Top Law Schools

Other than Wachtell/S&C/Cravath, what other firms are known for staffing teams leanly and for giving junior associates relatively more responsibility?

Kirkland

Also very interested in this topic.

Anonymous User wrote:Kirkland

Both NY and Chicago?

DPW only staffs 2 associates to every cap mkts deal and the associates run the deal through and through. Cap mkts associates run deals by year 2. M&A varies at every firm depending on deal size.

Probably Kirkland more so than other firms because they do a ton of smaller deals where it's not necessary to have a mountain of lawyers. On the flip side, it means you will work a lot more and there are times when you will wish you had more people to spread out work to.

Boies Schiller
Quinn Emanuel (although perhaps less so as the firm grows)

Bryan Cave

I've heard that Paul Weiss corporate staffs leanly, though I dont know how true that actually is

Any firm that does a lot of stuff with VC/start-up/emerging company work.

Anonymous User wrote:I've heard that Paul Weiss corporate staffs leanly, though I dont know how true that actually is

Very true from what I've been hearing

Every firm you ask will say they staff leanly. I had a callback a few weeks ago and asked the partner and he said it was a wasted question.

I was told to look up the associate:partner ratio at firms to really assess this. Every firm is going to say they staff leanly and they do for a lot of small cases they have but many young associates are put on large teams on big cases. However, if a firm has a small ratio (Munger is 1:1 and Wachtell is pretty low as well, for example), you know they have to staff leanly in order to get the work done on all their cases.

Here's a random website I found that has most of the firms: http://www.lawfirmstats.com/rankings/co ... nkings.php

I think it's more common for corporate/transactional. Those practices are much more hub-and-spoke, with small associate deal teams working with light partner supervision rather than giant pyramids built on the back of doc review dungeons that you see in litigation.

I'm a first year at a V5 and sometimes run some small (6 figure and low 7 figure) deals with hilariously little supervision, and it seems like everyone has a story along the lines of "it was me and a senior, then the senior [rage quit / got hit by a bus / stopped showing up at the office] and for a while I had to run things along." Terrifying and a good learning experience all at once!

Also, vacation is great when you're on it and a tragedy when your team members are on it. C'est la vie.

Anonymous User wrote:I was told to look up the associate:partner ratio at firms to really assess this. Every firm is going to say they staff leanly and they do for a lot of small cases they have but many young associates are put on large teams on big cases. However, if a firm has a small ratio (Munger is 1:1 and Wachtell is pretty low as well, for example), you know they have to staff leanly in order to get the work done on all their cases.

Or they just use a ton of senior associates on the cases?

For litigation, staffing (and responsibility) depends on the case, which should be pretty logically obvious once you've asked it enough times and gotten the same/similar answer. I used to think it was an important question to ask during screeners/callbacks, but it really is a wasted question. Yes, overall you probably get leaner staffing at a firm that has a better partner:associate ratio but even then, big cases get staffed with more people, and in those cases, the partners are who the clients are paying so they're going to do all the really important stuff.