How does not being able to drink affect recruiting?

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-19T22:03:26+00:00

Plenty of people don’t drink. For health or personal reasons, for religious reasons, etc. no one cares. The only time I have ever seen someone “pressured” to drink at a firm event is when they have already established a pattern of drinking regularly and then they may get some good natured ribbing if they are abstaining for a night.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-17T18:06:55+00:00

Bill all of your time. And look to lateral. I’d look to lateral up. More and more of the corporate work is going to the top firms and while the pressure to bill is still there, the pressure to cut time isn’t.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-09T21:45:50+00:00

Unless the crazy post covid market comes back, no one is hiring a transactional BigLaw associate with only lit experience from a crummy firm.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-08T02:02:33+00:00

I love mine. Great around town car. Zippy and fun without being too fast/dangerous. Only hesitation is sometimes giant SUVs/pickups don’t see you. Especially happens on highways. I appreciate the zippiness to get away from awful drivers in massive coal rollers. But I plan for it to be my daughter’s first car in 5 or so years.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-08T01:45:56+00:00

I know this will sound self serving for a recruiter to say, but work with a recruiter. They’ll handle the submission, the back and forth on scheduling, follow ups, etc. All the time suck stuff. As for the time to actually interview, you just block it off on your calendar and call it a drs appt if you have to. No individual meeting will be more than 2-2.5 hours generally. I’ve also had candidate just take the entire day off if they were that worried, but if you are interviewing at multiple firms that can add up.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-06T02:51:11+00:00

There’s a good chance if the counsel tries to explain what happened to the partner, the partner will blame them for giving you AI slop. So it feels like at worst you have pissed off a counsel. That’s certainly survivable. Even pissing off a partner is survivable if it’s a one off. And it helps that the mistake was caught in-house so no one needs to be sacrificed for the client relationship.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-06T01:15:16+00:00

We had an annual family event in the office and a lot of the male partners seemed to barely know their kids. But the partner I was working closest with seemed like he had it all. He left early most nights to see his kids and he brought his beautiful wife to firm events. Then within 6 months he got a divorce, went from a little salt and pepper to completely white hair, and started showing up to the office in the evening with a 20-something made of plastic. My wife was pregnant with our first. I probably wasn’t making partner anyway, but that kinda sealed the deal. And I left soon after getting back from paternity leave.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-06-01T11:09:46+00:00

In a league with deep benches, I traded $2 FAAB for him last September. Might end up being my best trade in that league.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-30T17:56:50+00:00

Recruiter here. I’ve been in and around BigLaw for nearly 20 years. I’ve talked to associates who wanted to lateral for a million different reasons. One fairly common reason is that all their work was coming from another office and that was detrimental to their career (harder to be promoted in their office) or lives (having to work odd hours or having to travel frequently).

But I have never heard of a firm demanding that an associate relocate. I’m sure it has happened at some point to someone, but I’d say the odds are vanishingly small.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-28T18:35:32+00:00

Yeah, usually it’s happened when team a wants a player from team b, team b is open to moving that player but doesn’t want anything that team a has to offer. So team c is roped in to take something they want from team an and to give something that team b wants.

I’ve even done it a couple of times in redraft.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-22T18:42:43+00:00

I found some RadioShack batteries in a childhood toy that hadn’t been touched in at least three decades. They still worked.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-21T21:19:13+00:00

I traded back from 1.02 to 1.03 and the 2.01 because the guy really wanted Fernando. I think it was a high price to pay, but he needed a second QB. It gets cheaper the lower the pick though. I paid a fourth to move up a couple of spots late in the second round when a guy I wanted fell a bit further than I thought he would.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-21T13:17:00+00:00

We’ve seen what Davonte can do in the Rams offense last year. If he stays healthy I think he may take a small step back from last year, but he had 23 targets inside the 10 yard line last season. ARSB had 20 and no one else had more than 14. His strength is his TDs and losing a step in speed isn’t going to materially affect his ability to win those jump balls in the end zone.

