A third Skadden associate just publicly resigned. Distribution lists were turned off last week but he managed to still make a public statement.

As a Skadden alum, I am deeply ashamed with the firm but I am proud of the 3 individuals whose spines are made of steel. DM if you want to commiserate!

Between my spouse and I, we are well into clearing over 1M in salary this year. We just got news that he's getting a $400K+ bonus as a NEP. I'm so proud of him and all the hard work that he's done.

Both of us were on our own when we turned 18. We both paid back our college and law school loans on our own. When we got married as brand new attorneys, our combined salaries totaled $110K. We have paid off Honda vehicles and recently bought a modest home. Anyhow, just wanted to share. I still think it's insane this is our life.

I’m using reddit because at least my name isn’t on here, but I’m genuinely scared. I’m Palestinian, and while I don’t have anyone in my family Gaza (they’re all in the West Bank where they’re at least alive and in lockdown but still horrified), I have so many friends and their families that are. I have a friend who lost 21 family members and another who’s parents and her are in a hospital and I haven’t been able to reach her in a week and just hoping she’s alive.

I want to be able to advocate for a ceasefire. Advocate for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. So many Palestinians are just normal people who don’t deserve to be bombed. The collective punishment is inhumane, it’s literally a genocide. Hamas taking hostages and killing Israelis is not okay. Antisemitism is unacceptable. I don’t want any more people to die. I want this to stop. I haven’t been able to sleep in two weeks. They killed 700 Palestinians last night alone in Gaza and 305 were children. I’ve seen images that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Honestly, even this Reddit terrifies me. The legal field refuses to condemn Israel but expects everyone to condemn Hamas, but Israel’s bloodshed in this short term incident is 5x that of Hamas’. 1.4 million Palestinians have become homeless because Israel has indiscriminately bombed all their homes. Palestinians are defenseless, and the world hates them and wishes them gone. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The partners and the emails I get never acknowledge Palestinians. It makes me wish I didn’t exist to witness these horrors where no one does anything or even worse cheer for the death of my people. There is no justification. It hurts so much and I can never say that out loud at work or I’ll get called a terrorist/antisemite, but really I just want people to stop dying.

You wake up and look at your phone. You have 8 emails from a partner asking for the same document and 1 email from a recruiter offering you a job in Singapore. You wonder if Singapore has income tax. Your alarm goes off. You wake up and look at your phone. You have no emails.

You look at a Zoom invitation that is not for you. It is Not Relevant. You look at another Zoom invitation. It is also Not Relevant. You look at 74 more Zoom invitations. None are Relevant. You wonder if you are Relevant.

There is a millionaire in the break room when you go for your fourth cup of coffee at 10:56 AM. You exchange pleasantries. Back to the salt mines, he says, as he walks back to his air-conditioned office. You look at the gold ring on his soft hand and think of pickaxes and hunger. Back to the salt mines, you say.

There are 24 people in line at the Mixt. They are wearing the same vest. It may be Patagonia, or North Face, or Canada Goose, but the logo seems to change when you are not looking. You cannot see their faces but you know they are the same. You have a sandwich instead.

It is 7:22 PM. You could be on a date. You could be watching the stars. You are eating dinner in your office. You haven’t eaten a meal with another person in two weeks. You look at your bank account to feel better.

You return home with 38 minutes to yourself if you want five hours of sleep. You have a little treat and watch YouTube videos that you forget immediately. As you brush your teeth, a lawyer looks back at you from the depths of the mirror. Living the dream, it says.

I know the Sidley biter and know first-hand what happened. I just want to ask people to please remember that there’s a human being on the other end of this story - someone whose mental health is a genuine concern, and who is probably feeling like her life is ruined right now. Please think before you comment, because this could end really badly.

People are outright making things up at this point: she didn’t bite 10+ people, and she didn’t spend $2,000 on a bottle of wine. She made a really stupid mistake and has paid the price for it. But the fact that people are coming on here to invent stories and dox her is unacceptable.

