But to the extent that anyone does, I wouldn't be surprised if they just hated DC.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1401306&forum_id=2:#15844496)

i was in HP for 8 months before I got to file any sort of motion, and even then it was some BS discovery motion. until then I did corporate research to determine liability of a company. wtf.

Talked with lots of people and it's prety much the same. TTTs stay because it's hard to lateral and good people leave. there are exceptions though, rockstar ex-scotus clerks who get to argue before the dc circuit and whatnot. that would be awesome. but the typical lawyer tops out at gs14. you have to get some supervisory experience and take on extra responsibility to hit gs15. plus the gs15 level is actually competitive. it's not an automatic move, you have to apply and be selected over your coworkers to move from 14 to 15, or else you'll just keep getting a step bump every year.

sometimes people move to chief type positions which are on the senior executive scale (SES) versus the GS scale, but even the SES scale isn't that much better and chances are slim that any one person will move to the SES scale.

occasionally people really make a name for themselves in a niche though and they seem to do well. but yeah, the experience isn't what I thought it would be. for some reason during 1L I decided it was my dream to work for DOJ. did SLIP and hated it, but decided to press on into HP. HATED it even more.

for the people with biglaw creds though, the DOJ is basically a revolving door. it's not as hard as others are making out to move to biglaw and people do it constantly. people leave for biglaw then come back a few years later and such. I moved to biglaw, but honestly the best career trajectory IMO would be to do DOJ for a few years then move to biglaw as a 4th year or whatever so you can skip all the BS of biglaw 1st-2nd years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1401306&forum_id=2:#15850784)

coworkers were intelligent, but surprisingly lots of TTT students with LLMs like I mentioned. the smartest of my coworkers could go toe-to-toe with any legal mind in the country, the dumbest would (and probably did) do well at TTT schools.

as an anecdote, one of my coworkers was there like 20 years and an expert in his field. if he wrote something or put his name on something going to the court, the court would universally agree with him. even opposing counsel would basically bend to his will when he told them what he thought on gray area issues in his specialty. it was pretty sick.

I stayed about 18 mos. headhunters started calling and I finally started answering.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1401306&forum_id=2:#15850797)

- poor resources (eg, it takes 6 days for the IT people to fix anything)

- mostly moronic ttt co-workers w/ no ambition

- boring work (that gov't work is "interesting" is the biggest misconception of all time)

- topping out at $145k

of course, all the trust-fund babies at yhs think that they will all be the next Robert Bork. they soon discover that they are more likely to be some low-paid, inconsequential bureaucrat for the next 40 years.

btw, unless you're a presidential appointee, few if any agency-level gov't lawyers lateral to decent biglaw firms.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1401306&forum_id=2:#15848352)

Everyone i know at doj hates it (except ausa and appellate) and can't wait to get out. problem is, it's very hard to lateral to top firms. many top firms don't even take laterals (eg, cravath, w&c, s&c).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1401306&forum_id=2:#15850521)

You're mostly wrong on exit ops. Exiting to Cravath which doesn't take laterals of any kind, would be hard. But aside from ~5 firms out of the V100, firms do take laterals and I've seen too many come from SEC, DOJ, FTC. Also talked to SEC, FTC types who, when they look to make an exit, field multiple offers, ITE or otherwise.

Also, if you spend more than 10 years at these agencies and manage to move up into the senior ranks, you can lateral in as a partner. Frankly, your odds of making V100 partner are higher starting in DOJ/SEC/AUSA than starting in a V100

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1401306&forum_id=2:#15850773)

http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=1354306&mc=121&forum_id=2#15388193

Also, a lot of people go into it thinking they'll only stay a couple years. Get some decent experience, skip the month long doc review bullshit a lot of BIGLAW first years get, and lateral out as a mid-level. Plus the money jump is pretty significant. Not an un-credited strategy.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1401306&forum_id=2:#15846132)