job description

I am a transactional intellectual property associate at Latham & Watkins LLP. I've worked here for six years.

Latham practices all areas of law. In my practice, I assist clients with technology transactions. This encompasses intellectual property (meaning ownership of ideas, such as patents or trademarks) deals, including licensing and outsourcing, and any other technology-related corporate deals, such as joint ventures, services agreements and distribution agreements.

I think Latham is a fantastic firm. It is a full service, diverse firm. They have offices worldwide, so you get a wide body of experience working here. You can work on all types of large deals.

A lot of our clients are Fortune 500 companies and big investment banking firms. The client base depends on the location of the particular office. For example, we have a lot of real estate investment clients in Los Angeles, but we also work with investment banks quite a bit here. Our New York office works on a lot of high-yield debt and other finance transactions

A law firm, especially in your initial years, is a great resource for accelerated learning. You have so many opportunities to be mentored in a large firm. It's a good way to start out, as opposed to coming out of school and trying to start your own firm. Working for a large firm is going to grow a person as an attorney, because it is a very different skill set than what he or she learned in law school. It is very helpful for someone first starting out to have someone else to turn to, rather than starting out on his or her own immediately.

A variety of things. In the earlier years a transactional attorney, also known as a corporate lawyer, does a lot of due diligence work. That can involve reviewing documents and checking for revisions. Over time, a lawyer becomes more involved with deal transactions by drafting and negotiating documents. As one evolves, the job encompasses more client management, which can mean being able to fulfill their needs and manage their expectations. The practice of law can range from researching a particular legal issue to putting together a deal from start to finish.

Only in the very beginning, when you are not sure what to do, there is an assignment book. You report to a person and you take whatever comes along. Over time, you get to know the people in the firm and develop relationships. Then the people in the firm will come to you directly when they need help. You will end up getting your work that way or by word of mouth. Also, over time you choose your practice group. Then you become more focused with what you do and who you work with, developing specializations. That also dictates how you get your work.

It is nice in the initial years to have a supervisor as a reality check, but by the time I was in my fourth or fifth year with the firm, for certain transactions I would not go to a partner unless I had questions. Once you stop being a junior associate (meaning the first couple years with the firm) you only need to report back if you are not sure about something. It is not always the case that you are working with a partner, but I like working with a partner because there is always so much to learn by watching him or her in action.

career path

I started out at University of California, Berkeley where I became bored taking regular pre-med classes. Pursuing what I wanted to do seemed like the right thing at the time. So, I transferred into Julliard School, where I received my Bachelor of Music in piano in 1990. I had been playing piano my whole life, and I loved it so much. Then I got a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in performance at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995. I worked as a classical pianist and taught for a few years. I was playing piano, but mostly doing chamber work instead of performing solo pieces. As it became clearer that I wanted to take my career in a different direction, I worked at a law firm and a bank for a while. I decided to go for my Juris Doctor (J.D.) in law at The University of Chicago Law School.

I did everything! I started helping a friend by answering phones, and then they asked me stay to work as a legal secretary. Eventually, I became a paralegal (someone who assists an attorney, but does not have a degree in law). I decided that law was an interesting field, and that I wanted to keep working in it.

I don't think it was difficult, but it required a different skill set and different analytical skills than I had not been using in the past. It was like, "you're not getting any younger and you really should find something financially stable." Also, I wanted something mentally stimulating and, while teaching is stimulating personally, it does not develop a person mentally as much as other professions would. That was what spurred me to look for something new.

I went through the interview process that my school had in place. I worked as an intern during summers, which does the trick for most people. At the end of my first year, I went to Heller Ehrman in San Francisco. I did everything across the board, including litigation and corporate work. My second year in law school, I did a split between Latham's Silicon Valley office and its Los Angeles office, because I was not sure if I wanted to be in Northern or Southern California yet.

This is my first position. I have been here ever since I graduated from law school. I accepted a position at the Latham's Silicon Valley office and worked there for two years. Then, I transferred to the Los Angeles office because my boyfriend moved down to Los Angeles. For a brief stint, I also went to Hong Kong and worked in our office there for three months because they were incredibly busy. I have enjoyed my time here.

