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These are my choices. All three are Securities litigation plus white collar practices which I interpret to mean SEC enforcement plus class action work.

Clerkship is ending soon so these are pretty much what I got. No real time to apply to anything else but I do have active applications out there so I might get something else....

Goal is AUSA. Alternative goal is Cal DOJ doing white collar pros. Other alternative goal would be DOJ or SEC SF branch office.

Which firm should I pick?

Couple of notes:

I don't think either of these firms have a specialized Securities/white collar group. MoFo and Kirkland both have general lit groups.

As far as exit options, MoFo does a lot more of the big ticket cases in SF (i.e. Waymo v. Uber) and I believe places more people in the US attys office and CA DOJ. Their staffing model is pretty traditional for big law so you might have to hustle to get on the good cases. Kirkland's SF office largely runs support for big cases out of other offices or cases located in other jurisdictions so don't expect to work on a lot of big local matters there. They do run pretty lean over there so you will get a fair amount of experience and someone from their IP lit team just went to the NDCal US attys office. I don't know anything about BB since I've never encountered lawyers from their SF office (I thought they only did patent lit). Good luck.

Don't mind my vote too much (I voted MF,KE,BB), but just coming here to chime in that BB in the Bay Area is not a thing. It just isn't.

MoFo does have a litigation subgroup that specializes in securities lit (SLEW). I think it’s the biggest lit subgroup after IP lit.