Starting in Biglaw and Conflicts

[Byzantine]

In Ethics class there was a lot of focus on conflicts and avoiding conflicts as a lawyer. How does this apply in practice if you spend your articling / first few years at a biglaw firm? Does that inhibit your ability to do certain types of work in the future? Like for example if you're doing employment defence work at a biglaw firm can you move to a smaller plaintiff side firm later in your career? If you're doing defence class action work can you move to plaintiff side firm? 

I guess the conflicts worry would be that you end up against a client of your previous firm. Is that only an issue if you worked directly on that file previously? 

[Jaggers]

It can disqualify you from working on certain matters, but doesn't disqualify you against other parties forever. It's not really a major issue.

[PzabbytheLawyer]

What @Jaggerssaid.

However, certain areas lend themselves to very long, massive, trials that take many many years to resolve.

legal conflicts in these areas can be difficult to overcome when "switching sides".

[Jaggers]

When I started at the firm I worked at, I was conflicted out of a matter that went to the Supreme Court. It was huge, and I would have loved to be on it, but ultimately it was just one matter and it was over about two years later. But yeah, if you're out of a matter you're out of it, no matter how interesting or how long it takes.

[Byzantine]

On 4/20/2023 at 7:08 PM, Jaggers said:

It can disqualify you from working on certain matters, but doesn't disqualify you against other parties forever. It's not really a major issue.

So you're saying that working for a client doesn't disqualify you from being on the opposite side of them in the future right? I would think that you may have confidential information from your previous work with them that may be relevant for future cases. Does it matter what sort of client it is? 

[Jaggers]

For any matter you'd have to evaluate if you have confidential information. But I would say generally, just having worked for some company in the past doesn't mean you have confidential information that would disqualify you from all future matters involving them.