Jones Day v. Sullivan & Cromwell Forum

[Anonymous User]

Choosing between the NY office of both of these firms. I am well aware of the extracurricular issues Jones Day has had over the past year and am leaning S&C, but am looking for any insights about the culture at these places. Non-URM / T20 school

[Yea All Right]

Easy decision in my opinion. At S&C you'll get the great name on your resume and related experience. Meanwhile, Jones Day screws its associates via the black box compensation system, and then of course there are the workplace issues they're having right now. You're gonna work hard at both anyway so might as well choose S&C.

[Anonymous User]

Per friends at both firms:

JD is full of true believers: you have to be to stay, given the amount of bad press. Black box sucks, though I know two people who benefited from it. They're both men and they're bankruptcy midlevels. JD has offices in weird places (San Diego! Cleveland!) if you want to lateral to a home market eventually.

S&C is notorious for being awkward/socially incapable and for working you more than is typical of biglaw. S&C corporate keeps you as a generalist for a long time, which some prefer and others really dislike. S&C looks much better on a resume.

[Anonymous User]

S&C is notorious for being awkward/socially incapable

This is a stupid TLS myth. S&C associates are not at all particularly awkward compared to other biglaw associates. The fact that they recruit more heavily from selective schools and are more grade-selective doesn't mean they recruit awkward people. There is no correlation between grades and personality.

I don't know anything about litigation. I'm a 3rd year M&A associate. For corporate, I just can't imagine anybody choosing JD over S&C.

[Anonymous User]

S&C is notorious for being awkward/socially incapable

This is a stupid TLS myth. S&C associates are not at all particularly awkward compared to other biglaw associates. The fact that they recruit more heavily from selective schools and are more grade-selective doesn't mean they recruit awkward people. There is no correlation between grades and personality.

I don't know anything about litigation. I'm a 3rd year M&A associate. For corporate, I just can't imagine anybody choosing JD over S&C.

At Columbia, S&C is absolutely notorious for giving out offers to anyone who makes grades (>90% offer rate if you got a CB), regardless of their interview quality. In practice, many CLS students who start at S&C do so because they got no offers from other, less selective firms that compete with S&C. (e.g. Skadden, DPW, STB -- all of which hire "below" S&C at CLS in terms of GPA but often turn down candidates who get S&C offers) This isn't always the case, obviously, there are some very socially capable CLS students who choose S&C -- but that's definitely not the norm.

Anyways, other top-line firms that are grade and school conscious simply don't have that reputation. I think that's noteworthy.

[DoveBodyWash]

Culture stops mattering when the substantive gap is this wide. And nothing suggests that JD has a better culture anyway. Other than bankruptcy, S&C is better than JD at literally everything (and if you want to do bk, you should go somewhere else). You can always leave S&C later.

[Anonymous User]

At Columbia, S&C is absolutely notorious for giving out offers to anyone who makes grades (>90% offer rate if you got a CB), regardless of their interview quality. In practice, many CLS students who start at S&C do so because they got no offers from other, less selective firms that compete with S&C. (e.g. Skadden, DPW, STB -- all of which hire "below" S&C at CLS in terms of GPA but often turn down candidates who get S&C offers) This isn't always the case, obviously, there are some very socially capable CLS students who choose S&C -- but that's definitely not the norm.

Anyways, other top-line firms that are grade and school conscious simply don't have that reputation. I think that's noteworthy.

I usually dislike perpetuating firm stereotypes, but I do know a person in my section at CLS whose personality is absolutely atrocious and who did in fact only get an S&C offer.

[Anonymous User]

At Columbia, S&C is absolutely notorious for giving out offers to anyone who makes grades (>90% offer rate if you got a CB), regardless of their interview quality. In practice, many CLS students who start at S&C do so because they got no offers from other, less selective firms that compete with S&C. (e.g. Skadden, DPW, STB -- all of which hire "below" S&C at CLS in terms of GPA but often turn down candidates who get S&C offers) This isn't always the case, obviously, there are some very socially capable CLS students who choose S&C -- but that's definitely not the norm.

Anyways, other top-line firms that are grade and school conscious simply don't have that reputation. I think that's noteworthy.

The above is not true. In recent years, from Columbia S&C has had a CB-to-offer rate around 80%, identical to Debevoise, Skadden, GDC NY and Paul Weiss.

There's rumor and then there's reality.

[Anonymous User]

At Columbia, S&C is absolutely notorious for giving out offers to anyone who makes grades (>90% offer rate if you got a CB), regardless of their interview quality. In practice, many CLS students who start at S&C do so because they got no offers from other, less selective firms that compete with S&C. (e.g. Skadden, DPW, STB -- all of which hire "below" S&C at CLS in terms of GPA but often turn down candidates who get S&C offers) This isn't always the case, obviously, there are some very socially capable CLS students who choose S&C -- but that's definitely not the norm.

Anyways, other top-line firms that are grade and school conscious simply don't have that reputation. I think that's noteworthy.

The above is not true. In recent years, from Columbia S&C has had a CB-to-offer rate around 80%, identical to Debevoise, Skadden, GDC NY and Paul Weiss.

There's rumor and then there's reality.

While I don’t agree with the above that most people with S&C offers end up with only one offer, last year at CLS (excluding transfers) the accepted CB to offer rate for S&C was over 90%. There’s no denying that S&C has the highest CB to offer rate.

