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I have an interview coming up with the LA office of S&C. I expressed an interest in transactional work but said that I would be very open to exploring other practice areas. It looks like their LA office is predominantly litigation, though they do have some transactional partners there and some associate whose profiles don't indicate their specific practice area. Was expressing an interest in transactional work fatal if I'm interviewing for their LA office?

Mass mail? School range/grades/LR?

Anonymous User wrote:Mass mail? School range/grades/LR?

Yes, mass-mail (hopefully this means they have a genuine interest; I know of the high CB-->offer ratio, so hopefully I've got a good shot even though this is just a screener). Transfer from a T50 to a T14. Top 2%. Secondary journal 1L year and joined a secondary at the new school.

Anonymous User wrote:I have an interview coming up with the LA office of S&C. I expressed an interest in transactional work but said that I would be very open to exploring other practice areas. It looks like their LA office is predominantly litigation, though they do have some transactional partners there and some associate whose profiles don't indicate their specific practice area. Was expressing an interest in transactional work fatal if I'm interviewing for their LA office?

No. It's a small group, but gets very high quality work, primarily private equity M&A.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I have an interview coming up with the LA office of S&C. I expressed an interest in transactional work but said that I would be very open to exploring other practice areas. It looks like their LA office is predominantly litigation, though they do have some transactional partners there and some associate whose profiles don't indicate their specific practice area. Was expressing an interest in transactional work fatal if I'm interviewing for their LA office?

No. It's a small group, but gets very high quality work, primarily private equity M&A.

Thanks, that's good to hear. NALP doesn't break down the individual offices and the website for the LA office says that they handle M&A, which is what I'm interested in, and I had heard from others that the LA office was pretty much evenly split between litigation and transactional work, but when I went through the attorney profiles it seemed that almost everyone was a litigator.

My impression is that S&C LA's corporate practice largely revolves around one exceptionally productive partner. They do top-flight work but it's a very small office - with the benefits and drawbacks of that. It also has a very "satellite" feel and I get the sense that they're not as networked into the Los Angeles legal community as the LA powerhouses (Irell, GDC, OMM, MTO, etc...). In my interview there awhile back, I actually got the impression that the corporate practice of the office was the more viable component (again, due to the presence of that particular partner). I didn't summer there, so all of this info is only impressionistic from my callback and OCI research.

As someone who has summered there, OP's impression that it is mostly litigation is wrong. The number of litigation and transactional people are about equal, both partners and associates. The transactional practice is very high-level, in my impression generally doing New York style/quality transactional work. I would disagree with the previous poster that it is one exceptionally productive partner, there's at least two of them, arguably more. As to the satellite feel, it definitely is a branch of a larger firm. Whether that's good or bad depends on your perspective, I guess. That said, the LA office usually brings in more work than it can handle itself, so it's not like it's just taking scraps from New York.

Anonymous User wrote:As someone who has summered there, OP's impression that it is mostly litigation is wrong. The number of litigation and transactional people are about equal, both partners and associates. The transactional practice is very high-level, in my impression generally doing New York style/quality transactional work. I would disagree with the previous poster that it is one exceptionally productive partner, there's at least two of them, arguably more. As to the satellite feel, it definitely is a branch of a larger firm. Whether that's good or bad depends on your perspective, I guess. That said, the LA office usually brings in more work than it can handle itself, so it's not like it's just taking scraps from New York.

How did you like your summer there? Are you planning on returning post-graduation? Are exit options from the LA office comparable to the NYC office? How easy is it to lateral from one office to another if, for whatever reason, I decide to try to move to the NYC office?

To the S&C LA SA, would you be willing to post non-anon so I could PM you?

Anonymous User wrote:To the S&C LA SA, would you be willing to post non-anon so I could PM you?

Sure

Interested in this as well.