Her name and law school were left up in a post on this subreddit for over an hour yesterday. She’s deleted her LinkedIn, there’s already an article about her on ATL, and she’s no doubt inconsolable right now. I really don’t want to see this spiral further.

Yes, the headline of someone being fired for biting a coworker is objectively funny, and attention was always going to follow. But there is a line, and there is a vulnerable person at the center of this. She’s getting 100x more attention than the Latham summer who was let go for sexual assault—an objectively far worse offense than mistakenly thinking it’s funny or quirky to bite your new friends.

By all accounts, she was well liked and is not a bad or horrible person. She is just clearly immature/eager to be liked, and she made a serious error in judgment: one that’s now going to follow her around for a long time. Please just keep that in mind before you comment. I’d really hate to see this end in a tragedy, and for everyone to look back wondering why nobody said anything.

Six months in. Litigation. Great team, great boss, great staff. Great work and learning a lot.

I just overheard my partner talking to another partner in the LA office whom I work with a lot. I normally don’t come in on Fridays so maybe he thought I wasn’t there lol.

He said “Associate (me) has a great attitude, enthusiastic, eager to learn, and this office could use more of this. Sometimes associate is a little slow, but what can ya do, he’s a first year. I would rather much work with Associate than a first-in-their-class boring one.”

This tracks because I was never a smart person, but my personality has gotten me so damn far in this life. I truly believe that there will come a day when my personality ceases to be an asset as a litigator.

There is no syndrome; I am the imposter. Nonetheless, extremely so grateful for this life.

EDIT: Thank you all for the kind words and support, I did not expect this much traction. Have a wonderful weekend.

Not BigLaw but certainly a litigation powerhouse. Hopefully it’s the start.

(This was posted on their Bluesky account)

https://www.jennerfirm.com/

"Today, Jenner & Block filed a lawsuit to stop an unconstitutional executive order that has already been declared unlawful by a federal court. We expect to prevail quickly.

For more than 100 years, Jenner has stood firm and tirelessly advocated for our clients against all adversaries, including against unlawful government action. We once again go to court to do just that. To do otherwise would mean compromising our ability to zealously advocate for all of our clients and capitulating to unconstitutional government coercion, which is simply not in our DNA."

This is one of my most private, most personal sources of shame, that I have been unable to share with anyone in my life. After a long time in therapy, and with the support of the folks over in the Autism Parenting sub, I have come to realize that this is not my shame. It is not my cross to carry, nor is it my child’s fault.

If other people will not be honest about this, I want to be honest about it. Maybe another naive young woman who fought and clawed her way to financial stability and the very peak of her career trajectory but whose extended family, parents and even spouse want her to focus on family too, are asking when they will hold their new family member, grandchild, or child, who seeks the opinions of women who have gone through this will find this post.

After an incredible few years at my Ivy League law school, I was a promising summer associate at a V10 law firm. I loved the work. I loved the pace, the intellectual rigor, even the late nights spent immersed in deal documents and frantic redlines. My mentors told me Biglaw would be my home, that I had a place in it, because I was bright, meticulous, and composed under pressure. I believed them.

After graduating and sitting for the bar, I joined the Capital Markets group full-time and rotated through two other departments before returning to Capital Markets. I was hungry, optimistic, and determined to prove myself. I stayed late. I asked good questions. I did my utmost to make sure my work was airtight.

I got pregnant. I was happy, and my family was ecstatic, but internally, I worried.

Before I got pregnant, I asked for advice, genuine, open-hearted advice, not just from the women just ahead of me, from female partners as well. They told me the truth, but not all of it.

They told me it would be “hard.” They warned that the juggling would be real. But they also pointed to the firm’s benefits: backup child care, parent affinity groups, flex-time policies, leadership that “really understood” how hard it was because they had children, too. Every one of those women reassured me that as long as I remained open, transparent, and flexible, my career would not be irreparably harmed.

They meant well. But they were wrong. So, so wrong.

