Skadden PA vs. Latham SV vs. MoFo SF Forum

[Anonymous User]

Interested in Corporate/M&A work. I'm aware of the lifestyle differences between working in the city vs. SV and the burdens of commuting. Mostly curious about people's input on the quality of work done by the corporate groups of these different firms.

Specifically, does anyone have insight into the differences in exit opportunities, differences between satellite offices of stronger national firms vs. headquarters of stronger regional firms, and whether it's a concern that MoFo's corporate group isn't Band 1 on Chambers (does that metric even matter)?

Thanks!

[Anonymous User]

have you received offers from all three?

when did you cb and hear back from skadden PA?

[Anonymous User]

Interested in Corporate/M&A work. I'm aware of the lifestyle differences between working in the city vs. SV and the burdens of commuting. Mostly curious about people's input on the quality of work done by the corporate groups of these different firms.

Specifically, does anyone have insight into the differences in exit opportunities, differences between satellite offices of stronger national firms vs. headquarters of stronger regional firms, and whether it's a concern that MoFo's corporate group isn't Band 1 on Chambers (does that metric even matter)?

Thanks!

I contemplated offers from Latham and Skadden SV (didn't apply to MoFo SF) before ultimately deciding to go somewhere else in the valley, but I vote Latham.

I think the people there are pretty awesome, I found them to be far more personable and upbeat than most of the Skadden people, and the office and people in general seemed far more happy around the office.

As to the quality of work, I think Latham is the best non-native firm in the valley (and one of the only ones that ranks Band 1 or 2 in most of the major industries in the valley) for most corporate work. If you want to do exclusively M&A or Tax forever Skadden might have the edge, but Latham's involved in major M&A both inside and outside of the valley, they are pretty much the only Biglaw firm doing any type of emerging companies / vc work successfully, and I think this image is also held by a lot of the native firms as well. I'd also say that I've talked to people from Latham that have exited to major SF/SV tech firms and other places, whereas I don't know as many from Skadden, but I'm sure that there are. I think if you're interested in the Bay Area for any type of tech work in general, Latham is going to be the better option because you'll get to do M&A work for both tech and non tech corporations both inside and outside of the Bay, while still having access to quality Bay area work. And they've got the unassigned system so you can choose to either focus your practice early on on M&A, or spend the time getting a mix of work and skills.

Like I said, I didn't apply to MoFo because I was exclusively interested in corporate, and they don't really seem to be as major of players in the spheres I was interested in (emerging companies, VC/PE, IPO, and M&A work). I think the most highly regard non-native corporate players seem to be Skadden, STB, K&E, Latham, GDC and Goodwin Proctor to a lesser extent (from everything I could gather they seem to be on the rise with some recent poaching and increase in lateral hiring FWIW). MoFo seems to be dominant in the BigLaw IP / Lit scene in the Bay Area. Hope it helps.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Thanks for the feedback. I was aware that MoFo isn't as big in the emerging companies/VC/IPO sphere as some of the other native firms, but I thought they were strong in the M&A/larger public company deals. Is that not the case?

FYI to the person above, I received offers from Latham and MoFo. Interviewed with Skadden last week but haven't heard yet.

[Old Gregg]

OP here. Thanks for the feedback. I was aware that MoFo isn't as big in the emerging companies/VC/IPO sphere as some of the other native firms, but I thought they were strong in the M&A/larger public company deals. Is that not the case?

They are. I don't know what that guy is talking about. They also do an ass-ton more public company and emerging company work than Skadden Palo Alto does (though probably not more public company work by itself). Your best bet for public M&A and emerging company work is between Latham and MoFo. Really a toss up between the two, but MoFo will work you slightly less.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks for the insight, any additional thoughts would be appreciated.