Detailed Comparison of the Different Types of Law Firms
[00:00:00] Which is better, according to you in the fifth year of corporate associate-- a big firm or a small law firm.
I think that it depends on what your goal is.
If you're a corporate associate and your goal is to go in-house, then you're almost always better off coming from bigger firms. A bigger firm is going to provide a better brand and law firms like having people coming from bigger firms not in-house. Companies prefer people from bigger firms because they're coming from brand new places and they trust the training.
If your goal is to go in-house, you're better off staying at a big firm. If you feel like you can bring in clients, a big firm sometimes has a better name. So larger clients may be more comfortable joining a big firm than a smaller firm, so that can help you.
If you want to build a practice of smaller to mid-size companies, tech companies, or newer companies, then the smaller firm might be better for you. It's all kind of a question of the types of companies you want to work for each type of firm, the types of clients you want to bring in, and if you want to bring in big company [00:01:00] clients, then, you're probably better off with the big firm corporate work. You're more likely to get more sophisticated corporate work at a larger firm, but not necessarily.
Sometimes you could work at a smaller firm that has more sophisticated work as well. One thing I noticed when the economy is doing very well, attorneys will typically be fine at larger law firms. When the economy slows down larger law firms will very rapidly cut people, generally.
And when those big law firms cut people what that means is, it's very difficult to hold on to your job, even as a senior. Especially, as a senior associate but smaller law firms do not cut people as much. They tend to work for smaller companies and those smaller companies tend not to have as many problems.