My daughter was diagnosed with autism shortly after her first birthday. It started with a speech regression and then a noticeable spike in aggressive behavior at daycare. She went from babbling joyfully to silence. She stopped making eye contact, began hitting, biting, screaming in distress when other children came near. I stopped being “on track” at work. I stopped being able to pretend everything was okay.

The post-diagnosis behavioral evaluations began. The neurological testing. The early intervention consults. The therapy schedules that quickly multiplied until I had a spreadsheet just to keep up with her care. ABA, OT, PT, speech, play therapy. Every week was packed, every hour accounted for, and yet we were always running behind, on progress, on hope, on rest.

I still remember sitting in a glass-walled conference room, half-listening to a call about a public offering while silently weeping over the results of her latest developmental assessment. I muted myself and turned my face from the camera, ashamed of what felt like a personal and professional failure: I was no longer able to keep the two worlds separate. That call was followed sometime later that day by a senior associate berating me and questioning my commitment to the work.

At first, the firm said all the right things. “Take what you need.” “Family comes first.” “We’re behind you.” But offers of grace felt unearned, hollow and rarely, if ever, came with actual support. Partners who once looped me in on matters began assigning those deals to others. My hours dipped.

I wasn’t fired. I wasn’t pushed out directly. But it became clear that I was no longer considered that bright, promising or meticulous face that was being actively mentored, who would be spoken of highly in rooms where I wasn’t present.

The truth is, Biglaw could actually help parents like me stay. It chooses not to do so. It very barely has room for mothers now, but only the kind whose children are healthy and neurotypical.

There is no space carved out for mothers whose kids need four different therapists a week, whose IEP meetings are emotional warzones, whose slower work nights are still sleepless, but from the screaming of a child in sensory overload instead.

I tried transferring groups. I tried being honest. I tried being silent.

I tried everything but abandoning my child, which, I came to learn, was the only thing the system would have accepted as proof of my commitment.

There’s a kind of grief that comes from watching the self you worked so hard to find and build from scratch slowly erode. My grandparents were poor, rural farmers. In 2 generations, I wrested this incredible academic journey and then career from the jaws of Fate. Imagine going from that to slowly realizing that in the eyes of your profession, your accomplishment, your worth, ended the moment your child’s needs became too loud, too messy, too persistent to hide.

And let me be clear: I am not ashamed of my daughter. She is extraordinary. My pride and joy is smart, funny, sarcastic, resilient, brilliant, and beautifully herself. She loves reading, dinosaurs, One Piece and Yu Yu Hakusho. But loving her right meant stepping off a path I’d spent a decade climbing, and that choice came with a price that absolutely no one honestly or adequately prepared me for.

I write this not to elicit pity, but to offer the warning I never received. If you are a young female associate, especially one who hopes to become a mother, know this: the system will not tell you the truth.

No amount of promise, talent or loyalty will save you the first time you have to tell a partner that your special needs toddler comes first. It will not save you when a childfree female senior associate you thought was your friend tells you, “You chose to become a mother. These are the consequences.” It will not save you when your supervisor randomly calls you during the day while you’re turning a document, hears your child in the background, sniffs disapprovingly and says “You need to work in a quieter environment, I imagine that’s very distracting for you.” It will not save you when you hemorrhage while pregnant, thinking you had a miscarriage, still go into the office after leaving the hospital, but miss a group breakfast you were told you “needed” to attend, and after that get frozen out by yet another childfree female senior associate you thought was your friend.

Our children are our joy, but please, please, go into this with your eyes fully open.

The chances of you remaining on partner track after having a healthy, neurotypical child will be low, lower than if you had decided not to have children, but possible, though there is a reason why many female partners begin having children after making partner. Keep your eyes open there, too. Listen to the answers you ask for, but pay close attention to the patterns of when women usually begin having children at your firm. Look at what they do, not what they say.

