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Vault rankings in secondary markets are not really indicative of anything. You need to make this decision based on practice area, people, etc.

Also, biglaw with no debt for a few years sounds like a sweet deal. Save some cash, figure something else out.

I picked a v60 over a v20 in a secondary market. In my market the v20 is satellite, doesn't generate its own business, and its rates are way to high for the actualy market. The v60 is headquarted there, generated its own work, and is a leader among the other offices within the firm. It was a no brainer to me. You are going to work in that secondary market. Pick the firm that is better there, not the firm that will impress your law school buddies who will be largely irrelevant to your career development.

In New York corporate, there may be perceptible differences in quality of work and opportunities from a V5 versus a "V30", but outside New York, there are typically none; if anything, the satellite offers less.

Anonymous User wrote:Hi all, keeping things general so I don't out myself. I got lucky as a 3L and have three offers. Main question - what are the advantages of picking a V5 vs. a V30ish firm? All are in secondary markets.

I don't want to practice law for more than two years, took a scholly for law school, so no debt. Are there any advantages to picking the V5 that I'm missing?

What do you want to do after law? Is there a practice area at either firm that will help you transition to what you want to do next?

If both are equally relevant/irrelevant to your post law career plans, and the pay is the same, just pick based on which set of people you think you'll hate the least.

Is this post a flame? First off, with the single exception of Skadden Delaware, I don't think there is a single V5 in a secondary market. Also, went to lawl school to practice for 2 years?

OP here. Thanks for all of the input, everyone. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

And to the above, all I meant by secondary market was not NYC.

Anonymous User wrote:I picked a v60 over a v20 in a secondary market. In my market the v20 is satellite, doesn't generate its own business, and its rates are way to high for the actualy market. The v60 is headquarted there, generated its own work, and is a leader among the other offices within the firm. It was a no brainer to me. You are going to work in that secondary market. Pick the firm that is better there, not the firm that will impress your law school buddies who will be largely irrelevant to your career development.

I did something very similar with choosing a V50 over a V10 and V25 in a non-NYC market for exactly this reason. Assuming you're set on staying in that market long-term I think it makes a whole lot of sense to give heavy weight to who has a stronger local presence.

For me the biggest factor was looking down the road at what my potential career path would be post-BigLaw. The offices of the higher ranked firms did very little work for local clients. The lower ranked firm, on the other hand, self-generated essentially all of its work and is among the top couple of firms that dominate the local market in my desired practice area. Who knows what'll happen in 5+ years, but I'm pretty confident that working primarily for local clients will make it easier to transition from BigLaw to in-house (for example) in the same market.

FWIW in my case the disparity between the size of the offices and the work origination (local vs. out of different offices) was pretty substantial. The higher ranked firms' offices were around 1/3 of the size of the firm I picked based on headcount. I'm also very certain on wanting to live in the city for the entirety of my career so I wasn't concerned at all with how a more prestigious firm would look on my resume if I were to change markets.

Anonymous User wrote: And to the above, all I meant by secondary market was not NYC.

For political correctness' sake - what are we calling non-nyc markets? i.e. Chicago, SF, LA?

I'm with you OP anon, i've always called em secondary.

RaceJudicata wrote:

Anonymous User wrote: And to the above, all I meant by secondary market was not NYC.

For political correctness' sake - what are we calling non-nyc markets? i.e. Chicago, SF, LA?

I'm with you OP anon, i've always called em secondary.

If the only primary market was NYC, then it wouldn't make any sense to have a "primary markets" category. When lawyers speak of "primary markets," they're usually referring to at least NYC, DC, Chicago, LA, and SF. Sometimes you'll see Boston, Houston, and/or Dallas thrown into that list as well.

"Secondary markets" are smaller markets like Atlanta, Seattle, Minneapolis, Cleveland, etc.

I don't think any of this is controversial.

I think the issue at the core of this question is that people are treating the so-called ranking like it actually means anything. This has been discussed a lot: Vault is a rough analog to the strength of NY corporate practices, but it's not even that good at that because it attempts to be all things to all people at the same time, meaning its one strength is diluted to the point where it doesn't mean shit. The V5 rankings may roughly reflect the NY corporate thing, and the V10 is probably not a terrible guide to how those particular firms directly relate to one another, but most folks would argue that most of the V15 are "better" or more reputable than firms like Weil and Latham.

Which is all to say: it's silly to call a firm better ranked when that ranking means very little in its intended context and it means absolutely nothing outside of it. If you're in Seattle and you're seriously considering taking K&L Gates over Perkins Coie because K&L has a higher Vault ranking... your reasoning skills are garbage. There are reasons why a satellite might be a better choice due to practice area interests (aka Chambers type stuff), but the strict numerical component of the Vault ranking shouldn't even be a factor. For what it's worth, Vault has city specific rankings which may or may not be more useful, but they still take a broad view of something that may not be best viewed that way.