How should I plan my exit strategy when starting with a firm, and more importantly, how do I stick to that plan? What factors/forces trap lawyers at their firms? How can we learn to look several steps ahead when solving legal problems?

-- JaredBaumgart - 24 Apr 2008

How important is it really that you start in what is called a major market for legal services (NYC, DC, SF, LA, Chi)? Why is starting in a city outside of this group looked down upon? Is it assumed that your substantive work / actual legal skill is inferior to that of someone who chooses to start at one of these "major" cities?

-- MakalikaNaholowaa - 23 Apr 2008

How can I reconcile a distaste for the grade race with a real desire to have the experience of doing a clerkship?

How great is the danger of becoming "pigeonholed" in one area of the law (such as criminal defense)?

How important is class selection while in law school? If I accidentally fail to take classes in an area that I later find out I want to practice, will that hurt me?

How (specifically) does one go about starting and funding a non-profit law firm?

-- DanielButrymowicz - 23 Apr 2008

• I'm not sure that this is the only response to this, but at one of the few receptions I went to I actually spoke with a partner about this very question, and her response was that as soon as even one top firm does a 1L firm reception then it sparks a sort of cold war-esque arms buildup where every other firm then has to do one. In this environment, therefore, each firm is constantly trying to outdo all the others, leading to the massive 1L firm reception cycle we see today. So maybe another question to ask along these same lines is is there anything we as students can do to convince the law firms not to spend money on receptions but instead put it to better use? Or like in the story Eben told us about the push in the 80's to switch to a non-graded first term do you think the majority of students would rise up against this and demand the continuation of the free-food gravy train? -- AlexLawrence - 22 Apr 2008

There are a lot of very good questions on this thread and I think that the first step of finding the answers will be to consolidate this list to a manageable number. We have to find groups of questions that go to a single issue and rephrase them as a single question, and given the amount of time we have, we may have to cut many of these questions off the list if their not too important to the group. If we want to find good answers, or as Julian would say, if we want to find the people who know the answers we need, we're going to need a smaller list of questions.

The only question i would add, has to do with resources. There are a lot of questions about how to work outside a firm and still get paid enough, but i am more worried about how to work outside a big firm and have the resources to compete with such a firm. I would love to be a public defender, but they frequently don't have the resources to win their cases. At a firm, i'd get to take fewer pro bono cases, but i'd likely win more of the cases i got to take. That might be an oversimplification, but my question would be: What is the comparison between the resources of a law firm and other resources available, and how much does it affect success rates in court?

-- OluwafemiMorohunfola - 22 Apr 2008