Top Law Schools

I've looked at the vault rankings, chambers, etc -- and honestly all of the firms I'm looking at look good and it's hard to tell the difference. I know call backs, interviews, etc. will help weed things out for me, but generally I just want to know: what is the BEST biglaw firm for litigation in New York City? Think quality of work, reputation, exit options. The vault specialty rankings are the closest I'm getting at this point to anything definitive, and I know there's no right answer. Just hoping to go into interviews with a little more than "oh, you're number X on the vault "general commercial litigation rankings" and that's what I know about the real quality of your lit practice.

Thoughts?

Most people I speak to in NY seem to agree that Paul Weiss is the top dog in this area

There isn't a best litigation firm in New York City. The reason there are like 4 decent accounting firms and like 250 decent law firms is conflict of interest rules. Firm size is necessarily limited because a single legal entity just can't hoover up all, or even a majority of, the good clients. And every transaction or law suit has two sides...

This is the closest you will get to a non-horseshit ranking of litigation in New York: http://www.chambersandpartners.com/1280 ... torial/5/1

There's a very good reason they have 7 different firms in band 1 - there just isn't meaningful difference amongst them for the most part, or to the extent that there is, it's small and ever-changing. It's also important to note that the difference between band 1 and band 2 - particularly for a junior associate - will be slight or non-existent.

And then there are firms that do a pretty significantly different breed of litigation, focusing on plaintiffs work. Firms like Quinn, Boies Schiller, and Susman come to mind as having materially different litigation practices than the generic corporate defense common to the other top firms.

As for going into interviews, you'll look amateurish if you try to talk to them about rankings. They don't mean much of anything and rarely come up in the real world. Talk to them about how they train associates, how they staff cases, and recent noteworthy cases they have been involved in.

Op here- awesome, hadn't seen that chambers ranking and makes sense, thx

Look into Boies.