choosing a firm at OCI & how to become a "star" associate
learn from my mistakes!!
One of the best parts about having a publisher is that I finally have other people to talk to about strategies, initiatives, and all of the never-ending planning that goes on in my head about my book (and what comes after the book, which I still don’t know). The wonderful Author Development team at PRH took a look at all of my online initiatives and had one suggestion for my Substack that was so simple and genius that I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it myself: split up Ask Cece from my essays.
Duh! I love reading your questions and helping you think through your life. But previously, my ability to do so was hampered by my own writing paralysis when it came to essays (and my book, and articles, and really everything). So as part of my Behavior Elimination Diet™, I’m revamping my Substack.
Going forward, you will receive two newsletters a month: one will be an essay; and one will be the Ask Cece column (and if you have a better name than that, lmk!). (I would like to eventually move towards biweekly or weekly newsletters, but I know that is too ambitious given the fact that, idk, I still haven’t finished writing my book.)
I would also like to one day turn on paid subscriptions for this Substack—that day is very far from now, but if you value my writing and thinking and would like to support my work in the future, please consider pledging a subscription. You won’t be charged until I am 120% sure that I am able to provide enough value to turn on paid subscriptions. You’ll also get to make me cry happy tears, which is what happened when I read the note accompanying my first pledge ever (ily, Rachel!!!).
Okay, okay—enough preamble. Let’s get on with answering your burning questions about biglaw OCI and making the most of your associate years! And if you’re hankering for even more insights and tea about biglaw, law school, and the legal profession, check out my recent guest appearance on Thinking LSAT.
How do I decide which biglaw firm to work for?
With OCI season coming soon, what was your thought process for choosing which big law firm to work for?
- Angelica
Oh boy. I actually have many gripes with how OCI (on-campus interviewing) is run and how the Office of Career Services (OCS) is a biased actor who doesn’t disclose their biases to law students.
I decided on my firm during OCI mainly because I sat down with an OCS guidance counselor to go through my list of offers and they told me, “Don’t you want that shiny name on your resume? You can always switch firms later,” and I—because I did not know any lawyers and placed my full faith and credit in OCS, silly me—truly believed that OCS had my best interests at heart. I declined offers from firms with much larger and robust intellectual property/privacy/tech practice groups—which is the area I wanted to practice in—and instead went to work at the highest-ranked firm that I had received an offer from. (I also was super insecure about whether I would be a good lawyer and freaked out at the idea of trying to compete with other summer associates for a spot in a desired practice group, which I’ll elaborate more on below.)
Nine years later, I can confidently tell you that the way I went about it, the way that OCS advised me to go about it, was dumb. Not catastrophic—because I really enjoyed my summer experience and my overall biglaw experience—but still undoubtedly dumb.
Here’s how I would advise my younger self today:
Practice group rankings are more important than firm rankings. If you have particular practice areas you want to work in, look up the Chambers rankings for those specific practice areas. Prioritize Chambers rankings over general firm prestige rankings. The quality of work that you are exposed to in a particular practice area will track onto the reputation of your firm in that specific practice area, not the reputation of your firm overall. Even though my first firm was more ~prestigious~ overall, the complexity and intricacy of IP work that I was given at my first firm was well below the complexity and intricacy of IP work at lower-ranked firms who had bigger reputations in IP.
Consider the competitiveness of your desired practice group. This isn’t to say that you should just go with the highest Chambers-ranked firm in your desired practice area, either. There is often an inverse relationship between ranking of practice group and competitiveness to get an offer for that practice group. (See this previous edition of Ask Cece.) Ask about how many first-year associates the group(s) you want have and how those offers are made; talk to those first-year associates, if you can. If you feel comfortable with what they had to do in order to make it happen, then go for it! But if you don’t feel comfortable, then figure out which firm will allow you to do the type of work that you want to do—with an eye towards lateraling later into a firm with a more robust practice group for your desired area of law.
Go where you vibe with partners with whom you want to work. If you don’t have any practice group preferences—which you should have before deciding to go to law school (but if you didn’t, don’t panic and read on)—then figure out where you vibe with partners that do work that you are interested in doing. Not vibe as in “become BFFs with,” but vibe as in “get along with and have compatible working styles with.” Your colleagues and the partners with whom you work will be a huge contributor to your happiness at the firm.
