Litigation or Transactional Law Career: Some Advice to Law Students
Jeff Lipshaw, a professor at Suffolk Law School, provides thoughts about choosing a ligation or transactional practice.
"A reader who is interning in a NYC corporate law firm, and about to enter law school, saw my earlier post alluding to the creative possibilities in transactional work, and sought advice about choosing between transactional work and litigation work. I'm happy to share some thoughts.
1. Mostly I will be talking about big firm practice, but I should issue a disclaimer. There's big firm practice, and there's mega-firm practice. The reason it's important to make the distinction is because I'm looking backwards at a career in which many of the fulfilling aspects came later, after I did my time in the trenches (both in litigation and corporate). So there is a substantial period of learning how to chop the wood before a new lawyer gets to build, much less design, the house. My perception is that period is shorter in big firms outside of the financial centers. You will probably take on more responsibility more quickly at a big firm in Detroit than Chicago, in St. Louis than Los Angeles, in Salt Lake City than New York."
Visit Professor Lipshaw's entire post at Legal Profession Blog.
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