Career Prospects at Clayton Utz

We have a clear promotion structure and timeline which if you can hit the targets then a promotion is on the cards

The firm is lock-step at the junior level so promotion opportunities as you would imagine them don't exist. Once someone is in the middle of their career the promotion opportunities come if they can bring money to the firm by developing client relationships or if they can become an expert in a field. This is not something that is relevant to a junior applying for the roles.

Highly dependent on business need/the vibe of the team you are in

Given the firm is quite large, there is ample opportunity to progress your career. Those who want to progress are supported and informed of the best ways to do so and expectations are made clear.

There are generally good promotion opportunities, but this sometimes depends on what team your in and whether there is capacity promote

I am not fully across the path to promotion process but it seems as though it is a. time based and then up to b. partner discretion.

It takes a lot, but that's the same at every firm. At least here, people will help lift you up and tell you what you need to do to move up.

Offers opportunities for ascension as fast as employee wishes.

Depends on the team. It can be difficult to move up without just having higher PQE.

Billable hours, pro bono, knowledge management expectations. Usual to a firm of this size. There is a clear career progression line towards Partner if that is what you want. It isn't easy but it is there.

I haven't considered this.

It seems like promotion is perhaps too fixed. There are benefits to having a lock-step salary model but it does not provide much incentive to perform beyond regular KPI's which are already quite onerous when you're starting out. Also, the gap between SA to special counsel and partner continues to widen.

Unclear, other than time and billable hours targets. It appears to be hard to progress faster than the standard plan (i.e., it takes a certain number of years to progress regardless).

Attending the pathway to promotion sessions has been helpful for knowing what is expected - billable targets, business development, firm involvement, quality of work etc - can see around the firm that most people are moving up to senior associate roughly 5 years in so motivating to know around what time you can expect to start being eligible for consideration and it's not too far away. Less clear about the path from senior associate to special counsel/partner and what is expected of a special counsel role.

I have no reason to believe there are any issues with career progression at my company.

Senior Associate - 5 years

After finishing the grad program, graduates will settle in a practice group to become a junior lawyer, and a senior lawyer after 3 years. Lawyers can then go for a promotion to Senior Associate where they have enough experience to take the lead on matters. They can then go for Special Counsel, and then eventually to Partner. I understand that this is standard across most mid-tier to large commercial law firms.

It would be helpful to know more about what a standard career progression looks like. It is something that I think is unspoken at the firm, and not entirely transparent from the very junior level (i.e. it is treated as something that is so far away for graduates that it is not worth talking about at this stage). I think it definitely is worth talking about, as my tendency at least is to think that if we aren't told about the prospects of progression, the default thinking is that the prospects are bad. They may not be, but we just don't know. Things that would be helpful to know, for example, include dialogue around why Clayton Utz does not have promotions from lawyer to associates, as all other equivalent top tier firms do. I do not know what the reasoning behind not having this job title is. Obviously this looks like there is then a lot longer we have to wait until promotion, because this level does not exist at the firm. It would be helpful to know the reasoning around this, and also the stats - i.e. does this mean that people will get senior associate promotions quicker because there is not that level in between, and what is the average time before senior associate promotion, is it a matter of just doing that time or is there a realistic prospect of being promoted early if performance is up to scratch (even where there may be some people with longer tenure who have been 'in line' longer). I think it is very important that we get information on this from this very early stage, because the reality of the current market is that people are progressing quicker (experience, seniority and remuneration) when they job hop, so it is helpful to know what the path actually looks like here rather than being in the dark and assuming there is a long, unachievable path to promotion.

I started at my firm this year - unsure what it takes to move up the ranks (aside from the basic meeting KPIs)

Promotion opportunities seem to follow standard path. Some of the criteria appears a bit burdensome such as billable targets and time lags for submitting timesheets