Proceed with Caution: A Diary of the First Year at One of America's Largest, Most Prestigious Law Firms

by WIlliam R. Keates

In this title, the author takes you behind the scenes of a large firm, to show you what it is really like to be a junior associate. After graduating from law school, William Keates took a job at a blue-chip New York law firm and started keeping a diary where he wrote down his day-to-day life at the firm. This book excerpts his diary from his first day at the firm to the day he quit. It also intersperses diary entries with useful information about what new lawyers at the country's largest firms do on a daily basis. For additional career resources, visit the AttorneyJobs Web site.

Genres: Law

162 pages, Hardcover

First published April 25, 1997

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a very well written book, sincere, honest and profound, with accurate research to back up the conclusions made by the author. Unfortunately, it tells the truth about legal profession, the truth most people are not ready to hear. I would recommend it to anyone making a choice to pursue legal career. It will definitely help you to make an informed choice.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about the author's year in a large law firm; it seems to be written for college students, since some of the points in the book will be obvious to any reasonably intelligent law student or lawyer. (For example, the introduction points out that most lawyers don't do criminal work- something that I hope any law student knows after a semester or two).

The basic point of the book was that being a lawyer in a giant, high-paying law firm is dull and unpleasant work. I was certainly persuaded; my last law firm job was as a lawyer in a large-ish firm and I generally didn't enjoy it (although my firm was in a smaller city and we didn't work as many hours as the author or his coworkers).

There are some ways in which the author's experience varied from mine. He didn't seem to like his bosses; I generally thought they were pretty nice, both in my large firms and in smaller firms I worked at in earlier jobs. He complains that litigators are in "an adversarial and hostile work environment' and "remain in a constant state of conflict." But in my firm, I was so insulated from both clients and opposing counsel that I didn't feel any of that; the only times my environment was "adversarial" is when my bosses didn't like my work product. The author also suggests that lawyers should more feel guilty about representing large corporations against underdogs. This wasn't really an issue for me, we were mostly litigating against other non-underdogs (like other corporations or the government).