Reply to Best Lawyer Mom Jobs

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "Best Lawyer Mom Jobs"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ve never worked for the federal government, but I’m in a regulatory biglaw practice that regularly interfaces with a couple of federal agencies and they seem to have reasonable hours. I would think this really depends on the agency and their telework policies, culture, etc. - and you can get in at the entry level through the honors program. I don’t know how far in advance they hire, though - when are you graduating? My recollection is that my classmates from law school who did this route applied early in 3L.

If you go the biglaw route (and I think there are advantages to doing this, especially if you want an in-house position, since I don’t think those hire entry-level lawyers), regulatory practices typically have better hours. I switched practices as a junior associate from transactional work to a niche regulatory group, and the hours are not comparable. I generally work a 9-6 work day, and fire drills are pretty rare. This may not apply to all regulatory practices (especially ones that are there for deal support, like antitrust/HSR) and will also probably vary by firm, so you need to do some diligence, but generally it’s true. My group brings in its own work, i.e. we do investigations and regulatory counseling, so we don’t work on deal timelines.

[/quote]

+1. I've heard regulatory work is great for WLB. I didn't get that advice when I went into Big Law (oh well), but I at least had people tell me to focus on litigation as it is often (but not always) more predictable than transactional work. For example, you generally know when discovery is due, deps are happening etc because those dates are set at the start of the case. Further, I was told to avoid general litigation and opt for nice practices where the entire goal was to avoid trial. (After all, part of gen lit's sale to clients is that they are trial lawyers. Trials are fun, but you'll be doing horrible 90 hour weeks when they happen every few years.)

I went into Labor & Employment, which is speciality litigation work. The goal on most lit is to avoid trial (so settling or winning on a dispositive motion) and counseling work is helpful if you want to go in house. Most of the in house L&E lawyers I know have very reasonable hours. Plus, as long as you have employers and employees, you'll have employment law. You can also go work for the EEOC, which is another good WLB pivot.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics