What is the difference between the T14s? Forum

[bruinfan10]

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[dwil770]

I was just trying to point out the absurdity of relying entirely on employment numbers.

But I don't get that. Do you not want to get a job? And the flat employment score isn't the be-all and end-all - it's what kinds of jobs going into that score as well, and how the employment score intersects with cost. I don't think anyone has ever denied that.

I'm not saying UVA$$ cannot be a better choice than Yale.


My point was the ranking gives one a better picture than the LST list. Every 0L should accumulat as much information as possible. But my claim is the rankings are useful (not that LST isn't useful. It is.).

Of course us news can be useful. It is useful because it takes into account things like faculty impressions, so if the school has big profs that put out solid scholarship they will benefit in the rankings. LST just looks at job outcomes and has no attempt to try and rank the less tangible results like quality of education. Something these PLEBS treating law school like trade school won't understand.

[wons]

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

[Holly Golightly]

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

Then why do those firms have higher billable requirements than lower-ranked firms? And how does that not relate to how much people are expected to work?

[wons]

No top NY firm has a billable requirement that I'm aware of. Wachtell, Cravath, S&C, DPW, Cleary and Simpson do not.

You're expected to work hard because you're doing hard work and everyone around you works hard. But the work is less commodotized - the marjority of the firms listed above don't even bill out all their transactional work on a hourly basis. Work can be difficult and time consuming and demanding, but its not CHURN, its not the kind of soul crushing misery you do at a place that's doing commodity work.*

This is not to say there aren't good groups at lesser firms that have a similar profitability and culture, its just not across the board and you still have the general stress/tension of a less profitable, more EWYK-type place where partners will do anything to get in more revenue.

*the caveat being that first year work is soul crushing everywhere, so the advantage of being a better firm is bigger as you get more senior

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

Then why do those firms have higher billable requirements than lower-ranked firms? And how does that not relate to how much people are expected to work?

[BillPackets]

PLEBS

[lecsa]

Oh come on. Even without official minimums every firm has unofficial minimums. Top firms average more hours worked and most work in biglaw anywhere is boring and or soul crushing.

[wons]

No, they don't have unofficial minimums. I have gone to reviews after a year with 2900 hours (GASP) and a year with 1900 hours and hours were NEVER MENTIONED IN EITHER. Much of the work we do is not strictly billed by the hour and it makes all the difference in the world. I'm also completely baffled as to how someone could say that top firms average more hours worked, since I've never heard of that data being publicly reported. If anecdotally, people are telling you OMG PEOPLE AT SIMPSON WORK SO HARD, you should consider where that info comes from.

I'd note that if you do transactional work and you can't find a practice area at a the top transactional firm (after you graduate to not-a-junior-associate) that you find interesting, maybe you shouldn't go to law school in the first place.

Oh come on. Even without official minimums every firm has unofficial minimums. Top firms average more hours worked and most work in biglaw anywhere is boring and or soul crushing.

[californiauser]

No top NY firm has a billable requirement that I'm aware of. Wachtell, Cravath, S&C, DPW, Cleary and Simpson do not.

You're expected to work hard because you're doing hard work and everyone around you works hard. But the work is less commodotized - the marjority of the firms listed above don't even bill out all their transactional work on a hourly basis. Work can be difficult and time consuming and demanding, but its not CHURN, its not the kind of soul crushing misery you do at a place that's doing commodity work.*

This is not to say there aren't good groups at lesser firms that have a similar profitability and culture, its just not across the board and you still have the general stress/tension of a less profitable, more EWYK-type place where partners will do anything to get in more revenue.

*the caveat being that first year work is soul crushing everywhere, so the advantage of being a better firm is bigger as you get more senior

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Can you go into a bit more detail?

[A. Nony Mouse]

I was just trying to point out the absurdity of relying entirely on employment numbers.

But I don't get that. Do you not want to get a job? And the flat employment score isn't the be-all and end-all - it's what kinds of jobs going into that score as well, and how the employment score intersects with cost. I don't think anyone has ever denied that.

I'm not saying UVA$$ cannot be a better choice than Yale.


