Pros
Top of market salary; great clients/deals; stellar resources; first class staff that are responsive, competent, and friendly; complete benefits that are reasonably priced; nice people (depending on who you work with); and prestigious name on your resume. Among the more understated benefits is being able to work with world class lawyers on an array of matters. Seeing how they “make the sausage” by plugging into their workflows is a great learning experience. DLA also has “shadowing” hours that count towards your billable total but are intended to be used to shadow a senior lawyer for learning, as opposed to billing, purposes — things like a client pitch, a negotiation with a tough opposing counsel, or auditing a meeting on a novel situation. Those are great opportunities to see senior lawyers in action.
Cons
Pressure from senior lawyers to bill more than your target; sink or swim atmosphere and many senior lawyers avoid working with unseasoned lawyers, except for attorneys; you work with BIG egos; some nit picky, type A partners; no work/life balance; expected to work any day at mostly any time; and not a collegiate environment. One experience that particularly sticks out to me and was a tipping point in my mind was when a partner explicitly told me that I don’t dictate my availability, the client dictates it. The firm prides itself on being client focused, but focusing too much on the client kind of taints the culture and harm the rapport internally. For example, there’s pressure to bill more than your target, yet I was also told on numerous occasions to not bill for certain time spent fixing mistakes that all new lawyers will make, especially when they are working with senior lawyers who don’t have the time/patience to thoroughly explain the process of creating the deliverables. Why? Because “we can’t bill the client for that.” True. But you can write off the time instead of making me take the loss. After all, that’s the learning PROCESS and comes with the territory when hiring recent graduates. Another way the client focused mentality harms internal rapport concerned rates. Because senior lawyers are more expensive and not all clients are fee insensitive, I would routinely get emails after hours asking to grab a document or check to see if something is uploaded. This is the “handcuff” in the phrase “golden handcuff” since you are essentially handcuffed to your computer, always on call. This happens even outside of closings and for non-urgent matters; in other words, this is for things that don’t warrant a 10PM email noting you need it by tonight. Finally, what’s the one thing clients want the most? Lower bills. Instead of the partners lowering/freezing their fees, they started the “attorney” program — which is essentially the same job as an associate but bills at a lower rate and gets paid significantly less. Although the program has some pros, one big con is the dynamic between the first and second year associates and second and third year attorneys. I definitely got some shade because of that and it stifled the camaraderie.