We’ve written a lot about what makes Susman Godfrey unusual in the Biglaw landscape — the equity-only partnership, the top-of-market compensation, the willingness to fight Trump’s executive order rather than capitulate, the radical decision to treat law students like human beings during recruiting. But the thing that actually defines the firm’s identity, the thing all those other choices flow from, is the trial work. Susman is, at its core, a firm that tries cases. And trying cases means putting lawyers in front of judges. Young lawyers.
Which brings us to a federal courtroom recently, where Judge Jon Tigar of the Northern District of California stopped proceedings to deliver what amounted to a public service announcement to the entire bar.
As reported by Law.com, the subject of his remarks was Dylan Salzman, a Susman Godfrey associate in his first year at the firm. A University of Chicago Law School class of 2023 grad who brought brought two clerkships to the table (one at the district court level, one at the Seventh Circuit) before joining Susman less than a year ago. He is not a raw rookie, but he is, by any standard measure, a young lawyer. And Judge Tigar was paying attention.
The judge walked through Salzman’s credentials methodically — the Chicago JD, the clerkships, the less-than-a-year tenure at Susman — before delivering his verdict: “And nonetheless, the firm thought it would be a good idea for you to argue in the federal court. And what I want to say to Susman Godfrey is: Good for you. Good for you, really.”
Salzman’s performance apparently earned those kudos. “He had the argument, and he just … knocked it out of the park,” said partner Rohit Nath, who argued alongside him. Nath was quick to note that this wasn’t a special occasion or a calculated risk — it was just how the firm operates. “This was really kind of our standard practice. If we have an argument, there are some arguments that the senior lawyer handles. There’s some big arguments that the junior lawyer will handle entirely on their own.”
That philosophy, partner Justin Nelson explained, goes all the way back to the firm’s founder. “It stems from, really, Steve Susman himself, who taught me and others at the firm the importance of giving younger lawyers the opportunity to really, really excel.”
It’s worth pausing on that framing, because it stands in fairly sharp contrast to how most of Biglaw operates. The dirty secret of large firm litigation is that the word “litigator” covers an enormous range of actual courtroom experience — or more accurately, the frequent lack of it. At most large firms, associates spend years doing research and drafting motions that partners argue. The path to real courtroom experience is long, indirect, and far from guaranteed. The Biglaw model, broadly speaking, is to hire large classes of talented young lawyers, extract their labor on document review and brief writing, and promote a small fraction of them while the rest leave for in-house roles or boutiques. Developing people for the courtroom is not really the point.
Susman’s model rejects that explicitly. The firm is small by design — the smallest member of the Am Law 100 by headcount, with roughly 200 attorneys — and it is selective precisely because it intends to develop the people it hires rather than churn through them. The clerkship pipeline exists because the firm wants lawyers who already understand how federal courts work. The reformed recruiting model exists because the firm wants to hire people who genuinely want to try cases, not people who made a panicked decision with half a semester of grades. And putting Salzman up to argue, giving him the argument to own, not just to observe, is the whole model in action.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
The post A Federal Judge Praises Susman Godfrey For Letting A Young Associate Cook appeared first on Above the Law.
We’ve written a lot about what makes Susman Godfrey unusual in the Biglaw landscape — the equity-only partnership, the top-of-market compensation, the willingness to fight Trump’s executive order rather than capitulate, the radical decision to treat law students like human beings during recruiting. But the thing that actually defines the firm’s identity, the thing all those other choices flow from, is the trial work. Susman is, at its core, a firm that tries cases. And trying cases means putting lawyers in front of judges. Young lawyers.
Which brings us to a federal courtroom recently, where Judge Jon Tigar of the Northern District of California stopped proceedings to deliver what amounted to a public service announcement to the entire bar.
As reported by Law.com, the subject of his remarks was Dylan Salzman, a Susman Godfrey associate in his first year at the firm. A University of Chicago Law School class of 2023 grad who brought brought two clerkships to the table (one at the district court level, one at the Seventh Circuit) before joining Susman less than a year ago. He is not a raw rookie, but he is, by any standard measure, a young lawyer. And Judge Tigar was paying attention.
The judge walked through Salzman’s credentials methodically — the Chicago JD, the clerkships, the less-than-a-year tenure at Susman — before delivering his verdict: “And nonetheless, the firm thought it would be a good idea for you to argue in the federal court. And what I want to say to Susman Godfrey is: Good for you. Good for you, really.”
Salzman’s performance apparently earned those kudos. “He had the argument, and he just … knocked it out of the park,” said partner Rohit Nath, who argued alongside him. Nath was quick to note that this wasn’t a special occasion or a calculated risk — it was just how the firm operates. “This was really kind of our standard practice. If we have an argument, there are some arguments that the senior lawyer handles. There’s some big arguments that the junior lawyer will handle entirely on their own.”
That philosophy, partner Justin Nelson explained, goes all the way back to the firm’s founder. “It stems from, really, Steve Susman himself, who taught me and others at the firm the importance of giving younger lawyers the opportunity to really, really excel.”
It’s worth pausing on that framing, because it stands in fairly sharp contrast to how most of Biglaw operates. The dirty secret of large firm litigation is that the word “litigator” covers an enormous range of actual courtroom experience — or more accurately, the frequent lack of it. At most large firms, associates spend years doing research and drafting motions that partners argue. The path to real courtroom experience is long, indirect, and far from guaranteed. The Biglaw model, broadly speaking, is to hire large classes of talented young lawyers, extract their labor on document review and brief writing, and promote a small fraction of them while the rest leave for in-house roles or boutiques. Developing people for the courtroom is not really the point.
Susman’s model rejects that explicitly. The firm is small by design — the smallest member of the Am Law 100 by headcount, with roughly 200 attorneys — and it is selective precisely because it intends to develop the people it hires rather than churn through them. The clerkship pipeline exists because the firm wants lawyers who already understand how federal courts work. The reformed recruiting model exists because the firm wants to hire people who genuinely want to try cases, not people who made a panicked decision with half a semester of grades. And putting Salzman up to argue, giving him the argument to own, not just to observe, is the whole model in action.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
The post A Federal Judge Praises Susman Godfrey For Letting A Young Associate Cook appeared first on Above the Law.