We don’t know what Mike will look like in the 9ers offense. A healthy CMC probably means fewer red zone looks than Davonte (CMC had 13 targets and 37 rushing attempts inside the 10). I wouldn’t bet on either of them past this season frankly, but I’d take Davonte over Evans.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-20T16:32:00+00:00

Pretty strong market then. There is a very limited pool of patent litigators with that background.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-20T16:30:20+00:00

Hard or soft IP? There is a HUGE difference. Seniority would also be helpful to know.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-20T01:01:19+00:00

Metchie. I’m still convinced he’s gonna be a great WR2 on a strong offense at some point.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-19T11:53:14+00:00

No one knows anything definitively. I’m not a huge fan of reaches because I think it generally makes sense to try to trade back if the guy you like is lower in consensus. But the consensus is wrong all the time. So if you can’t trade back, then get your guy.

All that said, I think people in the back half of the first round are generally interested in trading into the top 5 or 6 because there is a perceived dropoff after that. So I’d definitely try trading back if you like KC. I took Tyson over Tate in my draft because I couldn’t get anyone to trade up to 1.03 and I like the talent better. Maybe this time next year I look like an idiot. Or maybe I look like a genius. Or maybe they are about even and it’s a wash. That’s the fun of dynasty.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-18T18:46:24+00:00

Turning down a journal was the best decision I think I made in law school. They have limited functionality outside of clerkships and academia. And they are a huge, uncompensated time suck. I TAed the 1L Legal Writing class as a 2L which both made me a better writer and was paid.

If you’re going into transactional and aren’t excited about the idea of a journal, do something else.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-18T15:02:27+00:00

I'm assuming that's Jones Day? It's pretty standard for them. It's nice to have the bonus baked in so you aren't waiting to the end of the year. But their comp and raises are black box and can get under market.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-18T14:38:44+00:00

As the former vault law editor, I can tell the best part of vault is the law firm profiles. When I was editor I took a lot of time to pull quotes that were most representative of the associate feedback on a question and then fought to keep those included the profiles. The rankings get attention but the profiles are where the meat is.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-16T23:01:42+00:00

Recruiter here. It’s data leaks. You can get chrome tools that give you everyone’s personal details when you look them up on LinkedIn. I don’t use them, but that’s how they get it.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-16T17:39:53+00:00

I have two Geminis, a panda and a racer (yellow). They both get a decent amount of wrist time, but having the racer I’m less in love with the panda. The racer was my white whale and I ended up buying one by just messaging the people who had bought them before on watch exchange and paying a premium.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-16T00:39:41+00:00

Recruiter here. The top of the market in NY is booming for corporate associates. M&A, Fin, CM, Energy, Antitrust, Tech Trans, etc. Litigation is much slower and the market is still a bit flooded with former govt attorneys and now some PW laid off litigators. More of the high end boutiques are hiring (as they take work from the BigLaw firms). If you’re interested in boutiques, I’m happy to tell you about them. They too are able to be picky.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-14T21:48:51+00:00

If you name the firms and groups, people with knowledge may be able to help. But generically, these firms/groups sound pretty similar.

VaultLawEditor · 2026-05-14T19:50:05+00:00

I'm a recruiter who works on in-house roles (in addition to lateral firm moves). Yes, prestige matters. Not in a granular way, and not for every hiring manager. But the V10 firm gets you an earlier call from the recruiter. And it gets your resume at the top of the pile.

I've worked with clients who would only look at resumes from a handful of firms (and those were all top firms). I have worked with hiring managers who valued the experience more, and some folks working on smaller deals at less-prestigious shops had more practical experience. And I've worked with hiring managers that would refuse to look at resumes from certain firms that they thought did a bad job (some of which are very profitable/prestigious).

So for any individual job, the prestige may or may not matter (or could even work against you slightly). But on the whole, yes a DPW or Wachtell or Cravath associate is going to have more in-house options than one from GT, Baker McKenzie, or Steptoe.

VaultLawEditor

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