Paul Weiss Corporate Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi, I'm interviewing at Paul Weiss as a 2L. Can anyone shed light on the corporate department there? They have made a lot of big hires recently, and I've liked the few attorneys I've met there. But I've heard of it referred to a litigation shop mostly, so not sure what to think. I'm not set on corporate but pretty sure I wouldn't want to do litigation (1L summer intern at a small litigation firm). I would love to hear anyone's opinion.

[bwh8813]

First thing is, to be considered you must always use the comma: Paul, Weiss.

[curepure]

they should have used "@paul,weiss.com" for their email domain

[Anonymous User]

They do a lot of private equity work. That means a lot of M&A work, a decent amount of private equity related financing work, and some investment fund work. They also have a small IP transaction practice that is pretty popular. They keep you a generalist rotating among those groups for the first two years. I think they're pretty busy right now, they were when I was there. Not a bad place to be despite the PE-focused new york shop issues discussed in this forum a couple month back and the fairly high (sometimes crushing maybe) workload. Those two things are fairly unattractive IMO.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. What are the PE-focused shop issues that you refer to? I searched previous threads, but couldn't find anything specific. Also, I wouldn't know how to quantify it, but recent hires (Scott Barshay) suggest a focus on public company work? From talking with attorneys there, that seems to be the case. Do you know the workload there is particularly worse than peer corporate departments?

[unlicensedpotato]

OP here. What are the PE-focused shop issues that you refer to? I searched previous threads, but couldn't find anything specific. Also, I wouldn't know how to quantify it, but recent hires (Scott Barshay) suggest a focus on public company work? From talking with attorneys there, that seems to be the case. Do you know the workload there is particularly worse than peer corporate departments?

They also just hired four antitrust partners from Cadwalader. They're definitely making a play for public company M&A.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. What are the PE-focused shop issues that you refer to? I searched previous threads, but couldn't find anything specific. Also, I wouldn't know how to quantify it, but recent hires (Scott Barshay) suggest a focus on public company work? From talking with attorneys there, that seems to be the case. Do you know the workload there is particularly worse than peer corporate departments?

Yes they are making a play for public companies and yes they already have some but a large amount of their corporate work is turned by PE firms, including one in particular. They have been pretty successful in building their corporate practice in general, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are more successful than others with their public company attempts.

My take is that compared to other firms they are among the stodgier and harder working. I know people didn't last there long for the most part. They were constantly lacking for midlevels when I was there. I'm sure some places have more toxic environments but they're not great either. This depends more on who you work with. I think the best you can do is to try to avoid working with the partners that work with a certain PE client and try to work with the M&A partners outside that group. My sense was that those were the partners to work with.

By the way I was referring to the So you want to be a NY Corporate Associate thread a few pages deep into the Ask a Law Student/Graduate forum. Somewhere in the middle of there is a discussion of the more limited exit ops for PE-focused corporate associates. I have heard the same from other associates, specifically from K&E associates and elsewhere on this thread.

[Anonymous User]

I spent a short while there about 4 years ago. it was awful and everything above is true. I think its worse than the other v10 firms because they are always understaffed in corporate. they have been very successful in growing their corporate practice, and if your goal is to make partner at a v20 firm I think you have the best chance here, but they were desperately bleeding associates when I was there. it's like their hiring couldn't keep up with the amount of new deals coming in. new laterals were constantly being brought in but it wasn't enough. the other v10 practices i feel like found the right balance in terms of associate head count and work load (relatively speaking of course, i think all the v10 practices could easily hire another dozen associates), which makes sense as they have being dominating corporate work for a century. this was all a while ago so take with grain of salt, but it sounds like from above not much has changed

[Anonymous User]

OK so there have been a bunch of negative posts about PW-Corp so far.

Does that dept have ANY redeeming qualities?

[Abbie Doobie]

op i don't think you have to worry about p, w's corporate practice because knowing where to place commas is the most important corp associate skill and your comma game just isn't up to p, w's standards.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. From what I've gathered, the biggest problem is the workload, and this results from a lack of staffing because the department is so busy. From my POV, this bodes well for the health of the department/firm. In my interviews, the partners/associates straight up told me that this was the case (too high workload) and that they're doing everything they can to bring more people on-board. They said that they believe a lot of this is a result of the recent public company expansion and difficulty in attracting corporate associates because people think of it as a litigation firm first. It seems almost like it's a cycle of too much work/not enough people/so people leave because there's too much work. Not sure how to feel about that. I worked at another V50 as a paralegal with the opposite problem, and that was toxic af. I think I'd rather have too much work than nothing to do/no bonus, especially if the firm recognizes the problem and is hiring lots more to try to rectify the issue. But what do I know.

I hear the issues re PE work, but balanced with the 2 years of unassigned and push into significant public company M&A, I see a better than not chance of getting into the public company stuff, which I think I want in any case. Re the PE stuff, I think the large client other posters have referred to is Apollo. I interviewed with a partner who did midmarket PE work, mostly M&A, and never does Apollo work. That person said that's a good chunk of the business as well. Not sure how true that is, but it's what I was told.

Happy to have more input from others.

[Anonymous User]

Have worked across from the Apollo team there. Steer clear.

[Empirebuilder]

So is it still bad or have the understaffing issues been addressed? Also isn't it kind of difficult to "steer clear" of a particular client or team?

[Anonymous User]

I'm one of the posters that has been giving advice in here. I think it is possible to steer clear of a client team there, even the biggest one. Not entirely, you'll likely have to do some work with them from time to time, but if you're likable enough, responsible enough, smart enough and diligent in trying to work with the other M&A partners, there's enough work to go around. Also enough people want to work for the big name clients on the big name deals and others, believe it or not, like that style.

I didn't mean to make people think PW corp should be avoided at all costs. There are some good people there and some good work and hopefully staffing will come to be less of an issue. Just be aware going in.

[Anonymous User]

@10:31

OP here. Thanks for your evenhanded advice. It's annoying when people post something like "I worked across from the Apollo team. Avoid." as if working opposite a team is the same as working with them or as if that group is representative of the firm, department or the Apollo team generally, which I gather is more than a fair few.

@10:01

Again, from what I gather from speaking with people there is that the firm is aware of the problem and trying to hire lots more people. I don't know the answer to this either, which is what I'm hoping someone who works there now will help explain.

Thanks again for everyone's input.

[Anonymous User]

Have worked across from the Apollo team there. Steer clear.

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