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I know nothing about real estate, but Chambers compiled this list of the best firms doing real estate:

https://www.chambers-associate.com/prac ... eal-estate

RE seems to cover many different kinds of work that not every firm is ranked in, so I’d just check on there to see if your desired sub-area pops up for any firm (e.g., RE finance).

Then I’d check the firm’s site to see how many people actually work in that department. I wouldn’t choose a well-ranked firm with a RE group of 5 partners and 1 associate over a firm that’s a bit more robust in RE if that’s all you want to do.

It was a badly hit area in the recession evidently. Maybe pair the info above with some research on individual firm health via AmLaw. I’d also google each of the ones you’ve narrowed it down to and see which firms valued RE more/less during the recession. Not that any of this predicts what our next recession will do, but it’s better than nothing.

in NY the best RE group is fried frank.

other top groups include Skadden and Gibson Dunn

Per friend practicing at NY real estate shop--assuming you mean land use/zoning rather than the corporate / financing, Fried Frank is likely best and Kramer Levin and Greenberg are also excellent. Skadden, PW, GDC are very good but a step below all the above though their finance/corp real estate practices are better than FF/Kramer/Greenberg.

soft blue wrote:Per friend practicing at NY real estate shop--assuming you mean land use/zoning rather than the corporate / financing, Fried Frank is likely best and Kramer Levin and Greenberg are also excellent. Skadden, PW, GDC are very good but a step below all the above though their finance/corp real estate practices are better than FF/Kramer/Greenberg.

Surprised STB isn't mentioned here. They represent on all of Blackstone's deals.

Again, per friend: his sense of STB is they're there because Blackstone likes them as a firm. He's down on their RE ability and says the evidence for that is that they don't even get into the room for anyone else's major deals.

For general real estate, my impression is Gibson got the strongest real estate group and gets a lot of the more complex deals, especially ones that require tax planning. Fried Frank and Skadden got more volume but less sophistication. Everyone else seems to be small or living off only one or two really big clients.

For specifically NY real estate, which is practically a specialty area by itself, there are other firms, some of which have been mentioned.

I'm at FF, so I'm anon.

For dirt, there is FF and really no one else. Just look at the biggest projects (e.g. One World Trade, Barclays Center, Hudson Yard, Yankee Stadium, etc.) and those all have FF on one side of it, and sometimes even multiple sides.

The only other firm that is sort of considered a peer is Gibson. Otherwise there is a considerable drop off.