Small firms

The "Small Firm" is often invoked as the cure for what ails the profession: it offers a real work/life balance, young lawyers gain "genuine" experience from the get-go, the clients are all orphans and puppies and so on.

Tony Waller, a career services dean at Illinois, tells us that 2 types of students are interested in small firms: those who feel they've no other options and those who are genuinely attracted to the potential lifestyle. Symmetrically, there are also 2 types of small firms: those in markets where there are no other sort of firm, and those in large urban markets. Apparently, the latter--the small fish in the big pond--tend to look askance at student applicants, believing that "we are your seventh choice and we know it." In situations where the firm actually is a last-resort option, Waller counsels his students to seriously consider taking such a job: "employment somewhere is preferable to unemployment." He emphasizes to them the value of incremental increase to the graduates' experience ("adding to your toolkit"): "Some of your classmates will have left a big law firm after a few years, having done nothing but review depositions; at the same point in your career, you'll be able to say you can run a trial."

Waller had an interesting point on the subject of "Millennials" (easily the buzzword of this conference). According to the dean, this generation is so thoroughly inculcated in the primacy of "prestige" that many can't grasp some basic math: "$160,000 in Chicago equals $92,000 in Bloomington, Ind., which is equal to $64,000 in Carbondale, Ill." His frustration was obvious at seeing student after student make ultimately unhappy decisions based on the wrong criteria.

Kids these days!

                                                                         -posted by brian