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Jonathan Putnam was no stranger to competition when he joined Kirkland & Ellis in 1993. He beat out 500 students to graduate first in his class from Harvard Law School, won a coveted position as editor of the Harvard Law Review, and clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. But distinguishing himself from the other lawyers at Kirkland, he discovered, would take a lot more than fancy credentials.

Every year, Kirkland's litigation associates compete against each other in two-day trials before mock juries, with partners acting as judges. "I was way out of my comfort zone," says Putnam, 40. He lost his first trial. Afterward, standing in front of the big board listing all the winners and losers, Putnam had an uncomfortable realization. "I had a long way to go," he says, "to get where I wanted to be."

Putnam is hardly the first ambitious young lawyer to be chastened by joining a big firm full of exceptional associates. It's a daunting reality: Few litigation associates will ever lead a significant case, and fewer still will rise to the upper echelons of their firm. There is no single road to success as a litigator at a major law firm; if there were, it would be gridlocked. To a large extent, young litigators have to carve out their own paths using creativity, resilience, drive, and luck. But there are paradigms. We've identified five archetypes for success and some lawyers who exemplify them. Here are their stories.

The Entrepreneur

Juan Morillo didn't wait to become a partner to start hustling for clients.

A born salesman, Morillo knew that he had to make the most of that gift to make a mark at Sidley Austin: There were five former U.S. Supreme Court clerks in his associate class, and he wasn't one of them. "Everyone told me I was crazy to come to Sidley, that I'd never make partner," says Morillo, 38, who joined the firm straight out of Georgetown University Law Center. "I had to build my own practice."

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, bringing in major business is one of the best ways to win accolades at a big firm. Junior partners who attract their own clients, or who persuade existing clients to give the firm new work, quickly become invaluable-particularly if they build specialty practices that expand their firm's expertise and reach. Even the most successful firms need risk-taking entrepreneurs.

From the beginning, Morillo looked everywhere for clients. He found the first two close to home-one through his then girlfriend (they're now married), who introduced him to the president of a small company involved in a real estate dispute, the other through a family connection to a prominent investor caught up in a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. (The case ended with no charges being filed.) Morillo also built relationships with other lawyers, hoping for referrals.

That work paid off in 2003, when a Mexican lawyer referred Morillo to ING North America Insurance Corporation in a highly charged case. A phosphate manufacturing plant in Mexico had been damaged in a hurricane. ING, the plant's insurer, set the damages at $10 million. The plant's owner claimed $300 million-and initiated a criminal investigation against ING and its senior management in Mexico. The executives fled the country and hired Morillo to advise them about possible extradition proceedings and recourse under international treaties. Ultimately, Mexico did not try to extradite.

ING was pleased enough with Morillo's work on the case to feed him more. The company is now a regular Sidley client, as are other Morillo clients, such as Mohawk Industries, Inc., Sorrento Lactalis, Inc., and Coronet Industries Inc. For all of them, Morillo is leading, or has already won, major class actions. According to Carter Phillips, managing partner of Sidley's D.C.

office, Morillo has generated more than $5 million in revenue in each of the last three years. "Juan will read a story in The Wall Street Journal and call the general counsel of any Fortune 500 [company]," says David Weinstein, a partner at Greenberg Traurig, who is Morillo's cocounsel in the Coronet case. "He'll say, 'I understand you have an issue, and I'd like to come talk to you about it.' Very few people could pull it off without being over-the-top, but Juan can."

The Trial Lawyer

One of the toughest obÂÂstacles to launching a litigation career today isn't just proving yourself in court; it's getting to court in the first place.

Clients are increasingly reluctant to bear the risks of a trial-and when they do, they want a veteran to do the talking. "[It's] one of the great sadnesses of this business," says James Quinn, head of global litigation at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. All too often, young litigators simply don't get the chance to experience what Peter Wald, the global head of litigation at Latham & Watkins, calls "the epiphanal event."

But for those who get to trial, it can make all the difference.

Consider the example of Jonathan Putnam, the Kirkland lawyer whose initial mock trial came as a rude awakening. After the loss, Putnam dedicated himself to sharpening his trial skills, working closely with senior Kirkland lawyers William Pratt and Donald Kempf. He got his big break in 2000, when Trisport Limited, a family-owned British manufacturer of plastic golf cleats, came looking for a defense lawyer in a bet-the-company patent infringement suit filed by its archrival. Trisport's executives, who knew Putnam because he had helped a sister company win dismissal of a patent suit, asked him to lead the case. "They were blissfully ignorant of the opportunity they were giving me," says Putnam.

