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What should a NYC corporate associate at Cravath/S&C interested in emerging companies work do to: (i) maximize opportunities to lateral to a top SV/Boston emerging companies practice (Fenwick, Cooley, Gunderson, WilmerHale, WSGR, Goodwin, etc.) and (ii) to maximize value-adding capability and standing within the firm after lateraling? I studied a non-technical subject at an East Coast UG (Ivy), went to HYS, and have VC investing and start-up operations experiences from before law school.

do work, don't get fired, make connections

Start your own company

gamify your doc review, bootstrap your deliverables, disrupt discovery correspondence, and growth hack your pitch deck in case you run into treps at the food court

Since there's no emerging company work at CSM/S&C, I would probably try to do as much work as you can in related fields, particularly M&A and equity capital markets work. Emerging company work can often involve a lot of capital markets and M&A as your start-ups get bigger and go public, get sold off, buy off smaller companies, etc., so you'll have some experience in something useful, and you can learn a standard NVCA venture financing on the job while still providing value. Being a junior doing M&A and IPOs will also involve diligence where you sift through corporate records from incorporation to the time of the transaction, which are a lot of the documents you'd be generating during the venturing financing phase, so you'll at least have some sense of what those docs look like.