JAG lawyer or law firm?
There are a lot of financial considerations at play. How good is your school’s loan repayment program? Make sure you know *all* the details. Even some top-10 school have shockingly bad loan repayment. You may have to work up to 7 years as a JAG (or other govt/nonprofit position) in order to fully vest, and you might face having to pay it all back if you go back into the private sector too early. Also, your loan repayment program might require you to plow a whole lot extra money you make at a firm into your loans if you are going to qualify for loan repayment later on as a JAG. That could make the financial reasons for working at a firm significantly less attractive — you may not end up with any savings. On the flip side, if you work at a higher salary in a firm, before you enter federal government service, even for just a year, you may get a significantly higher pay grade than you would if you entered government service directly. (This is true for judicial clerks, but I’m not sure it’
Ignoring the financial aspect of it all, the question is what kind of lawyer you want to be. If you want to be trial lawyer, you should work for a law firm that is going to get you into a courtroom. Not a motion practice, but a trial practice. And what kind of litigation do you want to do? You’re much more likely to find this at a smaller or medium-sized firm which does exclusively general or matter-specific litigation. Sometimes, to get those kinds of jobs at good firms for that kind of thing, a year or two in a large law firm will help you a lot, in terms or training and general understanding of the process. If you want to be a military lawyer, then join the military. I don’t know, but I suspect, that being a JAG will not be that much like being a civilian trial lawyer. You will learn information and skills that may or may not be useful to you in a civilian setting. Do it because you want to be in the military, not because you want to be a trial lawyer. What did you do for your summe
A little more follow-up – I know lots of “trial lawyers.” Even they spend lots of time in motion practice – it’s just that there is a greater chance that they’ll ultimately take these cases to trial. If you really enjoy the actual process of being in a courtroom and arguing about things and getting a ruling one way or the other, this concept of being a trial lawyer may appeal to you, even if you’re not actually in trial that much. I has watched several of my trial lawyer friends come to really enjoy what they do, because they enjoy the competition and the intellectual battle of it all. While they relish occasionally taking cases to trial, having a jury or a judge decide the questions of fact of the case is generally not nearly as emotionally satisfying to them as it is being able to demonstrate superior lawyering through the arguing, drafting and other legal skills exemplified in a broad motion practice. The law student’s ideal of a full “trial practice” is largely a fantasy. It’s a ve
