Beyond Litigation and Transactional Work

A guest post from Cybersecurity and Privacy Law Expert Kirk Nahra

Today’s Standout Summer Associate message comes from Kirk J. Nahra. Kirk is a Partner at WilmerHale where he is the co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity and Privacy Practices. You can learn more about Kirk’s fascinating career story on Episode 75 of the How I Lawyer Podcast.

You all know that the summer associate hiring process is getting earlier and earlier. And that’s on top of the fact that, no matter when this process happens, law students know vey little about law firms in general and about any specific firm. Nothing about this early season is helping either students or firms.

With that said, when you are working at a firm for the summer, you should be thinking about your future career—not because you have to know what you want to do, but because this is a good opportunity to explore options as you think about a future career (and remember, careers are long).

So one suggestion—don’t think of your choice as between “litigation or transactional.” I realize that’s how law schools focus your attention. But I’ve seen too many students and summer associates—and even new associates—who seem to think those are the only choices. They definitely are not. And many of the “other” choices have a component of these areas without being so limiting.

One big “other” area is what my firm calls “regulatory” work. I don’t know that there is a formal definition, but this means practices where lawyers are advising on issues related to state and federal law—how these laws work, creating compliance programs, advising on new developments, counseling on business implications of regulatory provisions, understanding new details of complicated federal regulations. A government contracts lawyer will advise on the Federal Acquisition Regulation and how a company can meet the requirements of these rules and where the key risks are. There may be a “transactional” element when these contracts are being negotiated. There may be a litigation piece if something goes wrong. The same with an environmental practice—these are laws that impact business practices. What does a company need to do to comply? Will we be able to offer this new product? Where do we have the biggest risks? You may need to know these issues because of the acquisition of a new company. Or a government agency may pursue litigation. But the core is advising on the rules and how they impact the business of your clients.

My area of cybersecurity and privacy is exactly in this space. We are involved with almost every practice area in the firm. The “core” of our activity is a counseling practice—advising on the enormous variety of new and old privacy laws. We handle a wide range of security breaches—this involves company counseling, dealing with law enforcement and hackers, negotiating with customers, complying with regulatory notification obligation, developing appropriate overall policies and then handling the investigations and litigation that follow. We are involved in tons of transactions. We draft a lot of contracts (or at least important sections of these contracts). We help with development of new products. We write privacy policies. We build compliance programs. There may be litigation and transactional elements—but there is so much more to these core regulatory practices.

So use your summer to learn about these possibilities. You won’t get much of this in law school—but it’s a key part of what so many lawyers actually do.