Should BigLaw Associate Jump Ship?

For those of you who have been following the adventures of BigLaw Associate you know that she anonymously on the trials and tribulations (bull shit) of working in a mega-firm. She is anticipating that she will ultimately be discovered as the anonymous blogger and be fired by her firm. She thinks she may quit, but is afraid as most any high paid associate at a prestigious firm would be. Here is what she says:

      " I’m having difficulties shaking the sense that a BigLaw job is a mark of success. I have worked very hard to get where I am, and I am sure that quitting the Firm will feel like a defeat (and like great weight lifted off my chest, of course). Even worse, I have this nagging suspicion that others will view it as a defeat and I will branded a loser. I can just imagine the whispering at the next family re-union: "BLA had so much promise, but they say he just couldn’t hack it! And now he’s working solo, poor guy. They say "solo" really means "so-low" (snicker) … , get it?"

There is no denying that some people, primarily non-lawyers, but also the occasional non-BigLaw lawyer, look at me with a touch of awe when I tell them I work for the Firm. I reluctantly admit that it tickles my vanity a little bit. Just dropping the name of the Firm gets me immediate respect I might otherwise have to earn. Earning respect sounds like a lot of work. How good does one have to be to get respect as a lawyer, without the brand recognition of a prestigious BigLaw, such as the Firm?"

I think Big Law Associate captures the essence of BigLaw Life perfectly. It is all form over substance. Associates rarely get to do anything meaningful and spend their careers pushing paper and finding new ways to bill clients for work which may not even be relevant. I know because I have worked at these mega-firms. Your self esteem as an associate is all tied up in your firm name and your high salary. I remember one day I looked in the mirror and had no idea who I had become. How could it be that I had this prestigious job and all this money and no sense of self? The irony was not lost on me. I realized that much of BigLaw Life is smoke and mirrors. BigLaw creates an entire culture built around ego and its own sense of prestige. BigLaw creates fear within that culture that anything outside BigLaw’s front doors is failure. BigLaw leverages that fear in order to keep associates and partners in place.

The truth is that if you really want to practice law, chances are that you will never do it at BigLaw. Practicing law is not drafting memos, summarizing records and researching law. Practicing law is client contact, stepping into court and working the front lines of a case. I found at BigLaw that the mid-level associates had quickly become less focused on their big salaries and much more focused on the fact that they never got to go to court to do anything meaningful. If you graduated first in your class, do you really want to spend twenty years carrying someone else’s bag around the courthouse?

I think that BigLaw Associate should jump; should quit big law life and find a niche at a smaller or perhaps even her own firm. I think she will find that instead of losing her sense of self she will find her sense of self. She may even find the profession that she thought she was going in when she went to law school. What do you think? Log on to the BigLaw Associate blog and post a comment if you think that she should be supported and inspired about a new life outside the BigLaw front doors.