What are your opinions of the practice area specialties of the V15? For example, WLRK is probably strongest in corporate, especially M&As. Williams and Connolly is really a lit firm, especially white collar and government investigations. What about the others?

Kirkland is strongest in private equity, bankruptcy, and litigation.

The V15 is heavily weighted toward NYC and M&A because there are so many NYC deals attorneys. You can't really use it as a legitimate ranking for anything except for a ranking of large-scale deals firms in NYC. Many firms carry subspecialties, but they get their ranking from being great at M&A and capital markets. For example, I don't think anyone would argue that Cleary Gotlieb is a better firm than Kirkland when you evaluate Kirkland's amazing PE specialty and strong lit department. The rankings are also biased against lit firms-- I don't think anyone would argue that Paul Weiss, Simpson Thacher, or Davis Polk are better firms than Williams Connolly, Quinn, or Boies. Lit boutiques which are more prestigous/ profitable than Wachtell like Keker, Susman, and Bartlitt Beck don't even get included.

If you want to evaluate which firms are great in other areas, look at Vault's sub-specialty guides. There are firms ranked in the 50s and 60s which have much more law prestige than a few of the M&A NYC V25 ever will because they are essentially big boutiques which are amazing in a niche area but also carry on ancillary litigation and M&A work to capture full revenue potential from their clients.

WLRK: Repping targets on mega M&A
S&C: Mega M&A. Cap markets.
Cravath: mega M&A, litigation
DPW: cap markets, mega M&A, FIG
Skadden: mega M&A, cap markets, litigation
Cleary: mega M&A, cap markets
Simpson: mega PE deals,cap markets
Weil: bankruptcy
Kirkland: middle market PE, bankruptcy, litigation, and IP
Covington: litigation, regulatory work (more?)
Paul Weiss: litigation, rising M&A and PE practice, growing IP practice

Just use chambers bro. HTH.

No wai, Paul Weiss does IP now?

Took a big Weil rainmaker. Intent is to grow the practice.

Have a friend who has been doing IP lit at PW for a couple years now.

It fits the trend of prestigious firms jumping on the IP bandwagon.

Not really. Trend is for superstars to strike out on their own.

As in, start their own firms? Is this just in IP you're talking about? 20 years ago, most big NYC firms had no IP practice to speak of.

IP people. Think Desmarais and Powers.

Fresh Prince's list is very accurate.

In litigation, basically all of the V15ish firms are doing corporate defense (shareholder suits, white collar, foreign corrupt practices act, etc.) in some form or another. Plaintiff's side work falls to either smaller plaintiff's firms that get less press, or still-basically-big-law firms like Quinn and Boies.

Another big practice that the NYC firms have is credit/banking&finance - similar to capital markets, but one-on-one with the bank instead of using the bank as an intermediary to the public markets.

Also, DPW has a great FIG department, but so do a lot of the other big NYC (and DC) firms nowadays. Covington, Cleary, S&C off the top of my head, but I bet all of them at least dabble in it.

Finally, (transactional) tax practices largely exist to service other practices, but there a bunch of big and highly respected ones in the V15.

So there is a rough consensus that in the V15 all of the firms are roughly equivalent when it comes to litigation departments, or are there some that are distinctly better than others? If it's the latter can anyone give a rough breakdown?

How do Latham, debevoise and GDC fit into all of this?

None distinctively better barring W&C. Differences are in more in form of type of work. Shareholder suits versus toxic torts and products liability.

I know I'll get haters for this, but surprisingly Deb was not elite by any metric in the 2012 amlaw numbers.

Anyways, Debis good for PE and white collar lit. If you have the grades for deb, though, you can do a lot better.

Latham: mega M&A
GDC: litigation, some corp but not really a player on the scene,

You can approximate almost all of this info by looking up Chambers & Partners rankings then looking up the size of the department in the firm.

Highly respected department + large department = specialty of the firm.

Those two don't always go hand in hand. There are some firms with a very well respected but small practice while other firms have an equally or better respected gigantic practice. Bankruptcy and weil + firms that aren't Weil come to mind.

Debevoise is good at PE - particularly fund formation (probably the best for that), but also quite good at buyouts. Lit department is mainly white collar , but also a lot of international arb and soft IP (copyright/TM). The international arb group is actually one of the best, but the field is pretty small in general, so it's not huge.

GDC has a great lit department firmwide, but strengths really vary by office. Obviously DC does a lot of appellate, whereas NY is more diversified. Not a really big player in corporate in NY, but pretty prominent M&A/cap markets practice on the west coast.

Latham is kind of very good (but not "the best") at everything - think Skadden, but slightly smaller. Relatively more prominent on the west coast since there are fewer big firms there.

I think this is a really good list, but I'd add a couple of things:

-I wouldn't say Simpson does "mega PE" whereas Kirkland does "mid market PE." Sure, STB represents Blackstone and KKR, but K&E represents Apax, Bain Capital, Madison Dearborn, Warburg Pincus, and various others, all of which are just as "mega" as Blackstone/KKR. STB also represents a bunch of smaller buyout shops.

-Both Cravath and DPW also do a lot of banking/finance and representing underwriters (banks) in M&A deals. Probably the best firms for this.

-Skadden and DPW have pretty legit bankruptcy groups, though DPW does mostly creditor-side work.

-Cravath's lit department is almost entirely securities lit and IP.

As usual the feedback seems very NYC centric. Granted that most of the V15 are NYC based firms, but still there are other offices and practices.

For example: Cleary has one of the top antitrust practices in the country (if not the top) in its DC office. They also have a stronger presence internationally than most of the V15.

Skadden has basically the only biglaw chancery practice in DE.

GDC is a much bigger deal on the West Coast than it is on the East Coast (barring appellate work in DC).

Boo fucking hoo

^ Why I hate New York.

Huh? Just lamenting the fact that you're bitching and moaning. I don't really care about NYC either.

Original post wasn't intended to bitch, just to point out a few practice area specialties outside of NYC. The OP asked about specialties, not about NYC offices.