The Work
Since Boies Schiller is still relatively small in terms of headcount, applicants seeking the reassurance of big company infrastructure, mature work allocation systems, precise billable hour expectations and a defined hierarchy would not thrive here. Small teams, early responsibility, generalist practice areas and long working days characterize life at the firm. “I was attracted to Boies Schiller by its size,” one junior associate said. “I wanted to work directly for partners rather than mid-level associates; I’m effectively a mid- level associate already.” Others echoed the high expectations the firm places on its new associates from day one: “I wanted to be sure I’d get an intense type of practice, intellectually stimulating on a regular basis. Here there’s the opportunity to do so many different things.” Another concurred, “It’s been an amazing experience so far. I like the intense atmosphere – it’s constantly go, go, go.”
Work allocation at Boies Schiller is not an exact science and, provided you can handle the pressure, work will flow your way. “The distribution of the workload depends on your ability,” one junior explained. “The partners are very astute about how much you can do, and the quality of your work.” Typically, work filters down from partners that juniors are formally assigned to. “There’s an informal team structure.” In some groups there is also a coordinator who manages a pool of work and then allocates it out according to who is available.
Litigation associates can expect a very broad workload covering everything from antitrust to white-collar crime, with tasks including “researching and drafting briefs and responses, a lot of discovery requests, and responding to complaints. Whatever the partners ask me to do.” Some interviewees had already clocked up hours of trial experience, and others were looking forward to this prospect. “We’re a firm of generalists,” an interviewee explained. “We do everything under the sun.”
The small corporate group is almost entirely based in New York City, with a few tax lawyers in Miami. It tends to work separately from the litigation teams, although it does provide support or specialist knowledge to them when required. “Corporate work is fundamentally different from litigation, so we have our own clients and do our own work," a junior explained. "But there is a great deal of overlap with litigation , especially in securities work. We provide necessary backup where required.” Corporate attorneys choose to work at Boies Schiller over other firms because they “wanted the opportunity to get very substantive work at a young age.” The pressure on junior associates can be unrelenting, something they seem to relish. “Some clients only ever speak to me, never the partner in charge,” one said. “We get a great deal of responsibility. I’ve run my own deals – I’m the one who negotiated with partners on the other side. It was really my show. In most places you don’t get to do this until you’re a fourth or fifth-year associate.”
Training & Development
Although the firm has a program of firmwide, monthly training seminars given by senior attorneys and occasionally name partners via video and teleconferences, associates repeatedly said that “most of the training is day-to-day, on the job.” As the firm continues to expand, “maybe it will become more institutionalized.”
New associates receive initial training “about the basics” such as memo-writing. Furthermore, “everyone is given a mentor. Mine took me out to lunch once a month,” although the small team culture means that junior associates seek advice and support from other associates and partners when required. A corporate associate’s perspective was that “there’s no formal training. You have a more senior associate or partner giving you regular advice and feedback when you need it. Everyone is an informal mentor.” A litigator emphasized that “the associate network is great – we walk into each other’s offices and bounce ideas around.”
Annual assessments tend to be equally informal, which interviewees liked. There are no convoluted written reviews based on metrics here. Instead, “there’s a yearly review meeting with partners you’ve worked with, saying what you can improve. It’s a conversation – there’s no written feedback. It works well.”
Offices
Boies Schiller has 11 domestic offices, and some are to be found in unusual places, such as the four-attorney outpost in Hanover, New Hampshire. Notionally, the firm operates as a single unit and attorneys at the larger offices in particular regularly collaborate.
New York City is home to the largest office, with almost 70 attorneys. Attorneys have their own rooms on the lower floors of rented space on Lexington Avenue and are “not at the top of a big skyscraper.” The corporate team sits apart from the litigators. The style of the office is in keeping with the unfussy, down-to-business attitude of the firm in general. “Some offices in Manhattan are like museums. Not here,” a source said. “Some firms have real plates and wine glasses for lunch. It’s plastic glasses here. It’s stark in that sense. We save a lot of money on overheads.” One went even further when describing their view from the seventh floor: “I look into the ugliest hotel in Manhattan.”
The Armonk office – where David Boies is based – has around 35 lawyers. The journey from Manhattan takes about 50 minutes by car, “but longer by train as there’s a 20-minute cab ride from the train station to the office.” On arrival, you’ll discover “a very nice office, not like a sanitized high-rise. It’s a red brick building with a tremendous amount of space, in a New England style of architecture. It’s what a law office used to look like.” The quiet location is ideal for people with young families or anyone else who wants to move out of the city.
Culture
Entrepreneurial firms are often synonymous with aggressive personalities and a "star" culture. However, associate feedback indicates that Boies Schiller manages to eschew unpleasantness: teamwork and respect are integral to its success, though there is a star culture that certainly exists around the name partners, and David Boies in particular. “David is a thrilling person. You’re not just working for three names that have been on the side of a building in New York for a hundred years.” Boies treats summer associates to two much sought-after events at his house: a craps night when he teaches the game, and a wine-tasting evening with bottles from his “most amazing cellars. He personally decants the wine and takes the tasting very seriously.”
People take their work very seriously and the culture is driven by a hard work ethic. Relatively little time and effort is spent on secondary concerns such as the dress code, organized social events, office embellishments, perks, formal vacation, sickness policies, or formal hierarchies. This is a young company without ossified cultural conventions. “People work really hard here,” associates repeatedly said. “If you’re not willing to, it won’t work out. You can’t expect to hide in a huge class of people.” Another confirmed, “It’s very hard-working, no-nonsense. But at the same time because it’s a small firm people tend to have a very strong sense of being part of a team. People show respect.”