Putnam lost 13 pounds during the two-and-a-half-week trial in federal district court in Boston in 2000. But after two days of deliberations, the jury ruled that Trisport hadn't infringed its rival's patent-and Putnam had made his name. Over the next six years, he led six other patent trials, winning all but one. His biggest clients today are General Motors Corporation, Honeywell, and Expedia, Inc.

"He strikes you as a very tall Eagle Scout," says former Honeywell litigation chief Allan Tananbaum. "[But he] knows how to go for the jugular."

Even when young lawyers don't get a chance like Putnam's to lead a trial, they can make a lasting impression from the second seat. Success comes from taking advantage of the opportunities that arise, however they present themselves.

Daralyn Durie, 39, of Keker & Van Nest was supposed to have only a limited role in her firm's defense of Genentech, Inc., in a $300 million patent infringement suit brought by Chiron Corporation. But name partner John Keker kept giving her more duties, ultimately asking Durie to handle three key witnesses at trial. "Daralyn was insistent about getting as much trial experience as she could, and she sacrificed to do it," Keker says. "She will almost always say yes, even though she is swamped."

One of the witnesses Durie cross-examined at trial was a Chiron scientist who had scribbled notes in the margins of a patent application that supported Genentech's view of the case. But Durie knew that the notes would only be admitted as evidence if she could use them to impeach the scientist's credibility. So she needed to elicit contradictory testimony from him on the stand. "When I stood up," Durie says, "there was a lot of objecting by the opposing counsel," who was Harold McElhinny, a partner at Morrison & Foerster. "It was very contentious." In the end the notes were admitted. McElhinny came up to Durie and said, "Good cross."

Her work at the Genentech trial, Durie says, led to speaking engagements and calls from other prospective clients. She now represents large venture capital firms, Google Inc., and Comcast Cable Communications, Inc., in high-stakes patent cases. Most recently, she successfully led Comcast's defense in a $2.2 billion patent infringement claim in the plaintiff-friendly Eastern District of Texas.

Says McElhinny, Durie's former opposing counsel: "The number of people I admire is extraordinarily small. Daralyn is one of the future leaders of the profession."

The Client Cultivator

Developing close relaÂtionships with their firm's important clients is another excellent way for young lawyers to establish themselves. "If you are winning for the clients, you've outgrown the internal market, and you are heading a team," says Paul "Mickey" Pohl, the head of Jones Day's global product liability practice group. "In the end, it's a market test." A firm's partners, in other words, listen to what their clients have to say about young litigators.

Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman partner Aaron Marks, 39, set out to impress his firm's most important client when he was only a second-year associate. At the time, Marks's firm had just been hired to negotiate a settlement between Liggett Group Inc. (the smallest of the four U.S. tobacco companies) and five state attorneys general suing the industry. Liggett's chief executive was Bennett LeBow, a client known to be hard on his lawyers.

Marks, assigned to research early settlement drafts, won LeBow's confidence with his detailed knowledge of the tobacco industry-and his hard work.

During the two weeks leading up to Liggett's landmark settlement with the five AGs in 1996, Marks drafted and redrafted around the clock, with LeBow camped out in Marks's office reading each provision. "I got very impressed," says LeBow, in a gravelly Southern drawl. "I asked complicated questions, and he always had good answers."

The night the deal was finished, Marks was asked to join name partner Marc Kasowitz, LeBow, and a few Liggett executives for a celebratory dinner at New York's Four Seasons restaurant. Just two years out of law school, Marks realized that he had proven himself.

In 1998 LeBow tapped him to be Liggett's lead litigation counsel. Marks has now tried nine cases for Liggett, including the U.S. Department of Justice's conspiracy case against all of the tobacco companies, in which Liggett was the only defendant to win a dismissal from Washington, D.C., federal district court judge Gladys Kessler.

"Aaron is an excellent trial lawyer," says Dan Webb of Chicago-based Winston & Strawn, who has been cocounsel with Marks on two cigarette cases. "I've spent a lot of time noodling with him on strategic issues, and he is a very effective strategist. He is superb on his feet, jurors like him, and he is very well prepared."

And Marks got there, says Kasowitz, by focusing intensely on his client's needs. "It didn't happen by my convincing them. I don't go to a client and say, 'We have faith in him, and you should trust me,' " says Kasowitz. "He became the repository of expertise and knowledge, so it was natural for the client to turn to him."

The Protégé

Abby Cohen Smutny, 43, spent part of her childhood on a kibbutz near the Golan Heights in Israel. That inspired her desire to practice international dispute resolution. After law school she went to work at White & Case, one of the few U.S. firms that then had an international arbitration practice.

During her first summer in the firm's Washington, D.C., office, Smutny met Charles Brower, one of the deans of the international arbitration bar. "It may be a little corny," says Smutny, "but I saw his career path and thought, 'That is what I would like to do.' " And so Smutny went about hitching her practice to Brower's.

