Why will I not participate in on-campus recruiting next fall? I have no interest in working at a big law firm.

This is not a position of idealism. Except for a couple isolated exceptions, every lawyer I've met who worked at a big firm I found to be an insufferable idiot. Every lawyer whom I liked and respected (or hired to represent me) has been an independent practitioner or ran their own firm.

As a first-year this position will earn you a mixture of pity and contempt. But I have different motivations for being in law school than many of my classmates, and thus different goals for what I want to do with the degree afterwards.

One major difference is that I already had my "work terrible hours to pay your dues" career experience when I worked in the technology business in the 90s. It was totally worthwhile and totally necessary. I recommend it to all my classmates whose previous work experience may be, shall we say, somewhat light. But having done it once, why would I want to do it again?

Not that I think that because I worked for some years in an unrelated field that should give me some kind of shortcut into the legal field. No, I start at the bottom with everyone else. But the specific costs & specific benefits of working at a large firm do not appeal to me.

NB. A recent insight into big-firm marketing: a second-year student was talking to me about how she had just been flown to New York for a 2nd interview. She was extremely amazed & excited that THEY PAID for her plane ticket & hotel! Woohoo, a free trip! I gently suggested that the trip was not, in the long term, free; she insisted quite firmly that it was. It's great to be new to the working world, I hear they have free coffee and pencils too.

30 Oct 04