There is one notable extravagance: every year the firm flies its attorneys and their significant others to Jamaica for a weekend retreat, which is a social activity, a family gathering and an opportunity to network all rolled into one. “It’s an opportunity for colleagues from different offices who’ve worked together to actually meet.” At the first night’s party, “people wear name tags. It’s also an opportunity for the firm to thank family members of attorneys for not getting to see their loved one as much as they’d like throughout the year.” Characteristically, there is also an emphasis on getting business done, with “several partner meetings for brainstorming, reflecting on progress during the past year, and planning.” Aside from work and “dinner with music,” activities include tennis and golf.
Hours & Compensation
Associates praise Boies Schiller’s above-market compensation formula, which rewards hard work. “There’s more or less a direct relationship between how much you work and how much you get paid,” an associate said. The basic salary for first-year associates is $174,000 and the bonus amount is “more directly linked to hours billed than anywhere else.” Total compensation is roughly 30 percent of what is billed (adjusted to eliminate variations in associate compensation that would result from alternative fee arrangements or other factors such as premiums or discounts); subtract the base salary from that amount and you have your bonus for the year.
It lacks the guarantee that comes with a lockstep system and it comes with inherent risk, but associates prefer an arrangement where someone billing 3,000 hours is more generously rewarded than someone billing 2,100. “You have the opportunity to make a lot more money than first-year associates at other firms,” one said. “From a morale perspective, if you’re here at 2 a.m. and at the weekend, you know that’s making you more money. That has a positive effect.” The firm’s compensation policy for contingency work allows associates to treat such cases as regularly billable or to “roll the dice” and forgo any compensation until the case is hopefully won. If that happens, they receive a much higher payout.
In boom times, some associates felt they “weren’t doing as well as others in NYC because of the special bonuses firms were paying,” a source said. “But I’ve made a killing on the market in the past three years. I’ve worked a lot harder though. The compensation model puts pressure on you to work long hours.” There is no minimum billable target: “There’s no need. We’re so busy.”
Pro Bono
Boies Schiller supports associates who want to take on pro bono work, and counts it as billable work, but there is no minimum hours requirement. Consequently, some interviewees had done no pro bono work this year at all, or none ever, while others had done a lot. “The firm encourages pro bono,” associates explained. “It’s just a matter of if you can get it done. People don’t do more because they are so busy.” The difficulty of fitting pro bono assignments into a packed schedule was a recurrent complaint: “The main difficulty is time management. You are your own boss. If someone asks you to do something at the same time it’s difficult.”
Since 2005 the firm has been working on the high-profile Florida Medicaid case, fighting to improve healthcare provision to the Sunshine State’s indigent children. The case finally arrived in court in December 2009. Other pro bono work has covered prisoners’ rights, family law matters (through InMotion in NYC), battered wives, death row cases and the landmark Second Amendment ‘DC Gun Case’ before the Supreme Court.
Diversity
Boies Schiller’s diversity statistics are about average among law firms. “There’s a good representation of women and minorities,” one associate commented. “The stats are decent. It’s not an issue for anyone.” A Fort Lauderdale source went further, saying, “It’s relatively diverse in my office. It’s mixed: we have quite a few racial minorities and gay attorneys.”
An associate from a minority background explained the firm’s philosophy in relation to diversity. “We’re not willing to hire someone solely for diversity purposes. We’re not going to compromise the standard just to make the numbers look a certain way. Some firms do.” Boies Schiller actively participates in national and regional minority organizations, including the ABA’s National Conference for the Minority Lawyer, the National Women’s Law Center and the Hispanic National Bar Association.
Get Hired
Boies Schiller targets only the very top law schools and usually only the top ten percent of students at them. “Top schools. Top grades. The firm wants to be a leader of the elite,” a junior surmised. A senior recruitment source explained, “We don’t have any rigid rules, but we look at top ten schools. We look for high grades because they are proxy to the ability to think and do complex work at the highest level, but that’s not enough. You need to be an effective advocate, to stand up in court, or in front of the client. We want a culture of interesting people.”
Essential personality traits include “confidence, being proactive, energy, enthusiasm.” The "Boies type," according to current associates, is “incredibly bright, self-motivating and driven. There are no introverted people – we don’t have quiet lawyers who sit alone in their offices all day.” Furthermore, “you have to be a quick learner and independent – there’s not a lot of hand-holding. If you’re looking for a lifestyle firm, this is not the place.” The firm’s unofficial motto is, after all: Do you want to win, or sleep?”
Strategy & Future
Boies Schiller’s strategy for the future can be summed up as more of the same, with a senior source at the firm confirming there will only be “modest growth, because we want to maintain litigation boutique status.” Though there is a corporate group, “we remain predominantly a litigation firm.” The firm has around 235 lawyers, a number which “fluctuates a bit as people come and go, but is fairly stable.” The entry-level recruitment strategy has always been to hire the best of the best. “We have never hired classes of 100.” The bar to get hired by this elite firm is very high. The firm doesn’t anticipate any further office openings unless “it seems sensible.” For the moment, it will stick to operating its current offices and doing “New York-style work” for clients with “national, not local, stature.”