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I am curious to hear how the best Bay Area emerging company firms (Cooley, WSGR, Gunderson) stack up in their respective NYC offices. If there are any firms I missing, let me know, but I am most interested in firms that also have bay area offices.

Anonymous User wrote:I am curious to hear how the best Bay Area emerging company firms (Cooley, WSGR, Gunderson) stack up in their respective NYC offices. If there are any firms I missing, let me know, but I am most interested in firms that also have bay area offices.

Gunderson is I think the best of the bunch in NYC - they have a fairly large practice, and from what I've seen often have to turn work away.

WSGR associate here (not NY).

I agree that Gunderson probably the strongest of the firms you mentioned. WSGR's office isn't quite there, but it is growing quickly and has gotten significantly better over the last few years. I thin it's worth looking at.

Lowenstein Sandler also does a bit of this work, and they have a big NY office. I have also worked across from Goodwin Procter twice on deals, but both times they represented a NY investor and were not company side. HTH--good luck.

Any thoughts on Cooley in NYC?

Anonymous User wrote:Any thoughts on Cooley in NYC?

Pretty well respected. I interviewed there 3 years ago and the group was tiny - seems they've grown quite a bit since then.

Never worked w/ their NYC office, but Cooley is great. My favorite of the SV firms.

Can anyone speak to WSGR or Cooley's attitude w/r/t to transferring offices within the firm? I know this is always firm by firm, but I would be interested to hear if anyone had any personal experience with this.

Also, does Cooley do all of its Corp in SV and Lit in SF?

I think they are both open to it if you have a compelling reason. I work at WSGR w/ an associate who transferred offices as a junior. It was for family reasons though.

Cooley does plenty of corp in SF.

Anonymous User wrote:I think they are both open to it if you have a compelling reason. I work at WSGR w/ an associate who transferred offices as a junior. It was for family reasons though.

Cooley does plenty of corp in SF.

Thanks.

Is there any hard division between corporate practice groups in terms of who is in SF vs who is in SV?

At Cooley? I am not 100% sure, but I have been on 2 capital markets deals across from their SF office. I think they do more IPOs, cap markets, etc while SV does more emerging tech/VC work.

WSGR's SF office is mainly big M&A deals (especially if you're a junior).

Anonymous User wrote:At Cooley? I am not 100% sure, but I have been on 2 capital markets deals across from their SF office. I think they do more IPOs, cap markets, etc while SV does more emerging tech/VC work.

WSGR's SF office is mainly big M&A deals (especially if you're a junior).

WSGR junior corporate associate here. I am not sure I know of any WSGR associates transferring from NYC to SV or vice versa as a junior. Maybe one, not sure if he/she started in NYC initially. I've heard of an associate transferring between west coast offices but I think you really have to develop a rapport to get a transfer at WSGR. For reasons I won't go into here associates are not as fungible as they are at other firms. Bottomline I wouldn't bet on it. If I was trying to do one, I would guess it is easier to go SV -> NYC than the other way around.

Also note we have two offices in SF and one does M&A (and lit) and the other does startup work. You wouldn't work out of the SF emerging company group as a junior, though you could rotate.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:At Cooley? I am not 100% sure, but I have been on 2 capital markets deals across from their SF office. I think they do more IPOs, cap markets, etc while SV does more emerging tech/VC work.

WSGR's SF office is mainly big M&A deals (especially if you're a junior).

Also note we have two offices in SF and one does M&A (and lit) and the other does startup work. You wouldn't work out of the SF emerging company group as a junior, though you could rotate.

Rotate as in eventually get there? So the startup office (in SOMA) doesn't have juniors? I looked at some profiles out of that office, it looks like mostly people with significant experience in tech and/or entrepreneurship.

I am looking to switch from a more traditional M&A role into one of those types of roles.