Jr. BigLaw Associate in NY Taking Questions

["Legapp" Stands for "Legal Application"]

a legapp sighting?

good luck on tuesday.  wave if you see me.

LOL, might be hard among the 5,000 other people.... 

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

Sands, at what point in your career do they expect you to start brining in new business and creating business. I mean by what year should you start to have your own book of business if you want to stick around? Also do they give you any clients, like let you take over an account from someone else or do they expect you to bring in all your own book?

This is such a gray area.

You usually don't get to develop your own book until you are pretty sr., like 7th or 8th year.  It is, of course, possible to develop your own book at any time.  If you are a 1st year associate and you bring in a steady client for the firm I'm sure that would set you up nicely for the partnership track if  you were so inclined.

But they don't really expect you to worry about those things until you become sr.

Nearly 100% of the clients you will deal with will be given to you by the firm and, thus, belong to somebody else's book of business.  It may be possible, however, to develop your own relationship with other individuals within the client's company other than your partner's point of contact there.

Most of the lawyers I know are all 10 years plus (just happened that my mentors where older lawyers, introduced me to their friends ect.) Of the ones that are still at larger firms and are partners here in town they say in an average week about 40% of their time is spent “creating business” for existing clients. Like interpreting how a new regulation or case decision might impact them, or suggesting a compliance review or other things they suggest to the client legal work wise than the other way around with the clients coming to them with new legal issues. Another 30% of their time is spent overseeing those reporting to them and checking their work. And 30% is either keeping current clients happy (golf, lunch, games) or looking for new clients and only about 10% of their time is actually spent doing legal work. My friends who have their own firms report more actual legal work, but still a lot of time spent creating business and cultivating/keeping happy current clients. Is it like that as much in NYC big firms?

I can't speak to that yet as I'm not that senior but it sounds pretty similar from what I've seen so far.

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

Sands--your post about the Bar essay Qs completely made my life better.  You mentioned there was a Q about larceny/bad checks on your exam, which made me realize I knew nothing about that subject.  So, I read the NY Distinctions section on bad check laws in NY.  Sure enough, it was the second essay on the exam!  There is absolutely NO WAY I would have gotten that right without you.   

Wow, look at that.  Who knew they would resurrect the infamous bad checks essay of '07?!?!  What a bunch of tools. 

Well I'm glad you were prepared for it.  Good stuff!  You were probably 1 of like 10 people to get that one right from what I've been hearing.

About a week before the 07 exam, one of my friends called me up and started going off about commercial paper, saying that she had a bad feeling about it and that we had better know something about it.  Like you, I realized at that moment that I had not even touched the subject, so I breezed through it, picked up some terms of art, and sure enough the very first question on the bar exam - commercial f*cking paper.

Gotta give it to the bar examiners - they have a knack at picking the ultimate sleeper topic every year.

[Johnny Holiday]

lol