Yet Another Post Providing Advice to BigLaw Associates

[WSJ Law Blog]

Less than a month ago, we blogged a piece written by this impossibly young-looking 50 year old legal consultant named Frank D’Amore (pictured). The piece was about a lot of things, but our focus on it was based on this singular interesting piece of advice from D’Amore: “Don’t Hold Happiness Hostage.”

Well, on Tuesday, D’Amore was at it again. The topic this time: Associates.

D’Amore’s lesson to BigLaw associates sounds like so much advice that gets doled out to associates: intuitive, if not obvious. In D’Amore’s words:

[A]n associate must take charge of his career the day he starts, as he cannot blindly assume that his firm or others will protect him forever.

The operative words here: take charge. Writes D’Amore:

If this recession teaches associates anything, it is the value of looking ahead and not just blissfully plugging along. Engaging in firm citizenship, being a team player and collaborating with others remains important, but those essentials should not obscure the need to also focus on where one’s career is going and how to best improve it.

One might think that this need not be said. But the truth is that law firms are littered with young associates who have no idea what they’re doing there — partly because they really had no idea why they went to law school in the first place. Many were, at the time they applied to law school, simply filled with a powerful but incredibly ill-defined sense of ambition. “Law school seems interesting enough,” one might have thought. “I’ll figure out why I’m there once I’m there.”

The problem, which D’Amore seems to keenly understand, is that this attitude can persist while an associate gamely tries to climb the ladder. At that point, what do you do when it becomes clear you’re not going to make partner? That likely leaves you with the option of lateraling to another firm — and possibly coming to the inconvenient truth that you haven’t really shown that drive, that ambition, that passion for being a lawyer that a new firm is going to want. (After all, chances are it will be much harder to lateral somewhere in this economy than it was for you to get your first-year job in, say, 2002).

How do you avoid getting stuck in this position? D’Amore lays out several piece of advice. Our favorites is this:

First, do not take the easy route by doing work that has no challenge or risk associated with it. An associate’s attractiveness on the market, and to clients and partners in the evaluating firm, will largely be driven by the complexity of work and how well that work is performed.

We agree. And to this, we’d imply add to this our own piece of advice. Try to decide early on during your stint at a firm whether or not it’s for you. If it’s not, take steps to leave. If it is, kick it into high gear. Partnership might await you, but even if it doesn’t, three or four years down the line you’ll be far more likely to land a good next job. And by testing yourself for that stretch, you’ll also have a much better sense of what you like to do, what you’re good at, and what ultimately will make you happy.