Top Law Schools

Hi everyone,

Top third at CCN. Have an offer from WSGR, Cooley, and Wilmerhale, but can't decide between the three. Life sciences background. Which of these is best for big Pharma work, including patent prosecution, hatch-waxman lit, etc?

Ultimately hope to practice on the east coast (Specifically NYC), but amenable to moving later in my career to DC or Boston. The offers are all out in the Bay Area.

Thanks!

Wilmer. The other two seem like they are great for startup work, but it seems like that startup work in the valley is related to high tech more than life sciences.

Edit: I am primarily speculating. But Wilmer also seems to have a much stronger east coast presence whereas the other two are stronger west coast.

OP here. Thanks for the input, tbird.

Any other input? My main concern (which I prob. didn't make clear in the original post, mea culpa) is that, as I said, I ultimately want to practice out east but all my offers are out west. Yes, I applied for both east and west SAs. For whatev reason, didn't get too many out east, and the few I got were all lit (I'm hoping for mix of both patent lit and pros, which these three firms offer). I know it's hard to switch regions and have read that elsewhere on the forum but what about specially CA to DC/NYC/BOS transfer WITHIN firm (not lateraling)? Thoughts?

WH corporate is not something I'd call "life sciences focused" in the Bay. The overall vibe I got from the office was that the culture was great, but the office relied on a couple big partners to pull in the biggest clients and share the work. And a lot of that work is still high tech.

WSGR has some life sciences clients, and you can focus on that, but that's the exception not the norm. Bread and butter is still high tech. The culture is hit or miss, with mostly miss along the IP / Tech Trans groups.

Don't know much about Cooley, but pretty sure it (and neither WSGR or WH) do much patent pros. But WSGR probably has the strongest IP practice as a whole. As previous (non OP) mentioned, for east coast, WH > WSGR / Cooley. And WH being able to transfer within offices is a huge plus. But ultimately I'd go off gut feel and culture -- IP experience at Cooley and WSGR is very strong.

FWIW, made this same decision but -Cooley +Fenwick +MoFo +STB, picked Fenwick.

I would go to Cooley. Cooley is Chambers Band 1 nationwide for Life Sciences. Although this is mostly for corporate work, their IP lit practice is solid and they do have a decent sized prosecution practice for a biglaw firm. In my experience from working in the Bay Area (corporate), attorneys from Cooley are generally more pleasant to work across from than WSGR. If you want to move back to the east coast, you can always switch firms.