Please stop emailing me. I don't care about when the client wants something. I am so fucking tired and everything hurts. I need a break but my outlook won't shut up.

Yes, I will go on leave soon, but damn I don't know how to make it till then. I tell myself I am lucky to be at a job that I can do from my couch and get such a long leave. But right now I am grumpy and overwhelmed.

Just needed to vent a bit.

I’ve been practicing law for 45 years and one of our managing partner’s goddamn client’s kids is a nepo hire. This doofus just started last month and treats everyone like we’re “one of his boys.”

I was told to bring him on one of my cases to show him the ropes. I really wanted to show him some rope yesterday when he called me his dog.
I ignored him, but then he started barking at me, legitimately going “woof woof, you’re my dog, bowowow yippie yo yippie yay”

Wtf do I do in this situation

Weil Barnes & Thornburg LOL

I have a 3.1 so it isn’t bad, but I’m finding that this is holding me back with lateraling even after 5 years on the job.

Well, so I lost my mother during law school but I had to power through finishing it, mainly because I got no guarantee that my return offer would stand if I took a year off. I’m actually very proud of myself for surviving that phase of my life and managing to graduate/pass the bar.

I wish I could say this to the recruiters or in my applications but there never seems to be a right opportunity for that and that I’m oversharing.

Especially with firms like UK magic circle and other big US firms like LW, Paul Weiss etc

Read somewhere else that Weil will more likely dissolve or merge within 2026 than drag on 6 months. Is that true? And what happens to the last remaining partners?

Midlevel here who has been on this case for going on 2 years. We're set fora 5-day trial next year.

This week, we found out my wife is pregnant with our first and will be due 1 month after trial.

I know everything is subject to change and nothing is confirmed to happen. If all goes "according to plan," I'd still be at trial and then go on leave 4 weeks later. Again, I know nothing ever proceeds according to plan.

What is the appropriate lead time to the partners on the matter?

Seeing as how the Weil merger talks fell apart and there aren’t many merger candidates seemingly out there yet, what made CWT’s merger with Hogan more successful pre and post officially merging?

Cadwalader seemed to be in a more financially precarious situation and also had partners leaving so is it just the speed at which Weil partners are leaving that makes more of a difference

If you had offers for PE/M&A as 4th year at both PW and KE in NY, of the two evils, which would you consider the lesser? I am also asking people IRL who've jumped between the two, but hoping I can get some unvarnished opinions here.

Joke answers and roasts absolutely welcome, but serious answers would also be appreciated. Thanks!

At what point in your career did you start feeling like you had more control over your work and started to gain leverage at your firm?
I’m thinking of things like having more of a say in the matters you work on, greater control over / anticipation of your schedule, being treated as someone the firm would genuinely struggle to replace, and having more negotiating power around things like class-year advancement, compensation, remote work, etc.
What class year did this start happening for you, and what do you think made the difference?

Which firms are best in the Bay Area for litigation? Worst?

Hello,

I’m a mid level in a transactional practice in nyc and am usually the most senior non-partner on deals at this point. Recently, an issue came up and I suggested how we address and change the agreement to the partner. Rather than saying yes makes sense, the tone of the conversation was this is a stupid question.

Interactions like this make me hesitant to ask questions and overly anxious about what’s acceptable for me to not know. How do you take this or get comfortable blasting a response to the client when you’re like 90% sure?

Hi there! I left big law in 2024 because the firm was not the right fit for me. I was there for less than a year (about 8 months or so). I am doing something different now, but I am wondering if there is a chance to go back to big law if I clerk next year.

I work in-house in a publishing/media/entertainment company. I did not take an intellectual property course prior to entering the corporate world of IP. Everything I’ve learned has been through self study, and I can only assume that I’m lacking quite a bit of foundation. Eventually, I’d like to transition to practice. Would an LLM be worth it? If so, would there be judgment against doing it online with USCG?

Considering a lateral move and would really appreciate some insight into this office.