Ann Israel is the legal profession's Dear Abby. A New York legal recruiter since 1979, Ann is a past president of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants. Advice for the Lawlorn is updated every Tuesday.

Q:I am a second-year law student in New York City lucky enough to have multiple offers from Biglaw firms in New York. Does your advice to pre-law students -- to choose the highest-ranked law school that accepts them -- also apply to the prestige rankings of law firms?

Dear Lucky: First of all, it is both modest and charming that you consider yourself lucky to have multiple offers from law firms, but I doubt that it was luck bringing those offers to your door. I suspect it was a winning combination of grades and personality that put you in a position to receive a number of offers from prestigious law firms.

Your question is an interesting one -- and one that I have never thought about. However, I do think that the situation of a pre-law student preparing to choose a law school is quite different from that of a 2L trying to decide where to work next summer.

My advice in terms of where to go to law school has been constant over the years: Go to the school with the highest ranking that accepts you. But how does a law student choose a summer law firm?

Since you have offers from a number of New York Biglaw firms, more than likely these are all top law firms. My guess is that you can't make a mistake, no matter which one you might choose. But to make the best choice, you need to do some serious due diligence.

The American Lawyer publishes surveys on midlevel associates and on summer associates. Since there is a high percentage chance that you will end up working at the law firm where you summer once you graduate from law school, it is important that you try to accept an offer from a firm that will be the best fit for you. Go to your law school library and check out those surveys from the past few years. Find out what is being said about the firms you are considering. Take it all with a grain of salt, but take it all in.

Although it is far too early (most likely) to know the practice area you want to specialize in, you might have some ideas about certain areas that are of interest to you. Make sure that the firms you are considering do have these practice groups and, if they do, that they are significant practice groups at the firm. For example, if you think you might want to specialize in immigration law, and one particular firm doesn't have an immigration law department, I would knock this firm to the bottom of the list.

If you have been thinking about white-collar litigation and one of the firms has a particular expertise in this area and you constantly read about the firm in the legal papers and sometimes even in the daily newspapers, you might want to put this firm at the top of your list.

Again, I don't think you can make a bad decision given the choices you have. Even if the firm you choose for your summer employment turns out to be a place you wouldn't want to work at as a permanent associate, you still will have some other choices when you return to school for 3L OCI, particularly since it sounds as if you are a very desirable candidate.

I think if you take a bit of time to check out the Am Law surveys, this will be a tremendous aid to your dilemma. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any more questions and certainly let us know what you end up doing. Best wishes!

Sincerely,
Ann Israel
President, Ann Israel & Associates