Top Law Schools

I'm interested in corporate, and I know that both firms will result in very different day-to-day experiences. I'm interested in Cravath for the reasons people have always been interested in Cravath, and Debevoise because I think I could be happy (by big law standards) there. I've been going back and forth between each choice for so long that I've decided I should get TLS thoughts on this decision.

I'm not currently interested in a specific area of transactional law.

I can't speak to lit side, but Debevoise is notoriously brutal for corporate associates. One if my friends who worked there once made an offensive comparison to Stalin's gulags when he'd had one too many, and left soon thereafter. One of the associates I worked with 1L summer was a Debevoise refugee from several years prior and urged me not to fall for the marketing. Never understood why law students have this image of it as some utopia with short hours. Not so easy to make as much revenue as they do with no significant M&A practice. Working on gigantic debt offerings is no picnic.

Take Cravath and run. If you're going to work like that, you might as well have the fruits of your effort.

Anonymous User wrote:I can't speak to lit side, but Debevoise is notoriously brutal for corporate associates. One if my friends who worked there once made an offensive comparison to Stalin's gulags when he'd had one too many, and left soon thereafter. One of the associates I worked with 1L summer was a Debevoise refugee from several years prior and urged me not to fall for the marketing. Never understood why law students have this image of it as some utopia with short hours. Not so easy to make as much revenue as they do with no significant M&A practice. Working on gigantic debt offerings is no picnic.

Take Cravath and run. If you're going to work like that, you might as well have the fruits of your effort.

This seems wrong to me. Sure, I highly doubt that Deb M&A is any easier than Cravath M&A, but the "fruits" are not likely to be hugely different either. If you liked Deb that much better (for reasons other than perceived hours you will work), go ahead and accept the offer.

I have the same question, but in my case its Ropes & Gray vs. Cravath. Sorry to hijack the post, but does anyone have any advice in my case?

Anonymous User wrote:I have the same question, but in my case its Ropes & Gray vs. Cravath. Sorry to hijack the post, but does anyone have any advice in my case?

If Ropes Boston, that's just a tradeoff between prestige (goes to Cravath) versus quality of life (to Ropes), and NY v. Boston.

v5junior wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I can't speak to lit side, but Debevoise is notoriously brutal for corporate associates. One if my friends who worked there once made an offensive comparison to Stalin's gulags when he'd had one too many, and left soon thereafter. One of the associates I worked with 1L summer was a Debevoise refugee from several years prior and urged me not to fall for the marketing. Never understood why law students have this image of it as some utopia with short hours. Not so easy to make as much revenue as they do with no significant M&A practice. Working on gigantic debt offerings is no picnic.

Take Cravath and run. If you're going to work like that, you might as well have the fruits of your effort.

This seems wrong to me. Sure, I highly doubt that Deb M&A is any easier than Cravath M&A, but the "fruits" are not likely to be hugely different either. If you liked Deb that much better (for reasons other than perceived hours you will work), go ahead and accept the offer.

If you don't think that more doors open if you're a Cravath fifth year compared to a Debevoise fifth year when you're looking for your next job, then <shrug>. The lateral opportunities - particularly to other firms - are better, and take it from someone who's seen job searches from both places.

If you don't want to be a lawyer long term, then there's no reason to work at Cravath, but this advice assumes someone actually wants a career in transactional law, for which getting your learnin' done at Cravath is beneficial.

Sometimes I feel like these threads are broken records. People WANT law not to be prestige obsessed and they want workflow not to be better at the tippy top transaction firms and they WANT hiring not to look primarily at firm name, but at substantive experience.

But then the real world intervenes, and the S&C/Cravath/Wachtell associate who's never done emerging markets work gets the VC job over the guy from Wilmer who's done nothing but emerging markets work for the last 3 years because the former is more "talented", whatever that means, maybe because he got an A instead of an A- in securities law in 2L year. And if you don't think that shit happens all the time, you're in for a rude awakening in 4 years or so.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I have the same question, but in my case its Ropes & Gray vs. Cravath. Sorry to hijack the post, but does anyone have any advice in my case?

If Ropes Boston, that's just a tradeoff between prestige (goes to Cravath) versus quality of life (to Ropes), and NY v. Boston.

It's actually Ropes NY vs. Cravath.

Anonymous User wrote:

v5junior wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:I can't speak to lit side, but Debevoise is notoriously brutal for corporate associates. One if my friends who worked there once made an offensive comparison to Stalin's gulags when he'd had one too many, and left soon thereafter. One of the associates I worked with 1L summer was a Debevoise refugee from several years prior and urged me not to fall for the marketing. Never understood why law students have this image of it as some utopia with short hours. Not so easy to make as much revenue as they do with no significant M&A practice. Working on gigantic debt offerings is no picnic.

Take Cravath and run. If you're going to work like that, you might as well have the fruits of your effort.

This seems wrong to me. Sure, I highly doubt that Deb M&A is any easier than Cravath M&A, but the "fruits" are not likely to be hugely different either. If you liked Deb that much better (for reasons other than perceived hours you will work), go ahead and accept the offer.

If you don't think that more doors open if you're a Cravath fifth year compared to a Debevoise fifth year when you're looking for your next job, then <shrug>. The lateral opportunities - particularly to other firms - are better, and take it from someone who's seen job searches from both places.

If you don't want to be a lawyer long term, then there's no reason to work at Cravath, but this advice assumes someone actually wants a career in transactional law, for which getting your learnin' done at Cravath is beneficial.

Sometimes I feel like these threads are broken records. People WANT law not to be prestige obsessed and they want workflow not to be better at the tippy top transaction firms and they WANT hiring not to look primarily at firm name, but at substantive experience.

But then the real world intervenes, and the S&C/Cravath/Wachtell associate who's never done emerging markets work gets the VC job over the guy from Wilmer who's done nothing but emerging markets work for the last 3 years because the former is more "talented", whatever that means, maybe because he got an A instead of an A- in securities law in 2L year. And if you don't think that shit happens all the time, you're in for a rude awakening in 4 years or so.

Thanks for these answers.