My point was the ranking gives one a better picture than the LST list. Every 0L should accumulat as much information as possible. But my claim is the rankings are useful (not that LST isn't useful. It is.).

Of course us news can be useful. It is useful because it takes into account things like faculty impressions, so if the school has big profs that put out solid scholarship they will benefit in the rankings. LST just looks at job outcomes and has no attempt to try and rank the less tangible results like quality of education. Something these PLEBS treating law school like trade school won't understand.

Do you really think there's some measurable difference between the quality of education at differently ranked schools? The UNSWR "reputation" ranking has nothing to do with the student learning experience. You can get a good education at any law school, and any differences are at the extreme extremes. Law school is trade school; it's a professional program, not an academic program.

[09042014]

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

I was originally going to reply saying that the truth was somewhere in the middle of where both you and the guy you replied to. But this post is just retardedly misinformed.

Hours at the top firms are on average fairly significantly higher than at nontop firms. LOL at training. You have somewhat better job security but not much. V10 are more sweatshopish than the average v100. There are some v100 that are just as bad, but plenty are better.

Effective billing rates do make up some of the difference in revenue per lawyer, but not all of it, I doubt even most. There is a midlevel survery that lists firms billable hours averages floating around. I'll try to find it.

>The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

The big reason why this is true is because you cannot judge QOL as a callbackee. Hell you can't even judge it on a firm by firm basis. My VaulTTT 100 firm has some departments that probably bill near as much as V10. And some departments where 2200 is a rockstar.

Also, 1800 hours in some V100's is probably about as hard as 2200 at Cravath because of sporadic work. You can bill 6 hours a day and still get stuck until 9pm.

[wons]

Certain kinds of transactional practice are perceived by clients to be less of a value-add than others; or put differently, the value of good legal work over mediocre legal work is perceived by clients to be minimal. For examples, a lot of basic bank finance - revolvers and stuff like that - was once the province of wall street firms and now is done by firms further down the food chain (e.g., Otterbourg). Securities work is increasingly the same way - used to be done by the S&Cs and Davis Polks of the world, but more and more it gets farmed out to folks who charge lower rates.

If a firm survives on commoditized work, then it has to charge lower rates to draw in business because their services are functionally interchangable with any other firm out there, and there's more transactional lawyers hustling for work than there is work for transactional lawyers (the lingering hangover from the bubble). If you are doing that commoditized work, you bring in less revenue per hour of work and the firm tries to make up for that with volume. Its no different from Walmart selling huge volumes of widgets at the tightest possible margins.

Other types of transactional work are not commoditized at all, and clients pay a premium for top advice. Public company M&A, big PE buyouts, sovereign debt, many types of leveraged finance / high-yield debt issuances are some examples - there's plenty more. Also subsets of the commoditized work - revolvers are commoditized, but DPW, Cravath and Simpson have A+ bank finance groups that get the most difficult/largest/gnarliest examples. Money is made there on a quality, not quantity basis - even if the work is billed out hourly, the rates are much higher and clients expect you to spend a lot of time on it to get it right.

No top NY firm has a billable requirement that I'm aware of. Wachtell, Cravath, S&C, DPW, Cleary and Simpson do not.

You're expected to work hard because you're doing hard work and everyone around you works hard. But the work is less commodotized - the marjority of the firms listed above don't even bill out all their transactional work on a hourly basis. Work can be difficult and time consuming and demanding, but its not CHURN, its not the kind of soul crushing misery you do at a place that's doing commodity work.*

This is not to say there aren't good groups at lesser firms that have a similar profitability and culture, its just not across the board and you still have the general stress/tension of a less profitable, more EWYK-type place where partners will do anything to get in more revenue.

*the caveat being that first year work is soul crushing everywhere, so the advantage of being a better firm is bigger as you get more senior

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Can you go into a bit more detail?

[wons]

I don't the guy at the middling firm should pretend to speak knowledgably about the experience of working at a top firm.

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

I was originally going to reply saying that the truth was somewhere in the middle of where both you and the guy you replied to. But this post is just retardedly misinformed.

