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Is this an opportunity to join a growing corporate practice where you might get great exposure early, or is it better to go to a more established corporate practice at a V10 firm?

As a former SA in PW corporate, I can say the following:

1. Great working environment -- your colleagues are relaxed and fun (compared to other firms, of course). Lawyers actually hang out with one another after work.
2. Diversification of practice areas (litigation and corporate) means greater financial stability.
3. This summer, the chairman of the firm guaranteed us on the first day that we would all receive full-time offers, unless we commit murder (manslaughter is okay ).
4. Corporate is growing rapidly--the revenues from corporate have exceeded the revenues from litigation.
5. As a SA, you are not pigeon-holed into corporate--over the summer you can decide you actually want to try litigation as well. You have flexibility.

Hope this helps.

The partner I spoke with said that the revenue on the corporate side grew rapidly because they brought in some lateral partners. He didn't expect the growth to continue, at least not at a fast rate.

Not the OP, but also very interested in this.

I assume that everyone here has heard about PW adding the OMM partners to get Apollo as a client. I think that's what the previous poster was referring to. As a result, PW corporate now does a lot of private equity work.

FWIW, they've been rocketing up the Vault ranking for "general corporate practice" in recent years. They were #23 in 2011, but they're #15 in the new (2014) rankings. Not sure how much to trust Vault secondary rankings, of course.

On my CB, corporate associates I spoke to made it sound as if there were effectively two groups - those that do the Apollo/private equity work, and the rest. Is that true, or was I reading too much into things?

I have a similar problem as OP. I have offers from Paul Weiss and Latham and trying to decide between the two (doing corporate). The corporate department at Paul Weiss does seem to have expanded greatly because of Apollo, but from what I read the department was "exploding" even before then. Everyone at my callback said the corporate group is continuing to expand, and one associate I talked to lateraled there because she thought the chances of a partnership there are much better.

The corporate work is predominately PE/Hedge fund work, so its a lot of finance, fund formation, and private M&A deals.

My impression is that because of the expansion, associates will have better opportunities to get more responsibility earlier on, which is something I'm interested in. I don't know if I would choose Paul Weiss over other V10's, but I think I will choose it over Latham.

Anonymous User wrote:FWIW, they've been rocketing up the Vault ranking for "general corporate practice" in recent years. They were #23 in 2011, but they're #15 in the new (2014) rankings. Not sure how much to trust Vault secondary rankings, of course.

Vault is nothing but a survey of associates who are asked to rank firms in order of prestige. It is almost completely meaningless as a consequence.

thesealocust wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:FWIW, they've been rocketing up the Vault ranking for "general corporate practice" in recent years. They were #23 in 2011, but they're #15 in the new (2014) rankings. Not sure how much to trust Vault secondary rankings, of course.

Vault is nothing but a survey of associates who are asked to rank firms in order of prestige. It is almost completely meaningless as a consequence.

Kind of off topic, but what's to prevent a whole bunch of mischievous associates from messing up the rankings to make a firm like, say, Squire Sanders #1?

thesealocust wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:FWIW, they've been rocketing up the Vault ranking for "general corporate practice" in recent years. They were #23 in 2011, but they're #15 in the new (2014) rankings. Not sure how much to trust Vault secondary rankings, of course.

Vault is nothing but a survey of associates who are asked to rank firms in order of prestige. It is almost completely meaningless as a consequence.

So, I can understand this in some respects. For example, junior associates are going to rank Wachtell at 1 each year because it was 1 when they went through OCI, etc, so the rankings are generally going to be self-perpetuating. But something must have caused the 17,000 associates who completed the survey to change their perception of PW's corporate practice.

Anonymous User wrote:Kind of off topic, but what's to prevent a whole bunch of mischievous associates from messing up the rankings to make a firm like, say, Squire Sanders #1?

Vault claims 17000 associates completed the survey last year. How are 17000 associates going to conspire together without that becoming public knowledge?

Anonymous User wrote:

thesealocust wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:FWIW, they've been rocketing up the Vault ranking for "general corporate practice" in recent years. They were #23 in 2011, but they're #15 in the new (2014) rankings. Not sure how much to trust Vault secondary rankings, of course.

Vault is nothing but a survey of associates who are asked to rank firms in order of prestige. It is almost completely meaningless as a consequence.

Kind of off topic, but what's to prevent a whole bunch of mischievous associates from messing up the rankings to make a firm like, say, Squire Sanders #1?

The fact that I'm way, way too busy to conspire with 17,000 other people to manipulate some stupid rankings. If I had the time for that, I could conspire for much cooler shit. At this point, it's all about getting sleep.

OP here - thank you for all your insight pre-Vault debate. So what I'm getting from all this is that unless you know you want a practice primarily focused upon PE, another firm with a more balanced practice is probably the safer bet?

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Kind of off topic, but what's to prevent a whole bunch of mischievous associates from messing up the rankings to make a firm like, say, Squire Sanders #1?

Vault claims 17000 associates completed the survey last year. How are 17000 associates going to conspire together without that becoming public knowledge?

Maybe not conspire, but what if a lot of them just decided to randomly assign rankings. It seems a bit weird that every year, nearly 20 000 dutifully list the firms in the predictable order that they're published by Vault.

Or maybe there's a collective interest in maintaining some semblance of order, though it seems that the only people who care about Vault rankings are law students (as opposed to clients).

Maybe not conspire, but what if a lot of them just decided to randomly assign rankings.

This possibility, along with many of the trivial reasons associates can have for giving one firm a certain rating instead of another, is why you should take Vault rankings with a grain of salt...


When I do the rankings, I'm almost completely random with respect to about 75 of the listed firms.

Anonymous User wrote:OP here - thank you for all your insight pre-Vault debate. So what I'm getting from all this is that unless you know you want a practice primarily focused upon PE, another firm with a more balanced practice is probably the safer bet?

What other offers do you have? Several firms in the t10, like Kirkland and Latham, seem to do mostly PE work from what I understand. If you want to do work on public deals and to represent corporate clients, it seems like you should focus more on Cravath, Simpson, S&C, Wachtell, and of course Skadden.

PE work itself is fairly interesting. There is public M&A work involved, though it is mostly private M&A. Firms that do a lot of PE work also have a lot of associates doing fund formation work, which is a lot of negotiation and drafting contracts and such. That's a great way to get client contact early on. Firms like Paul Weiss can also get you exit opportunities working for Hedge funds, PE firms, and other investment funds. That's something you won't get at firms that represent corporate clients.

I'm surprised you mentioned Simpson despite their reputation in PE. I get that they did the Facebook IPO, but I think Simpson is the more PE-oriented of the NYC heavyweights.

Fresh Prince wrote:I'm surprised you mentioned Simpson despite their reputation in PE. I get that they did the Facebook IPO, but I think Simpson is the more PE-oriented of the NYC heavyweights.

You are right. I'm not sure why I slipped Simpson in there.