Choosing a Firm? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Super grateful to have received a pre-OCI offer recently and to have many more interviews lined up. I am now thinking about what type of firm would be right for me and have a few questions:

- What are the advantages of doing corporate work in NY vs. corporate work in DC (either at an office that fields NY work from the DC office or just DC local clients)? This is hard because NY has higher profile deals, but my significant other is in DC, and I also want to consider our life together.
- What are the benefits of firm prestige other than just being at a more well-known place? How are future opportunities better either if you want to make partner or go in-house?
- What type of place is better when it comes to staying on track in spite of maternity leave, and how does one figure this information out?
- Also, just curious as to why billable hour requirements don't exist at the higher ranked firms like Cravath and Skadden or if they do exist, they are lower than others? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Thanks for your input!

[Anonymous User]

Super grateful to have received a pre-OCI offer recently and to have many more interviews lined up. I am now thinking about what type of firm would be right for me and have a few questions:

- What are the advantages of doing corporate work in NY vs. corporate work in DC (either at an office that fields NY work from the DC office or just DC local clients)? This is hard because NY has higher profile deals, but my significant other is in DC, and I also want to consider our life together.
- What are the benefits of firm prestige other than just being at a more well-known place? How are future opportunities better either if you want to make partner or go in-house?
- What type of place is better when it comes to staying on track in spite of maternity leave, and how does one figure this information out?
- Also, just curious as to why billable hour requirements don't exist at the higher ranked firms like Cravath and Skadden or if they do exist, they are lower than others? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Thanks for your input!

- As far as being a corp associate in DC vs. NYC, there are no advantages per se to either of them. Two big caveats: First, there are like 5 DC firms that have well-regarded corp groups (Skadden, Latham, K&E, GDC, Hogan, maybe Fried Frank), and probably 40 NYC firms with well regarded corp groups. Second, where DC really suffers is exit options for corp associates. Its generally not too hard to get a cushy in-house gig in NYC. Much harder to pull that off in DC...not that many F500 companies headquartered there compared to NYC. I actually interned in-house in DC and was told this numerous times
- Prestige is generally roughly correlated with exit options. A Sullivan & Cromwell corp mid-level should have more/higher-paying exit options than one from Winston & Strawn.
- Prestige is probably negatively correlated with your chances at making partner. While some people say that there is a decent chance of making partner at Jones Day, everyone knows its virtually impossible to make partner at Cravath.
- No idea about maternity leave. There's a few threads on it tho
- Billable hour requirements are not really emphasized at "prestigious" firms because when your at Cravath or Skadden, there is such an enormous pressure to bill, and the majority of associates starting off in those firms are ambitious gunners, that most people end up going way beyond the billable minimum. At my firm, we have a relatively low minimum amount of billable hours. I honestly don't know a single person who was close to it last year - everyone went way beyond it. This includes people who said at the beginning of the year that they were going to try to work a little bit less and they didn't care about not getting bonus... didn't really work out that way. It just goes to show that your schedule is truly not in your control and its hard to semi-humane hours without totally tanking your reputation. But then again there will always be coasters who get canned in like 3 years because they billed 1600


Also, all of the above should be totally trumped by living in the same city as your SO. So feel free to disregard

[wons]

OP, happy to answer some questions for you, but would rather do in PM. Please feel free to message me if you'd like.

[Anonymous User]

Thank you so much for your feedback, Anon!

My offer with the DC firm actually involves work that comes from the NY office and many DC attorneys travel to NY to see clients on a regular basis. There is also exposure to clients at a lower level given the structure of the office... Do you think these advantages outweigh the benefits of working out of a NY firm in terms of exit opps?

[pancakes3]

Imo, go DC for sure. The advantages of DC BL (lower cost of living, higher overall prestige for DC raises all firms, and local networking for bigfed exit options) outweigh NYC by a significant margin imo. All that in addition to your SO? It's a no brainer.

I'm a 2L 3L though, so salt and all that.

[Anonymous User]

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