Reply to If you could do Biglaw all over again...

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[quote=Anonymous]Recognize that for a long time, your "client" is not the client, but other people in the firm.  As a junior partner, I recognize that my primary client is still in fact the partner with the direct client relationships. Everything I do is towards the goal of making his life and relationships with our clients smoother. Just by way of example: if he asked me to look into something, I know that he wants to understand it before talking to the client. Provide that information to him in the best way possible to accomplish that (in our case, a short bulleted email with headings and underlinings. He doesn't want a novella). Don't always be doing things in the biggest, longest, best way. Do them in the common sense way.  What is the most helpful work product?

Also, just be a generally nice person to be around. Applying this strategy, I've been able to carve a pretty great work life balance in an interesting area of the law -- but I'm only a mediocre lawyer. Being a normal, helpful human being is a lot more helpful than being a nerd or super worker.

Strategize early on for the life you want in the long term.  Pick the partners and practice area with decent work flow, decent hours and good personalities. Establish early on that your value added is doing good work, being a nice person, being responsive (including jumping on the occassional weekend last minute item) and not a face-time long hours person. It never makes sense to pour in tons of hours as an associate, because there are only two possible outcomes: One, you establish yourself as the person who puts in long hours, and so you still have to do this as a partner; or two, you leave biglaw after a few years, only to get paid the exact same as the associates who billed 1800 hours for 5 years.  No one puts in 2500 hours as an associate, to find their hours drop off as a partner.[/quote]

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