The Advantages of Going to a More Prestigious Firm Forum

[84651846190]

lots of dumb stuff posted itt. the partner(s) you work with and the kind of work you get early in your career matters infinitely more for long-term career prospects and exit options than how highly ranked your firm is in the Vault rankings

[fats provolone]

lots of dumb stuff posted itt. the partner(s) you work with and the kind of work you get early in your career matters infinitely more for long-term career prospects and exit options than how highly ranked your firm is in the Vault rankings

also you have basically no control over this. Enjoy!

[TheoO]

It feels like people here have gone in circles talking about better or worse exit options (and I assume 99% of what has been said should be taken with a grain of salt), but I have not seen any talk regarding what constitutes good or bad exit options.

[Tiago Splitter]

lots of dumb stuff posted itt. the partner(s) you work with and the kind of work you get early in your career matters infinitely more for long-term career prospects and exit options than how highly ranked your firm is in the Vault rankings

also you have basically no control over this. Enjoy!

Which is why tls doesn't tell people to go to higher ranked firms in order to take advantage of better exit options.

[itbdvorm]

Pros Big Prestigious Firm:

Don't No Offer SAs
Easier to get hired if you have the grades/school combo
More likely to have multiple strong practice groups, good if you don't know exactly what you want to do
Moar Pay
Potentially better exit options
Stronger support services
Prestige

Pros Smaller Firm

Maybe better hours, unless not
More likely to get client exposure?
Fit based hiring
IF non NYC, build regional ties faster
Better partnership odds



I mean, that's probably a decent shot at a general list, but it's really impossible to say much more. In some situations it will be better to go to a more prestigious firm, in some situations it won't be. So much depends on what a person wants to do, where they want to end up, and what the actual firms in question are that it's impossible to say anything really meaningful.

This isn't a bad list.

Of course, a few of the pros for a smaller firm are probably wrong.

Unless you're truly going to a "small" firm (don't think V100, think mid-law) no way the hours will be better - they may in fact be worse. Why? Less leverage, meaning more work piled upon associates (sure doesn't mean partners work more). And with fewer associates to go around, more pressure to push each one to bill more (for more profit).

Similarly, the likelihood of client exposure is going to be lower - any client could hire S&Cif it wanted to talk to a 5th year associate, instead it hires V100 because of the PARTNER relationship. That partner, similarly, will be more paranoid about him losing / you stealing the client relationship (as opposed to the institutional relationship the firm has with big bank / PE shop).

And partnership odds...I think again, probably worse. Skadden makes 6-12 partners each year, from a group of 100, 50 of which have no intention of staying past year 3. Those odds actually aren't THAT horrible when you break it down that way. "Partnership odds" shouldn't be measured against the starting class, they should be measured against the "in it to win it" class, which is really something like % of current midlevels who make partner (and even then probably not quite right). No idea what some of the mid/smaller law firms are like in this regard, but I would guess very few have a progression rate to partner of roughly 50% of the senior associates each year (because a talented senior associate who's a "maybe" for partnership has AMAZING alternative options from a V10 - a friend of mine was offered a GC/CLO spot at a F1000 company straight from a counsel position - but no one's offering anything to a random guy at a random firm).

"Prestige" is of course relative, and meaningful. If you are dead-set, 100%, guaranteed you want your career in sports, for example, saying you want to pick Proskauer over Cravath is not the worst idea in the world if you've thought it through. But the idea that there are not meaningful differences in lifelong career options for someone at Skadden vs. Cadwalader...that's crazy.

[zhenders]

I wish all such threads as these were automatically retitled "gimme some confirmation bias, TLS" so that I wouldn't get sucked in. ITT, 4 pages of op pretending his question hasn't been satisfactorily and thoroughly answered a million times.