Hours at the top firms are on average fairly significantly higher than at nontop firms. LOL at training. You have somewhat better job security but not much. V10 are more sweatshopish than the average v100. There are some v100 that are just as bad, but plenty are better.

Effective billing rates do make up some of the difference in revenue per lawyer, but not all of it, I doubt even most. There is a midlevel survery that lists firms billable hours averages floating around. I'll try to find it.

>The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

The big reason why this is true is because you cannot judge QOL as a callbackee. Hell you can't even judge it on a firm by firm basis. My VaulTTT 100 firm has some departments that probably bill near as much as V10. And some departments where 2200 is a rockstar.

Also, 1800 hours in some V100's is probably about as hard as 2200 at Cravath because of sporadic work. You can bill 6 hours a day and still get stuck until 9pm.

[09042014]

I don't the guy at the middling firm should pretend to speak knowledgably about the experience of working at a top firm.

LOL. It's not the prestige at the best firms. Higher effective billing rates = more profitable, more profitable means less need to fire folks (i.e., better retention, less need to generate revenue with churn / excessive hours, more flexibility to train you rather than wring every penny they can out of you by pigeonholing you as soon as they can. QOL is vastly better at the top big firms than in the middle, and compared to the bottom it's like spending summer in Paris compared to summer in Philadelphia. The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

This is not to say you don't work like a motherfucking dog at a S&C or Cravath, but you're going to work the same hours at Generic, Large and Moderately Profitable LLP, and you're going to be treated much, much worse, because they can't afford to treat you any better.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

I was originally going to reply saying that the truth was somewhere in the middle of where both you and the guy you replied to. But this post is just retardedly misinformed.

Hours at the top firms are on average fairly significantly higher than at nontop firms. LOL at training. You have somewhat better job security but not much. V10 are more sweatshopish than the average v100. There are some v100 that are just as bad, but plenty are better.

Effective billing rates do make up some of the difference in revenue per lawyer, but not all of it, I doubt even most. There is a midlevel survery that lists firms billable hours averages floating around. I'll try to find it.

>The single biggest mistake some of my friends from law school made was picking firms based on "QOL". Many of them - nearly all of them? - rue that decision.

The big reason why this is true is because you cannot judge QOL as a callbackee. Hell you can't even judge it on a firm by firm basis. My VaulTTT 100 firm has some departments that probably bill near as much as V10. And some departments where 2200 is a rockstar.

Also, 1800 hours in some V100's is probably about as hard as 2200 at Cravath because of sporadic work. You can bill 6 hours a day and still get stuck until 9pm.

And all those hours you've spend a middling firm lets you do the same? You can't be that stupid.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

[rayiner]

The employment rankings, while they aren't perfect, are vastly superior to USNWR to the point where I don't think the latter has any utility besides reminding people that HYS is at the top. The single most important metric in the USNWR ranking is peer reputation: what law faculties think of each other. There couldn't be a less important metric than what law professors think about anything.

CCN does tend to place into "better firms" (in the sense that they feed into NYC V10's at a greater rate), and I think that's important for people who want corporate practice. I'm beginning to question whether it's worth it for people who want litigation practice. Yeah, those firms are more stable and do more "premium" work, but ironically that often means that they work on matters where clients are still willing to pay $400/hour for a first-year to do doc review.

Case in point: both Northwestern and Virginia place fewer people into NYC V10 firms than say NYU. But Vault ranking aside, is going to Simpson Thatcher better than going to Jenner or Winston (for NU), or Hogan or Akin Gump (for UVA)?

[wons]

My father is a recently-retired equity partner at a V100 firm. Much of what I'm describing here comes from his understanding of the legal profession, rather than my own. My view is that I had a huge advantage when picking schools and firms because of the advice he gave me - avoiding landmines like "quality of life" and "good culture" - and that others should share in his knowledge. Whether people choose to use it is another matter entirely.

And all those hours you've spend a middling firm lets you do the same? You can't be that stupid.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

[wons]

CCN does tend to place into "better firms" (in the sense that they feed into NYC V10's at a greater rate), and I think that's important for people who want corporate practice. I'm beginning to question whether it's worth it for people who want litigation practice. Yeah, those firms are more stable and do more "premium" work, but ironically that often means that they work on matters where clients are still willing to pay $400/hour for a first-year to do doc review.

