DOJ exit opportunities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, as a mother of 3 young ones in biglaw, I think you really need to think about the travel. I used to travel a lot, for pretty long periods of time, and it was FAR worse than me working some late nights. I have found that I spend far more time with my kids, even with biglaw hours, than I did when I was travelling a lot. And the travel was very hard for my husband, who also works a professional job. There is a serious price to be paid for travelling that much, but at least with biglaw, you can usually pretty easily afford help (cleaning service, babysitters, etc.). Will you be able to hire help for all the times you are travelling?

FWIW -- none of my colleagues have ever had a problem getting a position with DOJ once they had some experience (a bunch left around 4-5 years).

I personally would bank your $$$$ while you can at biglaw and then take the jump into DOJ later.

This - it sucks to be married with kids to someone who works/travels a lot but doesn't make a lot - that puts more burden on the spouse due to lack of funds to outsource,

If y do doj, when you are home, to be fair to your spies, you should be prepared to spend time doing a lot of childcare and house care.

If you do big law, you can hire cleaning people, a gardener, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband works in Biglaw, and is now looking to either do Office of General Counsel for a Government Department, or work for the DOJ. He did a Federal Clerkship, went to a top 5 law school, and was on the Law Review.

Which route is more likely to open doors? And if he works for the DOJ, which is more prestigious, AUSA, or a DOJ trial position?

Also, which route will be more family-friendly?

Thanks!

It completely depends on the division within DoJ. And as for prestige, again, that depends on what he wants to do with it. If he wants to litigate, and be in court all the time, he should do AUSA. However, if he wants to work in the private sector in complex commercial civil litigation, it may not help him to work on simple fact pattern criminal matters as an AUSA. So, again it depends on what type of cases he will be working on, and what he ultimately wants to do wafter the experience.