WSGR, Cooley, Fenwick, Orrick NYC Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm currently a second year corporate associate at a v5 in NYC looking to make a lateral move.

I am interested in finding a firm that has a generalist corporate practice and is involved with tech and emerging companies. I would like to do predominantly M&A, but also interested in general corporate work involving these type of clients.

A firm with a presence in the bay area is a bonus - as I would be open to making a geographical move in the next few years and doing so within the firm seems preferable if possible.

Can anyone speak to the relative strength of WSGR, Cooley, Fenwick and Orrick in NYC or suggest other firms to look at?

[Anonymous User]

OP Bumping

[SFSpartan]

Cooley has the top fund formation (VC) practice of the firms you mentioned. WSGR has some early stage stuff, but their bread and butter is more startups. Orrick does good emerging company work (though IME their attorneys have a tendency to run up their clients bills by being unrealistically aggressive - that's a firmwide comment, and includes their European attorneys). I would expect Fenwick to be 4th of 4 here given how new their office is - I believe they opened last summer.

Out of curiosity, why don't you want to move to California? The NY market is decent, but SV is the king of EC/VC work by a mile. Given the credentials you likely have as a V5 associate, making the move out to SV should not be hard.

[Anonymous User]

Cooley has the top fund formation (VC) practice of the firms you mentioned. WSGR has some early stage stuff, but their bread and butter is more startups. Orrick does good emerging company work (though IME their attorneys have a tendency to run up their clients bills by being unrealistically aggressive - that's a firmwide comment, and includes their European attorneys). I would expect Fenwick to be 4th of 4 here given how new their office is - I believe they opened last summer.

Out of curiosity, why don't you want to move to California? The NY market is decent, but SV is the king of EC/VC work by a mile. Given the credentials you likely have as a V5 associate, making the move out to SV should not be hard.

OP here - your question re: locating is appropriate and of course you are right about the EC/VC work. However, I was born and raised in the SF area and, truth be told, I just like NYC much better. I would prefer to stay in the city for now and potentially make the move down the line.

[Anonymous User]

Cooley has the top fund formation (VC) practice of the firms you mentioned. WSGR has some early stage stuff, but their bread and butter is more startups. Orrick does good emerging company work (though IME their attorneys have a tendency to run up their clients bills by being unrealistically aggressive - that's a firmwide comment, and includes their European attorneys). I would expect Fenwick to be 4th of 4 here given how new their office is - I believe they opened last summer.

Out of curiosity, why don't you want to move to California? The NY market is decent, but SV is the king of EC/VC work by a mile. Given the credentials you likely have as a V5 associate, making the move out to SV should not be hard.

Not OP, but I appreciate your insight. What would you say about those firms' LA offices?

[SFSpartan]

Cooley has the top fund formation (VC) practice of the firms you mentioned. WSGR has some early stage stuff, but their bread and butter is more startups. Orrick does good emerging company work (though IME their attorneys have a tendency to run up their clients bills by being unrealistically aggressive - that's a firmwide comment, and includes their European attorneys). I would expect Fenwick to be 4th of 4 here given how new their office is - I believe they opened last summer.

Out of curiosity, why don't you want to move to California? The NY market is decent, but SV is the king of EC/VC work by a mile. Given the credentials you likely have as a V5 associate, making the move out to SV should not be hard.

OP here - your question re: locating is appropriate and of course you are right about the EC/VC work. However, I was born and raised in the SF area and, truth be told, I just like NYC much better. I would prefer to stay in the city for now and potentially make the move down the line.

That makes complete sense. To the extent you are looking to make a move out West down the line, I would probably look more heavily at Cooley and Orrick. They are far less siloed than WSGR (this is a problem that WSGR has been trying to address, but they don't seem to have cracked it quite yet), so you'll likely have to do less relationship-building in the event you decide to transfer offices within your firm.

[SFSpartan]

Cooley has the top fund formation (VC) practice of the firms you mentioned. WSGR has some early stage stuff, but their bread and butter is more startups. Orrick does good emerging company work (though IME their attorneys have a tendency to run up their clients bills by being unrealistically aggressive - that's a firmwide comment, and includes their European attorneys). I would expect Fenwick to be 4th of 4 here given how new their office is - I believe they opened last summer.

Out of curiosity, why don't you want to move to California? The NY market is decent, but SV is the king of EC/VC work by a mile. Given the credentials you likely have as a V5 associate, making the move out to SV should not be hard.

Not OP, but I appreciate your insight. What would you say about those firms' LA offices?

I'll start with the caveat that I know relatively little about LA. But it seems, from looking at the websites of these firms, that their LA offices skew heavily towards lit. This makes sense, given LA's geographic proximity to Silicon Valley. It's almost certainly easier/more efficient for these firms to headquarter their EC/VC practices in Silicon Valley and have partners take the 45 minute flight to LA for blocks of meetings as necessary.

[Anonymous User]

Cooley itself is really good for what it sounds like you want to do, but be prepared to feel like the illegitimate child of the family while working out of the NYC office.

I wouldn't worry about this as much if you have concrete plans to move out to CA (or almost any other office), though. I don't know the extent to which CA offices share work with NY attorneys in that particular group, but Cooley is better than many about allowing you to work remotely with other partners across the firm, so worst-case scenario, when you move to CA, you can keep your NYC work and just travel a bit until people in your CA office start putting you on their work.

[Anonymous User]

Cooley itself is really good for what it sounds like you want to do, but be prepared to feel like the illegitimate child of the family while working out of the NYC office.

I wouldn't worry about this as much if you have concrete plans to move out to CA (or almost any other office), though. I don't know the extent to which CA offices share work with NY attorneys in that particular group, but Cooley is better than many about allowing you to work remotely with other partners across the firm, so worst-case scenario, when you move to CA, you can keep your NYC work and just travel a bit until people in your CA office start putting you on their work.

Not OP, but I'm considering Cooley LA or Santa Monica. Would much appreciate any insight as to how their general corp or EC/VC practice is regarded and what the office dynamic is like?

[Anonymous User]

Cooley itself is really good for what it sounds like you want to do, but be prepared to feel like the illegitimate child of the family while working out of the NYC office.

I wouldn't worry about this as much if you have concrete plans to move out to CA (or almost any other office), though. I don't know the extent to which CA offices share work with NY attorneys in that particular group, but Cooley is better than many about allowing you to work remotely with other partners across the firm, so worst-case scenario, when you move to CA, you can keep your NYC work and just travel a bit until people in your CA office start putting you on their work.

OP here - this is really helpful, thanks so much.