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Hi all, I am fortunate enough to have received offers from Mayer Brown and Kirkland for this summer, both in Chicago. I'm primarily interested in real estate transactional / general corporate transactional.

I'm having a hard time deciding between the two. While Kirkland is *Kirkland* and offers an alluring resume bump, I'm turned off by its sweatshop / cog-in-the-machine reputation. Mayer Brown seems to lack the prestige bump, but also lacks that less-than-stellar reputation. Thoughts?

Thanks!!

Bump. I'm in a similar situation and curious on people's thoughts.

Kirkland.

I used to work at Mayer Brown in Chicago, but not in corporate/finance. (The two groups are separate at MB.) I would agree that there is less of a "sweatshop" reputation, but I'm not sure that it is actually less of a sweatshop in reality. Transactional lawyers seem to face a feast-or-famine situation: weeks and months where they are continuously working long hours, followed by weeks and months of fretting about their hours because very little work is coming in. A lot of the transactional clients at MB will be similar in size and industry to those at Kirkland. But at least three-quarters of transactional lawyers at MB are nice enough people who you wouldn't mind working with, which may be something to consider.

Kirkland. The Chicago office isn’t as bad as the NY office as far as sweatshops go. And the Chicago office has a much better reputation within Chicago than the NY office does within NY. But all that aside, much steadier work at Kirkland and you won’t have to worry about comp as a junior. MB has some weird system to determine whether you get the raise and they have an hours requirement for bonus which many ppl don’t meet. Kirkland Chicago is big enough where you can steer your life to a certain degree. Lots of chill people there too.

For Chicago, I'd go Kirkland. I know someone who was there and seemed to enjoy it.