiative of making a trip to the area to interview. These sized firms are very unlikely to pay travel expenses for first interviews.
Large Law Firms
Large law firms are the most institutional of the private practice environments. These firms with upwards of 50-300 lawyers and that number again in support staff are no longer small business but, in essence, large corporate structures that cannot be run on the loose management style of their smaller counterparts. The most often cited advantage of a large law firm is sophistication of practice: the matters handled by the firm typically present complicated legal questions. Large corporations traditionally look to large firms for legal representation, usually on the assumption that these firms have the resources to provide a broad range of legal services on a variety of corporate problems. Matters that are referred to outside counsel are typically of sufficient economic importance to justify the time and effort required for a detailed and careful work product of high quality (and the equivalent high fees charged by the large law firm).
Large law firms are facing a number of challenges today. With the emergence of the high-quality "boutique" firm and with a more sophisticated corporate counsel structure, large law firms are finding that they need to compete for business more than they ever had to before. Most large firms have marketing specialists whose job it is to take care of the public relations and marketing programs for the firm and firms are asked to present proposals to corporate clients for new representation. Firms are faced with negotiating fees, as well. No longer can firms simply charge what they want without necessary documentation or justification to the client. Firms are getting larger, as well. More and more firms are merging with smaller firms to expand their expertise in certain areas and lateral hiring is becoming commonplace. Mega-firms are emerging with branch office in cities all over the country and the world. With costs increasing and more competition for business, some large law firms hire large numbers of associates and are very honest with them concerning their expectations about partnership. In order to maintain the profitable pyramid structure, a firm should have more associates than partners. For a person to make partner in a large law firm, they must achieve an extremely high level of expertise in their practice area, show top notch judgement in the business of running a large law firm, and show the ability to retain and get new clients. Not an easy order. Potential for partnership will vary from firm to firm and from geographic location to geographic location. All is not grim, however, salaries are extremely high and training is normally at a very high level. A student with good training and experience, can often find that they are very marketable after a few years at a large law firm.
Large law firms aggressively recruit on-campus to hire summer clerks and associates. The best route into a large law firm is through their summer clerkship program. These programs can involve anywhere from 5-50+ clerks, depending on the size of the firm and the firm would much prefer to hire their new associates from this pool. Starting salaries in 1994 for large firms were as follows: firms with 51-100 attorneys brought a median salary of $55,000 ($56,774 mean); firms with 101-250 attorneys had a median of $60,800 ($62,603 mean); and mega firms with 250+ attorneys had a median of $70,000 ($72,035 mean). Many large law firms receive thousands of resume annually and can select from a number of qualified applicants. These firms will often prefer to hire students with top notch academic credentials. Additional criteria is also considered and highly valued activities such as law journal or moot court credentials can often supplement the applicant in this area. While large law firms are the ones most likely to interview on-campus, most firms have a group of schools that have historically been their feeder schools. In the early 90's these firms have reduced the number of schools they visit, relying heavily on their feeder schools and student write-ins.
Students are urged to contact non-visiting large law firms directly. Firms simply cannot interview on campus at all good law schools. Recruiting on-campus is very expensive and firms must constantly be reviewing the schools they visit to insure that they are spending their recruiting dollars wisely. If a firm does not regularly hire students out of on campus visits, or if the school's statistics indicate that there are very few students accepting positions in the firm's area of the country, it just doesn't make economic sense for the firm to visit the campus. Most large firms have administrators who run their hiring programs. If a firm is interested in a school but can't visit on campus, often they will be receptive to reviewing resumes of interested students submitted either by the student directly or through a resume packet sent by the school. If a student's record is strong enough, the firm will sometimes decide to pay the expenses of that student for an office visit. Some firms will send the student a "when you're in town" letter indicating that the firm would be happy to visit with them if the student visits the city at his/her own expense.
In large law firms training and supervision are organized programs. A new associate will either be assigned to a department or assigned to a rotation program where they will spend several months in two or three departments before deciding which department to settle into. Many firms have dropped the rotation program in response to the escalation in starting salaries, preferring to assign a student to a given department initially. In addition to supervision and training by senior attorneys, many firms also sponsor classes in Continuing Legal Education and pay the costs for lawyers to attend various programs. Evaluations are conducted periodically and are essential to the associate in evaluating his or her chances for partnership.
An associate can expect to be considered for partnership after seven to ten years depending on the geographic area. Systems may be flexible, with "buy in" arrangements and various methods of profit division. Some firms have gone to a "junior partnership" or "non-participating" partnership where the new partner will not share in the profits for a few more years but will be extremely well compensated and will be given the flag that they will, probably be chosen as a participating partner. Offers of partnership may depend on fees generated, clients secured, and income produced in excess of salary. Some attorneys may be made permanent associates and do not have the profit sharing benefits of partnership; other attorneys who do not receive offers may, with the help of the firm, establish a practice elsewhere or be connected with many lawyers. For this reason, feedback is extremely important and the new associate will need to keep his/her eyes open concerning the kind of evaluations he or she is given. Another valuable indicator is the turnover rate of the firm, the firm's previous partnership record and the likelihood of expansion. Lack of valuable feedback can be devastating in the long run so this is an important area to get into while interviewing. Partners will not share equally, in general. In most cases, firms "cut the pie" based according to each partner's contribution to the firm, which is not limited to a monetary analysis of fees generated. Many firms have billable hour expectations for partners and associates, sometimes equivalent to three times the salary of the attorney in fees generated.
A new position developing within large law firms is the position of staff attorney. These attorneys either enter the firm under this arrangement or may be given this opportunity as a choice between leaving. An individual hired as a staff attorney is not on the partnership track, nor will they ever be given that option. Staff attorney positions are desirable to those attorneys who do not wish to meet the demands of extremely high billable hours needed to make partner and the responsibility of rainmaking (being responsible for bringing in new clients). Staff attorneys are sometimes known as the backbone of a law firm because they spend most of their time working diligently on cases rather than cultivating clients.