Reeghan Raffals, by Reeghan Raffals

Reeghan Raffals is a business litigator with Valorem Law Group.

There's a line from the Simpsons where Mr. Burns expresses his views on art by saying, "Smithers, I may not know what I like, but I do know what I hate." That's a pretty good description of what I knew about practicing law when I started looking for a job after completing a clerkship. My friends at big firms told me all the things they hated about their jobs -- the office politics, the exhausting and all too often pointless work, and, looming over everything else, the vexing sense that their hard work, happiness, and professional development were afterthoughts if they were given any thought at all. What I knew less about, as did my friends, was where to find the things we would like.

Luckily for me, I found my way to Bartlit Beck in Chicago. Having broken away from a big firm themselves, they sought to capture some of the best aspects of big firm practice while avoiding the worst. They took on interesting and challenging cases, but staffed them leanly with the expectation that each team member would know the case and make a meaningful contribution. Soon after I arrived, I was taking depositions and playing a key role in RealNetworks' antitrust case against Microsoft, which settled for around three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Now that I know more about practicing law, I am excited to be working at Valorem. This is a firm that's young enough and small enough to allow each one of us to make our own contribution to the firm's personality and success. And with engaging work, small and collaborative teams, colleagues who are not only smart but collegial, and alternative fee arrangements that align our interests with those of our clients, there's a lot to like.