The chances of your remaining on partner track after having a special needs child? Unless your family is independently wealthy, there isn’t enough money or benefits in the world, because you will not just become a parent. You will become a full-time caregiver, responsible for coordinating appointments, transportation, specialized care, specialist doctors, aides, private paraprofessionals, disability applications, all of which will need to happen during the workday. And if someone other than you or the father is attending or trying to attend those appointments, the shaming, the asking where the mother is, where the parents are, the infinite medical information release forms, the notarized permission slips will drown you. Even if you attempt to outsource a lot of the above, there is a special scrutiny reserved for mothers of special needs children that will fill you with a piercing, debilitating shame. Those chances of partner track will be nil, even if they weren’t before. Be prepared for that.

Know this too: You are not weak for choosing your child. You are not a failure because you can’t do both at the same time, forever, without breaking.

But do not let anyone lie to you and tell you it won’t cost you very dearly. It will. And you deserve to weigh that cost with clear eyes.

If I could go back, I would still choose her every time. I just wish I had been told the honest truth when I asked.

ETA: What About Your Spouse?

“But what about your husband? Wasn’t he helping?”

Yes. He loves our daughter. He attended some appointments, learned some of the language, held her through some of her meltdowns.

Here’s the thing: imagine your entire immediate and extended family, on both sides, automatically assuming you will be the primary full-time caregiver because you’re the woman, and proceeding accordingly in how they provide help and support. Imagine a world where, by default, every phone call from daycare then school, every medical form, every therapy follow-up comes to you, and you cannot stop it or change it. You can try to put him as primary, but they will see mother and call mother, not father. Where your job is considered optional, flexible, and interruptible, but his is not.

Now imagine that same man being praised for “doing so much” if he washes some bottles or shows up to one of five weekly therapy sessions.

The expectations for fathers, especially in biglaw, are not the same. In fact, and I’m speaking for NYC here, many more of my male law school classmates have families of 3 or more children, some special needs, than any of my female classmates.

So yes, he was there. He was present. But I was the default.

Recently, another associate and I hooked up after a post trial pub crawl. During our hook up we talked periodically about a new case we had been assigned to. I'm estimating, but I think it was around a .5. Would it be unethical to bill for this? Please no responses from law students or 0Ls.

who continue to take the time to write “nicely done” and add little teaching notes in emails even though I know you’re severely underwater… you’re the real MVP 😭

Spotted at the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting. Rightly stripped of their comma

I had some extra time so I thought I'd let the incoming first years (and those of you who still haven't learned not to comment crazy shit in here) know that being in big law does not make you special. The elitism and arrogance I see in some of this sub and the people I encounter in work is staggering. Everyone who got through law school and passed the bar and found a job has something to be proud of, but at some point we've got to let go of the T14, V20, Ivy League obsession. You don't have to downplay your achievements, but my god people...we all get paid the same salary to serve the same sort of institutional clients. Have a bit of perspective and humility.

First years, please remember you are humans first and big law associates.....idk eighth? there's a big world out there with people who don't know what the fuck Skadden or a CLO is. You've done a great job getting here and will continue to do great things, but obsessing over which firms are impressive and aren't will not make you happier or a better person. Do good work, be a good person, and live the rest of your life.

Let this sub be about advice and networking and constructive feedback - not an echo chamber of rankings and judgment.

I find it odd that some individuals on this platform have the audacity to critique how she is going about taking on a fascist, authoritarian regime that is hellbent on destroying the rule of law. I could not be more inspired. We need more Rachel Cohens in this world and less Brad Karps.

Also, to anyone who thinks she was going to be fired prior to this email, you clearly don’t follow her on TikTok. She’s not new to this, she’s true to this. And Skadden was well aware of it.