It is like going on an extended business trip where the only time you have free is the weekends, and then you just want to be home. The work ethic in Hong Kong is different than the work ethic in America, in that they put in really long hours.

I have found the company to suit me well. I think that a large part of that is because I have found a practice group that I enjoy, a group of people I like to work with, and I enjoy the work I do. It is the whole package. I have just started a family and they have been really accommodating. I really appreciate the entire culture and environment that they are able to offer me. I haven't felt any need to change that.

my day

I got up and came into work at about 9:30. I checked in with my secretary and gave her some reimbursement receipts for a business trip that I went on about a week and a half ago, but had not had the chance to follow up on before. I went through and organized my emails and timesheets. Today has actually been an incredibly light day. I have been reading client alert emails and checking materials from clients as they come in. I'm not doing as much drafting work as I usually do. I do drafting work, for example, if the client wants an agreement put together. They will tell me what kind of agreement they want and sometimes what the terms of the agreement are. I can also learn their objectives by talking to the client on the phone or attending client meetings. Then it is just going back and figuring out what deals we have done that are similar, looking at precedent, and crafting an agreement that will suit the deal. It can take anywhere from one day to several weeks to put together an initial draft. A lot of small agreements come across my desk as well, so I often draft or edit one to three smaller documents per day. Usually, a couple things come across my desk from another attorney with a question, so I help provide commentary and follow up. Today, I took my regular lunch at noon for an hour and came back. I've been cleaning up my files and getting ready to ship things back to records. On a slow day like today, I get a lot of my paperwork done that I don't usually have time to do.

Yes, that is mostly what I do.

Most of the time I am in the office. Occasionally I attend meetings with clients. Most client interaction is through teleconference, so meetings generally happen over the telephone. We rarely meet outside of the office. I am a corporate attorney as opposed to a litigator, so I am never inside a courtroom. We don't have cases, we have deals, where two parties want to get together and define the terms of their relationship. There is no winning and losing, but sometimes one client has an advantage over the other. You try to get a wonderful deal for your client, but you also try to balance that with the client's need to maintain a good long-term relationship with the other side.

I usually work 9AM to 7PM, and it's fairly flexible at my level. It is less flexible on a junior associate level, and you have to work more on the weekends then. Depending on the deal, you could work at home and come in later. It depends on the particular office location as well. In Los Angeles, it is a matter of avoiding traffic, so you hang out here and get things done for a couple of extra hours.

The challenges come and go. That is the very nature of corporate practice. It gets very exciting when it heats up and all of a sudden the deal is over and you're thinking, "I should have arranged a vacation. It is just so quiet, I don't know what to do." When there's work it's very interesting and when there isn't you're thinking, "Hmm, maybe I should go shopping."

Occasionally, but not really. Legal work gets creative when you need to figure out a solution that no one else has already thought of. That's fun because we get to craft a new solution from scratch.

salary & lifestyle

I think the starting salary is $145,000 for a junior associate, but it may have increased. We have a lock step progression where every year there is an automatic bump. There is a similar progression for bonuses, although those are discretionary. After your seventh or eighth year, you are on board for partnership or to be of counsel. At the partnership level, your income is no longer fixed.

It definitely changed my life initially. When I first started out as an attorney, I wanted to make sure I was learning my job well, so I focused a lot of time and energy there. I didn't have much of a social life, but that was by my design because I wanted to do it right. I still have my friends outside of work and my family get-togethers. None of that has changed. On a day-to-day basis I don't go out at the end of the day because I have to work. It's more difficult to schedule things.

It's always a balancing act, sometimes more than others. If I think that my child is happy and well cared for, then I can give a sigh of relief and go to work. But if she's not feeling well, then I feel badly leaving her behind. It's just hard balancing everything, but for the most part I get to do what I need to do.

