Advice for Acquiring Lateral Positions in Biglaw
Hi all,
Currently I'm in my first year post-grad of working in copyright litigation at a small firm on the West Coast (Median at T20-T30). I would like to lateral to a mid-sized or biglaw firm as soon as I can to develop good exit options (ideally would like to go in-house).
Ideally, I want to transition to more transactional work in Entertainment and Soft IP. It seems like I should probably switch to whatever firm might take me closer to that area and establish experience for a year or two.
Besides changing jobs to a more relevant position, is there anything else I can do to stand out as a candidate? I am a member of my State Bar's chapters for Entertainment/IP/Business Law but the events they are offering are a bit hard to attend/pricy, and I'm not sure if they'd significantly set me apart. Any advice on anything I can do to bolster my chances would be great, thanks!
Posted May 24, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC
Network with alum and mass mail, that is the best you can possibly do. also, apply for clerkships to reset your biglaw hireability. Tbh small firm to biglaw is a hard transition to make so early on and soft ip is a really bad practice area choice for biglaw because it is rarer/smaller scale and mostly handled by smaller or mid size firms.
Will do, thank you. Would you happen to know if it's difficult to obtain a clerkship given my grades/background in soft IP? It seems like my experience might be too niche for a clerkship position. I'm also assuming only federal clerkships would be worth doing at this point?
Clerkships are always competitive depending on what type you try for/where and the exact school you went to/ how many judges are alums. Your writing will matter a lot as well. Judges will hire whoever they feel like hiring. You likely won't get a standout clerkship immediately, but apply widely and see what happens. You can use a worse clerkship to resume build for a more impressive second clerkship if you absolutely have to.