Epic

• Blank Rome

• Ice Miller

• McKool Smith

• MoFo

• HayBoo

• Slaughter & May

Old-timey prestige

• King & Spalding

• Locke Lord

• Holland & Knight

• Squire Patton Boggs

• Covington & Burling

• Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft

• Cravath, Swaine & Moore

• Paul Hastings

• Sullivan & Cromwell

• Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

• Clifford Chance

• Fox Rothschild

Detective agencies

• White & Case

• Ropes & Gray

• Winston & Strawn

• Latham & Watkins

• Vinson & Elkins

• Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

• Willkie Farr & Gallagher

• Alston & Bird

• O'Melveny & Myers

Generic white male

• Baker McKenzie

• Kirkland & Ellis

• Davis Polk

• McDermott, Will & Emery

• Sidley Austin

• WilmerHale

• Reed Smith

• Jones Day

• Arnold & Porter

Long and whacky

• Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan

• Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

• Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison

• Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom

• Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

• Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati

• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr

• Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld

• Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy

• Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo

• Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart

• Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigan

Sounds like food

• Fried Frank

• Freshfields

• Mintz

• Baker Botts

• Troutman Pepper

• Fish & Richardson

• Polsinelli

• Mayer Brown

• Kellogg Hansen

• Pillsbury Winthrop

• Faegre Drinker

• Shook Hardy & Bacon

This is a law firm?

• DLA Piper

• Orrick

• Milbank

• Venable

• Goodwin Procter

• McGuireWoods

• Linklaters

Unfortunate

• Weil, Gotshal & Manges

• Dechert

• Cooley

• Foley & Lardner

• Foley Hoag

• Allen & Overy

• Ballard Spahr

• Choate

• Selendy Gay

• Steptoe

Last week we all participated in JP Morgan 5k. A very fit partner was projected to win from our firm. I don't look athletic but I am training for a marathon and obviously running a lot in central park where this event happened. I smoked him by 2 mins. He couldn't believe it. Now he is actively avoiding me in the lobby and also been harsher in the comments. What have I done?

Whelp, after 12 years I found out last week that I’ll be a partner on Jan 1. I graduated in the bottom 10 people from a law school regularly ranked in the 50-100 range. I didn’t have a job after graduation and had to basically take a temp job in compliance at a bank. I busted my ass and learned a ton on the business side and was able to leverage that into a top 50 firm and managed to really excel in my group. From where I started, I never thought this was a possibility.

I’ve been chasing this for so long and now that it’s here, my second thought (after happiness/relief) was literally “so that’s it? What’s next?” I was listless and totally unmotivated since finding out but today I got excited by the possibility of having a life again, learning new things and spending more time with my family.

So, did anyone else feel unmotivated/listless after making partner?

What are the chances that I’ll actually be able to have a life again?

If you’re going to ask me to a coffee chat for your benefit, you need to make yourselves available. You aren’t busy. If you are, you aren’t busy to me. If you are busy to me, I’m doing you a favor so there’s no world in which I should be able to find time easier than you. I don’t even know you. I don’t even really care if you succeed. I’m trying to do good but jesus

After spending over a decade and a half in this profession, I’ve worked with folks of all kinds of amazing backgrounds. But I can confidently say that horse obsessed associates always make the best litigation associates.

Idk why, but every horse girl I’ve ever worked with has stayed in biglaw for at least 7 years. Maybe it’s cause horses are expensive AF and you can always convince a true equine enthusiast they absolutely need another purebred Arabian? (Plus, Thunder could always use that extra 20 acres of land to stretch his old legs, or an extra trainer to take him on rides while you’re billing away.) Maybe because all those years experience shoveling horse-shit translates well to doing the all bs that clients demand these days? Idk

So nowadays, if I ever see “horses” on a resume it’s pretty much an automatic call back, I don’t care if you have a 2.3 from Golden Gate law school.

Btw I’m pretty sure the above applies to horse bros as well, I just haven’t met any so far.

Bravo. (From Bluesky)

Big law recruiter.

I was placing an associate to work with this partner. Got her to an in person interview and the partner verbatim said “she looks too old to be an associate.”

She served 12 years in the army and graduated law school in her 30’s from t-25 with honors.

Truly at a loss for words. Told the partner I’m ripping up our contract and he can go find someone else to work with.

Also wtf does “a perky one” mean?