It is very different. I had very flexible hours when I was teaching and it was never a nine to five. I had a lot more time to do things on my own and focus on my family. It was a little strange at first, because I was never subject to those time restrictions before, not even in school. It's not that working 8 hours is too difficult to do, because you work longer hours in school. It's just that you cannot go out in the middle of the day. Working a nine to five feels restricting at first because there is an office mentality. You have to get comfortable with making it creative and interesting in different ways.

No, not really. I think that is my own fault though, because I don't allocate the time for it. I play piano only occasionally now. It definitely fulfills a different part of me.

At the end of May, we went on vacation to Mexico for a week for a destination wedding. We get three weeks per year of vacation time, which is probably more than you generally need.

I traveled more in my junior years and not so much lately. I probably could travel more, but as a new mother I prefer working locally. If you make your needs known clearly, I don't think they force you to travel. As a junior associate, I probably would be traveling somewhere three or four times a year. It could be just a day trip or it could be a week trip.

pros, cons & trends

The most satisfying aspect is when I am able to negotiate something and am pleased with the result. When the transaction is completed well, it is very satisfying. One of the more frustrating aspects is when legal analysis and caution comes up against business efficiency and speed, like when the business professionals do not want to spend the time, energy, and thought to work through the things that the lawyers feel they need to work through more thoroughly. They will try to rush deals and you do what you can, but it may not be your best work product because it is a compromise of necessity.

I do enjoy working with Latham because it is a good group of people what I work with. Also, I enjoy my area of law, which I find challenging and interesting.

Mostly just time. It is a matter of dedicating yourself to learning, doing, and practicing. I don't think it takes much more than that other than a desire to do well.

No, I do not regret it.

A gradual trend in law is that the type of work we do with technology transactions is starting to be performed more and more by attorneys in-house. In the past, big companies would send all of their legal work to big law firms. Over the years, corporate entities have been doing more of their own legal work, creating their own in-house legal groups. I think over time certain practice groups in law firms will have to change to respond to this trend.

Yes, to a certain extent. Earlier in the year, when the sub-prime credit market died, a lot of attorneys had no work. They've slowly been recovering. But one of the wonderful things about a full service law firm like our is that we are not just a corporate law firm; we also practice litigation and bankruptcy. We practice pretty much every area of law, not just finance, which was pretty hard hit this year. We are also diversified internationally, so as a firm we are doing just fine. Our European offices are busier than ever, even though the American offices are experiencing a quieter period. It is the general business rule of diversification. It has helped us along because the firm has been able to tell us that everything will be fine, just work hard when you get the work. This too shall pass.

Our law firm is definitely growing. I don't know if that's an indication of the field in general. I think that the workflow for specific fields within law can be tied to the cyclical nature of certain clients. For example, when none of our clients were going public in the capital markets, our Capital Markets group slowed down. But in a booming economy will it come back? I think that it definitely will. There are probably some areas of law that won't change too much over time, like taxes. By and large, it is probably better to go into what you want to practice and over time it will pretty much even itself out. The key is to enjoy what you are doing.

advice

I would advise that you get as much exposure to the actual practice of law as you can. You should throw yourself into it early on because that is the quickest way to figure out if that is what you want to do. If you don't do that, then it may take longer to come to a decision of what you like and what you don't like.

I think we look for a general exhibition of intelligence, which probably comes with going to a decent law school. Enthusiasm for the law is key. Also, a desire to work hard and turn out good work product is necessary. The ability to be detailed is important too. In the initial stages in practicing as an intern that is all they can judge you on. Like, "Is she being careful and detailed?" They cannot actually critique you on your analysis because you do not have any practical experience analyzing the law. It would be unfair for them to base their decision on something like that.

You pick up a knack for what sounds right and what sounds wrong in analyzing the law. You certainly run into transactions where certain things work and make sense. Over time you will just know.

I think that depends. It depends on what kind of firm you want to join. If you want to join my firm, I would say that the school you went to and networking are most important. The impression you make on people while you are interning or interviewing is important. They look very carefully at the way you interact with other people, not just the way you do your work, because they are looking at you not just as someone who can churn out good legal product, but as someone who will be able to deal with clients on a long-term basis, bring in business, and manage people well. They try to gauge potential, which is a hard thing to do.