“You won’t actually get to speak with a client until at least your fourth or fifth year of practice if you work in Big Law.”
Throughout law school, I was told over and over that if I were to choose to work as a litigation associate at a large law firm, I would be forced to sacrifice the opportunity for practical legal experience in exchange for a life of seclusion and tedium—trapped in my office for hours on end assembling deposition binders, reviewing thousands of documents and cite-checking lengthy briefs for typographical errors. Though that may be the reality for some first-year associates, my experience has been quite the contrary.