I remember meeting an associate once who told me that they picked their practice group because they liked all of the people—I didn’t understand that reasoning at the time and even judged them for that decision-making, but after seeing firsthand and secondhand the difference between working with a partner I vibe with and a partner whose working style makes me want to jump off a cliff, I totally understood where they are coming from now!Don’t stress the decision too much. If you’re weighing offers from multiple biglaw firms, you’re gonna be okay. Getting your foot in through the door is one of the hardest parts of biglaw. Once you’re a full-fledged associate, lateraling is super common (subject to general market demands, which you can’t control, anyway).
Didn’t end up getting an offer from the competitive practice group that you were shooting for? Work a few months and lateral. (A friend worked just eight months at their first firm before lateraling to the practice group they wanted at another firm.) Did end up doing the type of work you wanted but not loving how your practice area seems secondary to all others? Get your experience and then lateral. Remember that you always have options, and it’s never too late to make a change.
How can I differentiate myself from all the other biglaw associates? (plus some nerding out about video games)
I just graduated from law school and am starting at a firm, I want to focus on developing my own talents as a unique attorney, not just as a standard biglaw associate. You've obviously been successful at being unique in the industry. Do you have any recommendations for how I could make myself different from others? I'm looking to focus on tech transactions, and already have a list of books to read on the subject + plan on going to industry mixers (all after the bar exam, of course).
Lastly, glad to hear you recommend the Famicom Detective Club, I'll check it out some time. The original Ace Attorney trilogy is one of the best produced detective/deduction visual novel games out there (even if the stuff outside the courtroom is a little slow). And apparently "Paranormasight" is game that came out this year and is really good, but I haven't had the time to check it out yet. Thanks again for reading this, hope you have a great day.
- Adrian
Congrats on being done with the bar exam!! I hope you duly celebrated after and are enjoying a fun bar trip or staycation.
On the topic of how to stand out as a biglaw associate—this was a question that plagued me a lot as a first-year, too. My confidence about being a good lawyer was absolutely shattered by my Legal Research & Writing instructor and the fact that I didn’t graduate from law school with honors. I was pretty convinced that I was going to be an average associate, which then made it all the more surprising when I realized that I understood the world of a biglaw firm more than I apparently understood the world of academia.
First things first—you have to be a baseline “good associate” in order for other things to matter. Be proactive about process and project management, which are 100% things within your control even when you know nothing about the substantive laws; be relatively available; don’t miss deadlines; and group all of your questions into a daily email (unless the associate or partner tells you it’s okay otherwise). And be enthusiastic!
After you’re seen as a “good associate” by others and establish that halo effect for yourself, then you can start working on what your professional comparative advantage will be. Start thinking big-picture—about your practice group, your firm, the legal industry at large. What do you see missing? What needs aren’t being met? What new technology or societal advancement is something that isn’t well-understood?
For example, here are real-life anecdotes that senior associates and partners have told me about how they identified and exploited gaps they observed as juniors:
An IP associate realized that no one in the group seemed to know about how IP is treated in bankruptcy, so they read all of the IP provisions in the Bankruptcy Code (apparently not that long) so that they could chime in on IP aspects of bankruptcy proceedings;
During the dawn of e-discovery, an associate liaises with the e-discovery vendor to learn as much about search terms as they can, becoming the firm’s resident e-discovery expert (because the partners, who did not interface with e-discovery as juniors, simply will not have that expertise) [there is a very clear analog at the moment with technology- and AI-assisted reviews]; and
An associate starts hearing about blockchain and cryptocurrency, spends time understanding everything they can about it, and then is able to brief partners on aspects of matters involving cryptocurrency and even bring in their own clients.
In effect, being a standout associate is about two things: (1) being detail-oriented and responsive and meeting your billable hours requirements, which people tell you about a lot already; and (2) thinking about the big picture and developing your professional comparative advantage so that you can bring in your own clients, which people don’t tell you about as much. Paying attention to this second factor is critical to developing your own agency and power in biglaw.
(P.S. I hope you enjoy Famicom Detective Club! I also looooved Paranormasight, although it’s much scarier than either the Ace Attorney series or Famicom. I’m currently playing and enjoying Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, which is made by the same developers that created Danganronpa (my favorite series of all time!!) and the AI: The Somnium Files series (another fave).)
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