[Anonymous User]

The above is not true. In recent years, from Columbia S&C has had a CB-to-offer rate around 80%, identical to Debevoise, Skadden, GDC NY and Paul Weiss.

There's rumor and then there's reality.

While I don’t agree with the above that most people with S&C offers end up with only one offer, last year at CLS (excluding transfers) the accepted CB to offer rate for S&C was over 90%. There’s no denying that S&C has the highest CB to offer rate.

Previous anon. I crunched the numbers for multiple recent years up through 2017. Concededly I don't have the 2018 data. There is a range for each firm, IIRC I saw one or more of Deb/Skadden/GDC/PW go as high as 85% at one point or other.

Obviously S&C's offer rate is on the high end - it's not Cleary. But it's not game-changingly different from multiple peer firms and should not be cause for concern.

[Anonymous User]

Previous anon. I crunched the numbers for multiple recent years up through 2017. Concededly I don't have the 2018 data. There is a range for each firm, IIRC I saw one or more of Deb/Skadden/GDC/PW go as high as 85% at one point or other.

Obviously S&C's offer rate is on the high end - it's not Cleary. But it's not game-changingly different from multiple peer firms and should not be cause for concern.

I have the 2018 data. Deb./Skadden/GDC/PW/Clear/DPW are all below mid-70%s and S&C was low-90%s.

[Anonymous User]

I’m a mid level at Jones Day NYC. I think very highly of the firm and have had a great experience (compensation and otherwise).

I know someone who left S&C and lateraled to another big law firm in NYC. He didn’t like the culture there and had bad experiences including being asked to do doc review at a foreign location for 2 weeks. He moved to the location and after a few days was told the work might take another week. Then there were further extensions and he ended up staying there and living out of a hotel for 3 months. He had the feeling that it was clear from the outset that this was not a 2 week project. This may be a one off type of bad experience but it’s the sort of thing that if it happened to me I would definitely quit.

[Anonymous User]

Original anon who started the S&C acceptance argument.

From Columbia, for the 2019 SA class, excluding transfers, callback-offer % (rounding a little bit, all NY):

S&C: 95%
PW: 70%
Debevoise: 75%
GDC : 85%
Skadden 75%

Anyways, I'm not saying that everyone who gets an S&C offer only gets an S&C offer -- what I'm saying is that many people who choose S&C didn't get offers from "peer" firms in their area of interest (e.g. GDC, PW for lit or DPW, STB for corporate).

[trebekismyhero]

This thread seems to be off topic with CLS offer rates from S&C. OP almost certainly doesn't go to CLS anyways since they said they go to a T20. As Dove said, the gap here is wide. S&C is clearly the better firm. JD would only make sense if OP wanted to lateral to one of those random markets where JD is the best paying (e.g. Cleveland, Minneapolis)

[Anonymous User]

Original anon who started the S&C acceptance argument.

From Columbia, for the 2019 SA class, excluding transfers, callback-offer % (rounding a little bit, all NY):

S&C: 95%
PW: 70%
Debevoise: 75%
GDC : 85%
Skadden 75%

Anyways, I'm not saying that everyone who gets an S&C offer only gets an S&C offer -- what I'm saying is that many people who choose S&C didn't get offers from "peer" firms in their area of interest (e.g. GDC, PW for lit or DPW, STB for corporate).

Thanks. For a fuller picture, here are two additional years of data from Columbia.

2017 SA class (all NY offices)
S&C: 81%
PW: 83%
Debevoise: 80%
GDC: 76%
Skadden: 83%

2018 SA class (all NY offices)
S&C: 81%
PW: 74%
Debevoise: 71%
GDC: 80%
Skadden: 79%

So these rates move up and down by 10% or so every year. At least in 2017/18 S&C's rate wasn't unusually high. I agree that if 2019 proves to be the new normal then that would paint a different picture. At the moment there's every reason to expect S&C's rate to drop back to the low 80's where it's historically been.

[Elston Gunn]

S&C and JD are honestly two of the firms about which I’ve heard the worst and most horror stories (along with Latham, DPW, Cadwalader and Dechert). I think you have to take S&C, but I would consider 3L OCI.

On the Cb->offer thing, I think people substantially overrate the degree to which being good at law firm interviews is the same as being pleasant to work with. I’ve heard horrible things about working at S&C, but not because there’s anything unusually bad about the associates.

[QContinuum]

On the Cb->offer thing, I think people substantially overrate the degree to which being good at law firm interviews is the same as being pleasant to work with. I’ve heard horrible things about working at S&C, but not because there’s anything unusually bad about the associates.

I agree. Law firm interviewing is a highly artificial environment. It's entirely possible (and I've seen this firsthand) for folks to be terrific interviewees but horrible coworkers (and vice versa).

Further, despite all the hoopla made ITT about S&C's supposed record of "auto-offers," even the highest figure cited - 95%, from one school, for one year - isn't all that different from other firms with CB/offer rates in the low/mid 80s, yet no one ever claims Gibson or Paul Weiss are "auto-offer" firms. Deb reputedly values personality especially highly, and even so it has CB/offer rates in the mid-70s.

I don't think S&C vs. JD is a particularly close call. OP should go to S&C.