I agree with respect to litigation - it seems like there are many more firms out there that can give you a great experience as a litigator.

[jbagelboy]

My father is a recently-retired equity partner at a V100 firm. Much of what I'm describing here comes from his understanding of the legal profession, rather than my own. My view is that I had a huge advantage when picking schools and firms because of the advice he gave me - avoiding landmines like "quality of life" and "good culture" - and that others should share in his knowledge. Whether people choose to use it is another matter entirely.

And all those hours you've spend a middling firm lets you do the same? You can't be that stupid.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

I trust & respect your advice and I'm sure you're sincere but unfortunately just due to the culture of this board bringing up boomer parents is rarely going to get you much love

[09042014]

My father is a recently-retired equity partner at a V50 firm. Much of what I'm describing here comes from his understanding of the legal profession, rather than my own. My view is that I had a huge advantage when picking schools and firms because of the advice he gave me - avoiding landmines like "quality of life" and "good culture" - and that others should share in his knowledge. Whether people choose to use it is another matter entirely.

And all those hours you've spend a middling firm lets you do the same? You can't be that stupid.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

I agree with your daddy that you should avoid "quality of life" and "good culture" because it's impossible to accurately find it.

But your claims about top firms working less is just not true. And I don't care what your dad says about it.

[wons]

I don't think associates at top firms work LESS. I think their work experience is BETTER, and I don't think that's measured on a strict how-many-hours basis.

My father is a recently-retired equity partner at a V50 firm. Much of what I'm describing here comes from his understanding of the legal profession, rather than my own. My view is that I had a huge advantage when picking schools and firms because of the advice he gave me - avoiding landmines like "quality of life" and "good culture" - and that others should share in his knowledge. Whether people choose to use it is another matter entirely.

And all those hours you've spend a middling firm lets you do the same? You can't be that stupid.

Guy who wears his Sulcrom bag with the logo facing outward.

I agree with your daddy that you should avoid "quality of life" and "good culture" because it's impossible to accurately find it.

But your claims about top firms working less is just not true. And I don't care what your dad says about it.

[rayiner]

I do agree with wons that the security at a V10 is nice. You can always do some $400/hour doc review to round out your hours. But I disagree with the "training" point, at least for litigators. I think the structure of NYC V10's makes it hard to get good training as a litigation associate, and big-dollar litigation NYC work isn't exactly conducive to skill development.

[09042014]

We can all agree big law sucks unbelievable cock.

[wons]

I do agree with wons that the security at a V10 is nice. You can always do some $400/hour doc review to round out your hours. But I disagree with the "training" point, at least for litigators. NYC V10's are structurally incapable of training litigation associates properly, and big-dollar litigation NYC work isn't conducive to skill development.

I'm speaking purely from a transactional point of view. And when I say "training" I don't mean classes or CLE or whatever, because that's all useless. I mean, rather, a firm's interest in building up your skillset so you're something more than a functionary / widget. I'm contrasting how the top firms staff with, say, Cahill, which is just as profitable but achieves that profitability by giving its transactional associates the same narrow thing to do, over and over. That's bad for your career, because it limits your employment opportunities outside of the field they bestow on you and doesn't make you the sort of guy who can oversee a transaction in its entirety. A top firm might staff you entirely within a single area once you're done with rotations, but they'll give you lots of different sort of work within that practice area so that you're not a one-trick pony.

[wons]

We can all agree big law sucks unbelievable cock.

I quite like my job, actually. The notion that I get paid this much money (and my dad before me) to sit and type and pontificate and what not blows my mind. We're all incredibly lucky.

(I think student debt, specifically, tuition increases driven by administrative rent-seeking, is the problem, not Biglaw.)

[rayiner]

We can all agree big law sucks unbelievable cock.

At least with regard to my point, it's not big law generally, but V10 firms specifically. Cravath is leveraged, in litigation, 3.5:1. Paul Weiss is 4:1. DPW is at almost 6:1. Proskauer DC is 1:1. You're less likely to get laid off at the former, but more likely to do real work earlier at the latter.