Angela Vorpahl: Hey guys, welcome back.
We're here again with Brett Cenkus and we're going to dive even deeper into the differences
and the comparisons between the two.
So stay tuned.
Angela Vorpahl: I think that there is a lot of pressure coming out of law school to work
for the biggest firm that you can, to work for the biggest name that you can, with the
understanding that you'll be doing a year or two of grunt work and then you can leave
and do the thing you really want to do.
Whether that's going in house or going to a smaller boutique firm.
And I know that that's a really tough question for a lot of associates to answer, and I'm
just interested if you have any thoughts on your path.
Or if you would've done it differently, or if your decision really worked out well.
Brett Cenkus: Right.
Yeah, so I made exactly this decision when my second year I summered for a relatively
small regional firm.
Very entrepreneurial, a former big firm, well big regional firm lawyers, great lawyers in
a Southern city.
And then a massive New York based corporate law firm.
And I made exactly this decision.
And I made this decision over ... the money wasn't much of a driver, there was a little
bit more at the big firm, but not really enough to probably make the decision.
It was the name on the resume.
And yeah, I made that decision to take that name, and it was the right decision.
And that's a very personal decision.
And it's always hard.
Brett Cenkus: You don't want to encourage people to be miserable in life, but there
is the idea of pay the price of sacrifice or pay the price of regret.
So some of this depends too with how important your career is to your overall life, right?
And how much you want it to be a part of it, as opposed to this is a way I make money.
So that's separate from work life balance, it's like how important is it to you to have
opportunities in the career.
Brett Cenkus: Then there's a real something to be said for paying the dues and getting
names on the resume early on to open up those avenues.
Because the school I went to and the firm I worked for, unquestionably have opened up
a tremendous number of avenues to me that would not be open otherwise.
I mean it's a cluttered, busy world, we're all time-starved.
It's like people look at a resume and they're like, "Oh."
Right?
Brett Cenkus: There is no question, corporate lawyers are feeding into companies and places
like ... they're already planning kind of their next step.
A lot of them are planning the next step out of private practice and having a bigger name
is important to there.
Where most of my corporate associate peers, they were planning their next step, I mean
this was a two, three, four year stop and that was what it was.
Angela Vorpahl: It's interesting that you say that about corporate lawyers, because
generally speaking, I know you guys are much more business minded in terms of strategically
your next step.
And I think as litigators, at least the young litigators that I was working with, all of
us really were on the law firm track.
Meaning we were thinking of making partner down the line.
We weren't really looking go anywhere, unless of course if you started at a big law firm,
most people are looking to go to a litigation boutique at some point.
Because again, you get more substantive experience, you have a better chance at making partner.
And so a lot of people were making that move.
Angela Vorpahl: But I don't think that there were very many people, for example, looking
to go in-house or looking to start their own law firms, looking to work with a government
agency or a nonprofit.
There were a few, but I don't know.
In terms of corporate lawyers, it's so interesting to hear that you guys are already planning
your next step.
And I think that's, honestly, a weakness of young litigators, is we don't really think
outside of the law firm tunnel.
We're looking at making partner, and there's no real plan B if making partner doesn't work
out.
Angela Vorpahl: Thank you guys so much for watching.
And again, special thanks to Brett Cenkus for coming by.
I'm linking his YouTube channel in the description below, so please go check him out.
He does all types of law related videos on new lawyer trainings, transactional work,
especially mergers and acquisitions.
So you guys should definitely go give him a look.
And as usual, if you enjoyed the video, please give it a big thumbs up, comment below, share
it with somebody you think would benefit from it.
And if you haven't subscribed yet, go and subscribe to see new videos every Tuesday.
I'll see you guys in the next one.
Thanks for watching.
Bye.