Finding a mentor-a senior lawyer to serve as a career guide-can make all the difference for young litigators. Inside the firm, says Simpson Thacher & Bartlett litigation cochair Barry Ostrager, mentors can assure their protŽgŽs coveted assignments and support among the partnership. And in the outside market, they can have an even more significant influence: securing client contact and helping junior lawyers raise their profiles. It is tricky to balance those benefits with the danger of being eclipsed by a mentor's reputation. But as Smutny's career demonstrates, it can be done.

As a first-year associate, Smutny was inundated with general litigation assignments. Nevertheless, she knocked on Brower's office door to ask if he had any work. At first he waved her off. A few weeks later, though, he called to ask if Smutny had some time.

"The truth was, I didn't," says Smutny, laughing. "But I sure didn't tell him that. I knocked myself out to complete my other work and make sure he felt his assignments were the only ones I was doing."

Smutny got her first leading role on a major project as a midlevel assoÂciate, when Brower asked her to write the opening statement in a $1 billion case for a Turkish construction company that lost a Kuwaiti hydroelectric power dam project when Iraq invaded in 1990. Smutny traveled to Turkey for interviews and mastered 54 volumes of evidence to prepare the 100-page introduction. "If I made a mistake, [Brower] would cut me off at the knees. But I appreciated that he wasn't coddling me," says Smutny. "To the outside world, he was so generous and complimentary about me, it opened many doors."

As Brower (now retired from White & Case) stepped back from his practice, Smutny moved forward. In 2001 she took over the lead role in a long-running dispute between a Czech bank and the Slovak Republic, winning an $877 million award that is still the largest ever granted by the arbitration court of the World Bank. Smutny has become, according to Barton Legum of Debevoise & Plimpton's Paris office, a recognized expert in investment treaty disputes, one of the fastest-growing areas of international arbitration.

"She has great judgment," says Brower. "There is not a client she has been put together with who has not ended up accepting her advice."

The Outsider

Finally, there's a maverick route to big-firm litigation success: joining a firm after establishing a reputation and expertise elsewhere. E. Joshua Rosenkranz, 45, had already founded two nonprofit appellate practices when he joined Heller Ehrman's nascent appeals and strategy group in 2003. In 1988, after clerking for then-D.C. Circuit appellate judge Antonin Scalia and Supreme Court justice William Brennan, Rosenkranz cofounded the Office of the Appellate Defender, a New York-based nonprofit that handles appeals for indigent defendants. Then, in 1995, he established the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a public interest firm that works to reform democratic institutions through litigation and public policy. So when Rosenkranz arrived at Heller Ehrman, he says, "I already had a profile."

During Rosenkranz's eight years as director, the Brennan Center represented clients in more than 50 cases, including three at the Supreme Court for which he was the lead brief writer. Rosenkranz's most famous case was his defense of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation, which the Brennan Center had a hand in drafting. The legislation was upheld by the Court in 2003.

During that case, Rosenkranz says, he realized he wanted to litigate full-time. So he began searching for a firm where his experience would stand out. "I didn't want to go to a firm that already [marketed] a premier appellate practice," says Rosenkranz, "but a firm where I could have a role in building that practice."

Heller, which wanted to expand its Supreme Court capacity beyond its two appellate partners, was a good fit. "He was a strategic hire for us," says M. Patricia Thayer, cochair of Heller's intellectual property litigation practice group. "Bringing Josh in was a move to build that group and build in New York."

Since joining Heller, Rosenkranz has argued before the Supreme Court three times. He won a patent infringement case for Merck KGaA; lost a pro bono challenge to the Solomon Amendment, the federal law requiring law schools to give equal access to military recruiters; and lost a third case, argued on behalf of Pacific Gas & Electric Company, when the Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and remanded the case to the lower courts. He's also handling appellate cases for Qualcomm Inc., Visa International, and Philip Morris USA Inc.

"The first motion he wrote for me was hugely significant," says William Sailer, head of litigation at Qualcomm. The firm was fighting a $650 million breach of contract claim over the cancellation of employee stock options and hired Rosenkranz to draft summary judgment motions, which he won. "It was clear from the very first piece of work he did that he was brilliant," Sailer says.

While there is no substitute for raw intelligence, a good education, and an unquenchable appetite for hard work, the most successful young litigators at large firms have something more-an ability to inspire confidence in their partners and clients. They convey an attitude that no amount of responsibility or pressure is too much for them to handle. And they hunt for ways to prove it. As David Bernick, a senior litigator at Kirkland & Ellis, points out, litigators who win the struggle for recognition are those who make the most of their opportunities. "You can't make it to the top without things falling your way," Bernick says. "But it's a rare person who can take full advantage of the things that fall their way."