NY V5 v. Cleary DC Forum

[Anonymous User]

Interested in antitrust, but obviously don't have any experience in it. Otherwise would be happy to do M&A work. No geographic preference. Would it be a bad idea to choose Cleary DC over NY V5? Thanks!

[quakeroats]

Interested in antitrust, but obviously don't have any experience in it. Otherwise would be happy to do M&A work. No geographic preference. Would it be a bad idea to choose Cleary DC over NY V5? Thanks!

Cleary in DC has a certain reputation. Basically, you'll be doing second request doc review day and night.

[Old Gregg]

Interested in antitrust, but obviously don't have any experience in it. Otherwise would be happy to do M&A work. No geographic preference. Would it be a bad idea to choose Cleary DC over NY V5? Thanks!

Cleary in DC has a certain reputation. Basically, you'll be doing second request doc review day and night.

Didn't know there was doc review in antitrust or M&A (I assume you're not referring to diligence...).

[Anonymous User]

Interested in antitrust, but obviously don't have any experience in it. Otherwise would be happy to do M&A work. No geographic preference. Would it be a bad idea to choose Cleary DC over NY V5? Thanks!

Cleary in DC has a certain reputation. Basically, you'll be doing second request doc review day and night.

Thanks for the info. Would you mind elaborating how that compare to the grunt work done by junior corporate lawyer?

[Anonymous User]

Interested in antitrust, but obviously don't have any experience in it. Otherwise would be happy to do M&A work. No geographic preference. Would it be a bad idea to choose Cleary DC over NY V5? Thanks!

Cleary in DC has a certain reputation. Basically, you'll be doing second request doc review day and night.

Not sure why quakeroats likes to troll Cleary DC. There isn't a ton of doc review.

[enibs]

The answer will depend on which V5. They're not all created equal.

[Anonymous User]

The answer will depend on which V5. They're not all created equal.

Have offers from Skadden, S&C, STB (though not officially V5). Any thoughts?

[Anonymous User]

The answer will depend on which V5. They're not all created equal.

Have offers from Skadden, S&C, STB (though not officially V5). Any thoughts?

Voting STB; my understanding is a lot of their antitrust is run out of NYC, which is unique. You'll also get to sample a significantly larger breadth of corporate work. If you are antitrust or commercial lit, then maybe S&C or Cleary DC makes more sense.

full disclosure: summering next year at STB, and loved everyone I met so far.

[Anonymous User]

The answer will depend on which V5. They're not all created equal.

Have offers from Skadden, S&C, STB (though not officially V5). Any thoughts?

Voting STB; my understanding is a lot of their antitrust is run out of NYC, which is unique. You'll also get to sample a significantly larger breadth of corporate work. If you are antitrust or commercial lit, then maybe S&C or Cleary DC makes more sense.

full disclosure: summering next year at STB, and loved everyone I met so far.

+1

STB if you want NYC antitrust out of that group.

[enibs]

Another vote for STB. I think their antitrust practice is as strong as Cleary's and their M&A practice is much stronger.

[Lincoln]

The answer will depend on which V5. They're not all created equal.

Have offers from Skadden, S&C, STB (though not officially V5). Any thoughts?

Voting STB; my understanding is a lot of their antitrust is run out of NYC, which is unique. You'll also get to sample a significantly larger breadth of corporate work. If you are antitrust or commercial lit, then maybe S&C or Cleary DC makes more sense.

full disclosure: summering next year at STB, and loved everyone I met so far.

Do you mean unique among the four firms OP is considering? It's certainly not unique in a general sense.

Completely anecdotal, but I've heard horror stories from two friends of mine who were associates at STB (albeit in corporate) and both left within two years.

Cleary's attempts at being the "quirky" firm rubs me the wrong way, but the antitrust work they do out of their DC office is excellent. I wouldn't move to DC for all the tying cases in the world, but if you don't have a preference w/r/t city, and you want antitrust, my vote is for Cleary.

[20181989]

If you have serious interest in antitrust, go to Cleary. Cleary has a pre-eminent antitrust practice. No other firm I can name leads matters/investigations in both the United States and the EU. That positions them well to continue to represent multinationals with clearance/litigation questions in the two most important competition jurisdictions.

Check me if I'm wrong here, but the firm's current managing partner is an antitrust attorney. They just lost David Gelfand to DOJ, which gives you an impression of the esteem in which the group is held. Cleary has a mix of blue-chip and cutting-edge clients. DOJ/FTC attorneys (I have worked at one of these agencies) will tell you that the best competition groups in DC for technology-related work are Cleary and Wilson Sonsini.

Doc review in antitrust, esp. in merger review, will entail going through corporate communications looking for signs of anticompetitive intent. Those docs wind up being, for federal regulators, a major catalyst in determining whether to investigate further.

[Anonymous User]

The answer will depend on which V5. They're not all created equal.

Have offers from Skadden, S&C, STB (though not officially V5). Any thoughts?

Voting STB; my understanding is a lot of their antitrust is run out of NYC, which is unique. You'll also get to sample a significantly larger breadth of corporate work. If you are antitrust or commercial lit, then maybe S&C or Cleary DC makes more sense.

full disclosure: summering next year at STB, and loved everyone I met so far.

Do you mean unique among the four firms OP is considering? It's certainly not unique in a general sense.

Completely anecdotal, but I've heard horror stories from two friends of mine who were associates at STB (albeit in corporate) and both left within two years.

Cleary's attempts at being the "quirky" firm rubs me the wrong way, but the antitrust work they do out of their DC office is excellent. I wouldn't move to DC for all the tying cases in the world, but if you don't have a preference w/r/t city, and you want antitrust, my vote is for Cleary.

Mind sharing what type of horror stories you heard?

[Lincoln]

Mind sharing what type of horror stories you heard?

This one is pretty emblematic of the vibe I got from them. This was in the corporate department, and my friend was doing mostly private equity deals, if I remember right.

My friend is on a deal with two other first-year associates. They were "on call" round the clock. My friend had his parents (who live out-of-state) in town and had planned dinner with them on Friday night. He talked to the other two first-years, and they agreed to deal with anything that came in late, so he could enjoy dinner with his parents. (Keep in mind that they're first-years: completely fungible with identical skills.) An email came in, sent to all three of them, with some bullshit task to do. The two other guys took care of it, as agreed. Apparently, the partner had asked why only the two of them had responded, and they'd told him why. On Monday, my friend gets called into the partner's office and got screamed at because apparently it wasn't up to him to decide to allocate work between him and his colleagues, and if he wanted time off, he could request a fucking vacation day. He quit six months later.

They also do this thing where you're on call until midnight on the Friday before your vacation. Before that, anything is fair game; after that, they can't call you. I work at a firm where people work a LOT—more than at STB, according to rumors and whatever stats are out there. I get emails at night on weekends when stuff needs to be done and I'm the only one that can do it, and people sometimes get vacations ruined because of work. But when I have something personal that matters, my senior associates totally cover for me. We are expected to allocate work between ourselves based on strengths and available time. Sure, some partners are assholes, and work can be insane, but I'm treated as a person. That shit at STB is so weirdly formalistic and would make me feel like a fucking cog.