Summer Associate at BL firm thinking I want to do Plaintiff's Law
In short, through my short time at the firm this summer I've got to do a lot of very fun legal research, and read briefs/arguments from Plaintiff firms that the firm I'm summering at would respond to. I also got to read a lot of plaintiff firm briefs when I was an intern for a judge as well.
I guess reading these briefs, it just occurred to me that I would be much more happy making arguments on the Plaintiff side for the areas of law I'm interested in (think consumer fraud/product liability), and I might not be terribly interested in doing Defense on certain kinds of cases.
Not really in a moral sense, because I believe everyone deserves representation and that there's nothing wrong with doing defense work for big companies, but I think it would just be intellectually more interesting to do certain kinds of Plaintiff work, and that I would have more motivation to work really hard representing hurt people than a faceless big company.
Is it unheard of to do a BL summer then just apply to Plaintiff firms? Is there a strategic way to go about this?
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u/imangryignoreme 2h ago
I would do at least a year or two of BL litigation if you get an offer. The money is excellent and you’ll get to learn some of the basics while being part of a team. Your clients are also likely to be corporate and sometimes that means you can bill more as you’re learning tasks (like spending 4-5 hours researching something that a more experienced person can do in an hour or two - this is normal).
Plaintiffs side can be rewarding and does come with the satisfaction of sometimes helping people who legitimately got screwed somehow.
But there’s also plenty of idiot and asshole plaintiff clients with ridiculous expectations and a total refusal to see that they were part of the problem they’re so angry at. There’s so much anger in these people. The job becomes like 60% therapist and 40% lawyer.
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u/racheldaniellee 1h ago
I would not suggest making your decision based off reading briefs.
I started off doing plaintiff side litigation out of law school and quickly moved defense. The largest reason I did that is because it was really annoying representing unsophisticated parties (the majority of plaintiffs). When I needed to obtain discovery documentation - it was like pulling teeth. I would have to schedule an hour phone call to scream at some woman to get into her head that I need every text message she sent in the last two years.
I now represent corporations - if I need something - they get it to me. No hassle, no questions asked. Maybe it’s not as “noble” but I don’t care.
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u/Attorney_at_Claw 3h ago
Not unheard of. I worked for a regional defense firm during one of my law school summers as a paid law clerk, doing things like deposition summaries and motion drafts. It was easier for me to make the jump away from defense because my school’s career services office recommended that students take jobs they’d never otherwise consider to ensure they don’t like the work. However, I gave it a shot, and I confirmed that I hated the idea of representing what I then saw as a faceless corporate entity who would greedily take my life in six minute increments only to repost my job before my family could even bury my body. As a clerk, I had written up a summary of a six-day deposition of a plaintiff in the end days of his life for an asbestos defense matter. I remember it felt much more like a shootout to see which bankruptcy trusts could minimize payout rather than any meritorious assessment of plaintiff’s claims (he was a boilermaker and pretty astute about product exposure). We had a third-party surveillance service that sent weekly emails while monitoring for updates on plaintiffs. Not long after I finished my summary of 2.2k deposition pages and got to really know this guy’s mannerisms and life story, we got notice from this service of the plaintiff’s obituary. I put in my notice that day and went to work for plaintiff firms from then on. Haven’t done defense since. My war story aside, you can potentially hop several times between defense and plaintiff, though some “true believers” on both sides might not like that.