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Strong ties to Houston, none to NY. Assume I can go anywhere in Houston and am interested only in Corp.

Will I be missing out on something substantial by passing up Cravath?

Same boat as OP. Leaning towards NY for now and consider possible lateral a few years in.

Exit opps, and avant-garde experience in stuff like M&A where V10 firms dominate, but you'd only want either if you wanted to stay on the East Coast anyway.

Don't have anything on the substantive differences between CSM and Houston V5, but going to a NY-market paying Houston office is a much better financial decision in the near-term.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-livi ... nhattan-ny

The Lsat Airbender wrote:Exit opps, and avant-garde experience in stuff like M&A where V10 firms dominate, but you'd only want either if you wanted to stay on the East Coast anyway.

Please tell me more about this "avant-grade experience" you got in NYC that you won't get at Kirkland or VE in Houston.

OP, I had this decision and decided to go to Houston. I had a couple close friends from school go to Cravath and S&C in NY. We all meet up once a year where we went to law school and I can assure you there was little to no difference in deal sheets, hours or experience (I would argue my midlevel experience was more substantive than most the rest of the group). Will Cravath hold more weight outside of TX? Absolutely! Will your experience be much different or better there than at KE or V&E? Absolutely not. Also, if you want in-house in Houston VE is hands down the best bet here. If you want to focus on PE, you'll get all the work you could ever desire from KE. I can also assure you that your Cravath salary and above cravath bonus will go MUCH further in Houston than Cracath salary and (never)above market bonus will go in NYC.

Anonymous User wrote:

The Lsat Airbender wrote:Exit opps, and avant-garde experience in stuff like M&A where V10 firms dominate, but you'd only want either if you wanted to stay on the East Coast anyway.

Please tell me more about this "avant-grade experience" you got in NYC that you won't get at Kirkland or VE in Houston.

OP, I had this decision and decided to go to Houston. I had a couple close friends from school go to Cravath and S&C in NY. We all meet up once a year where we went to law school and I can assure you there was little to no difference in deal sheets, hours or experience (I would argue my midlevel experience was more substantive than most the rest of the group). Will Cravath hold more weight outside of TX? Absolutely! Will your experience be much different or better there than at KE or V&E? Absolutely not. Also, if you want in-house in Houston VE is hands down the best bet here. If you want to focus on PE, you'll get all the work you could ever desire from KE. I can also assure you that your Cravath salary and above cravath bonus will go MUCH further in Houston than Cracath salary and (never)above market bonus will go in NYC.

This is great and all, but to provide another data point, as someone who has worked at VE/KE for several years, I can confidently say I would choose Cravath unless you're dead set on being an oil and gas rockstar. And even then.

If you want to be in Houston you’d be nuts to go to Cravath. The dollars you can stack in Houston would far exceed any marginal preffftigious boost you’d get at CSM

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

The Lsat Airbender wrote:Exit opps, and avant-garde experience in stuff like M&A where V10 firms dominate, but you'd only want either if you wanted to stay on the East Coast anyway.

Please tell me more about this "avant-grade experience" you got in NYC that you won't get at Kirkland or VE in Houston.

OP, I had this decision and decided to go to Houston. I had a couple close friends from school go to Cravath and S&C in NY. We all meet up once a year where we went to law school and I can assure you there was little to no difference in deal sheets, hours or experience (I would argue my midlevel experience was more substantive than most the rest of the group). Will Cravath hold more weight outside of TX? Absolutely! Will your experience be much different or better there than at KE or V&E? Absolutely not. Also, if you want in-house in Houston VE is hands down the best bet here. If you want to focus on PE, you'll get all the work you could ever desire from KE. I can also assure you that your Cravath salary and above cravath bonus will go MUCH further in Houston than Cracath salary and (never)above market bonus will go in NYC.

This is great and all, but to provide another data point, as someone who has worked at VE/KE for several years, I can confidently say I would choose Cravath unless you're dead set on being an oil and gas rockstar. And even then.

OP here. Thanks for the responses everyone.

You would go to Cravath because you wish you weren't only doing oil and gas?

Anonymous User wrote:Please tell me more about this "avant-grade experience" you got in NYC that you won't get at Kirkland or VE in Houston.

I was rather being tongue-in-cheek, and like I said it's not something OP should worry about too much. But LJL at the idea that NY doesn't at least get somewhat more complex/prestigious work than Houston. You're biting back a bit too hard against preftige trolls if you really think there are no substantive differences across all corporate practice areas.

people advocating cravath: do you work at cravath? i'd personally want to blow my brains out if i had to work as much as those guys do. add to that the COL differential, and i don't really see the appeal.

I was also in this boat: Cravath vs. all of the top shops in Chicago. Easiest choice of my life. I chose Chicago. I make 10k more after taxes, have a way better COL situation, and I get to stay in the market where all of my family and close friends live. Why care about that CSM prefftige when everyone in my market doesn't really care about NYC and there are other more respected shops in town?

Anonymous User wrote:Strong ties to Houston, none to NY. Assume I can go anywhere in Houston and am interested only in Corp.

Will I be missing out on something substantial by passing up Cravath?

If you ultimately want to end up (back) in Houston, don't force yourself to start out in NYC. Cravath's brand is golden, yes, but if your ultimate goal is to practice in Houston you won't lose anything by starting out at one of the top TX shops. In fact, you stand to gain monetarily, as others ITT have pointed out. (Houston's on the $190k scale just like NYC, but without state/city income taxes and with much lower cost of living.)

You do need to understand and accept that TX work is oil/gas-centric.

Anonymous User wrote:Strong ties to Houston, none to NY. Assume I can go anywhere in Houston and am interested only in Corp.

Will I be missing out on something substantial by passing up Cravath?

Like others have mentioned if you don't mind doing O&G exclusively and want to go in house in TX after 3-5 years choose V&E or K&E. If you have any trepidation about the former and/or don't mind moving in house later in your career I think CSM is the right choice. Given your ties, you always have the option to lateral to a Houston firm in a couple of years.

As a midlevel corporate associate, it always seems a bit strange to me how people fight about relative desirability/prestige of corporate firms/groups. Everything is the same paper-pushing nonsense whether you are doing $2 million deals or $2 billion deals. Your job is to pay off debt and accumulate savings. Go to a group that isn't imminently about to collapse in a city with COL you can stomach and that you like. End of story.

Biggest benefit of the prestige of a place like Craveth is exits. But as others have said, those are going to be primarily NY based anyway, so not really relevant if you want to go back to Texas eventually anyway.

I don't know any other way to say this, as an ex-Cravather...you can't really understand the insanity of the hours in corporate there until you work the hours. Cravath has a mentality that you leave NOTHING for the next day. Get everything out to the client overnight. This sounds glam until you want to throw up and your chest hurts and your muscles are like jelly because you've worked so hard for so long. You can push paper anywhere, but if you want to not kill yourself, I can't see how Houston wouldn't be better, if you actually like Texas. There's nothing wrong with being in oil&gas if you like Texas. I thought, when I went to Cravath, following being an investment banking analyst, that it couldn't be that bad. It was indeed that bad. Really.

All of the above said, Cravath is a special place with a special culture. If you're corporate, you can do a rotation in London for your 2nd or third rotation. It will carry a ton of weight on your resume for the rest of your life (I speak from experience--I haven't worked there in 15+ years and people still zero in on in on p. 2 of my resume).

But again, after my time in London at Cravath, I went to Greece for a few weeks and then stopped by the office to say goodbye. I was tanned, and rested, and everyone said I looked amazing. Why did I look amazing? It was the first time in months I hadn't done 2+ near-all-nighters a week.