Firms that force associates who want litigation into corporate Forum

[Anonymous User]

Deciding between DPW, S&C and Paul Weiss. Which of those is the greatest and least offender of this?

I was told that DPW never does this. If I want lit what’s my safest bet?

Purely based on reputation/numbers and not any inside information, Paul Weiss is the most litigation focused of the three. DPW and S&C have good litigation practices, but I'd feel safer picking a firm that is less corporate focused.

That said, I was interested in litigation and almost picked S&C NYC, and throughout the recruiting process there was no question as to where I would end up. FWIW I landed at firm that specializes more in the type of litigation I wanted to do, but I really liked S&C.

Literally earlier in this thread, someone said Paul, Weiss did this. Of the three, only S&C hasn’t been mentioned here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did this too.

S&C does not do this.

FWIW, a few years ago, S&C did make a bunch of corporate juniors do litigation for a few months' time. Not quite the question presented, but it's not as if S&C is above this sort of behavior.

Are you referring to financial services investigations work, or actual litigation work? If it’s the former, that’s not abnormal given that S&C’s FIG practice, which technically falls under “corporate,” does occasionally help out with financial services investigations.

[Anonymous User]

Think there's two overlapping conversations here. Getting asked to help out temporarily is to be expected, everywhere. When you're low on hours you do random diligence or audit stuff or whatever random project needs bodies. When there's a recession, you do bankruptcy work for a bit, or the elements of the bankruptcy that are vaguely your area. I'm a transactional associate and have been asked to be the "specialist" for litigation that involved contracts similar to the ones I've worked on. And on my transactions, we constantly ask lit/regulatory specialists to help. All that is to be expected and if you're dead set on never ever doing anything outside a narrow area of focus I don't know what to tell you.

Then there's what OP was asking about. Students lean towards litigation, but transactional areas are more profitable and need more bodies. A firm might need 6 transactional new associates and 4 lit, but of the 10 summers 6 indicated lit preference. So the math is a problem. Firms have different ways of dealing with this. Some recruit separately for each group and have the summer already set up the way they want it. Some firms will just hire two new 3Ls, or just be short staffed, or depend more on laterals. And some will just tell 2 of the summers too bad you're doing corporate (or "we think it would be a good idea to split time the first year or two"). It happens.

[Anonymous User]

Think there's two overlapping conversations here. Getting asked to help out temporarily is to be expected, everywhere. When you're low on hours you do random diligence or audit stuff or whatever random project needs bodies. When there's a recession, you do bankruptcy work for a bit, or the elements of the bankruptcy that are vaguely your area. I'm a transactional associate and have been asked to be the "specialist" for litigation that involved contracts similar to the ones I've worked on. And on my transactions, we constantly ask lit/regulatory specialists to help. All that is to be expected and if you're dead set on never ever doing anything outside a narrow area of focus I don't know what to tell you.

Then there's what OP was asking about. Students lean towards litigation, but transactional areas are more profitable and need more bodies. A firm might need 6 transactional new associates and 4 lit, but of the 10 summers 6 indicated lit preference. So the math is a problem. Firms have different ways of dealing with this. Some recruit separately for each group and have the summer already set up the way they want it. Some firms will just hire two new 3Ls, or just be short staffed, or depend more on laterals. And some will just tell 2 of the summers too bad you're doing corporate (or "we think it would be a good idea to split time the first year or two"). It happens.

Exaclty, so the above anon’s point about S&C is pretty off-topic.