Shearman v. Ropes & Gray v. Morrison & Foerster in NYC Forum

[Anonymous User]

Interested in international opportunities, transactional work, and a good culture.

[Anonymous User]

Recently received an offer from Shearman for a lateral position. I didn’t take it because of the expectation that the firm seems to have about driving associates to the ground when it’s busy.

The people were great, though, and they said there are possibilities to work out of foreign offices.

Compared to Ropes and MoFo, I think Shearman is the best option given the international thing, the chambers rankings, AND the fact that it has no hours requirement. Ropes has a reasonable 1900 hour requirement, but it sucks to have a requirement during a slow year. MoFo has a 1950 hour requirement.

Yes, it has the worst vault ranking, but Shearman is still a great firm.

[Anonymous User]

Congrats on all three offers (which is why I assume you're asking about the three).

As someone who has done some cross-border work before, I would hesitate towards putting a lot of weight into that type of work. It sounds glamorous at first, but in my experience, it tends not to be the opposite:

(1) To be crystal clear, you will not be advising on international law issues as a U.S. attorney. You might become adept at issue spotting ex-U.S. legal issues, but otherwise, foreign counsel (either within your firm or from peer firms in the local jurisdiction) will be jumping in to advise on those substantive issues.

(2) Often times, cross-border work means acting as a specialist / support attorney on U.S.-specific legal issues. My firm frequently has laterals who come from the NY offices of Magic Circle / UK Firms (e.g., Freshfields, Allen & Overy, etc.), and they often explain that they left because much of their work consisted of M&A specialist support for ex-U.S. deals. Most law students don't realize this, but acting as a specialist on a larger transaction tends to be a crappy experience. Your primary client is effectively your own corporate team, rather than the client itself. You get bossed around by the core corporate team, have constantly tight deadlines because extra time needs to be built in for the corporate team to review your work and integrate it into the transaction documents, you only work on a small sliver of the transaction as a whole, and you have much less interaction with the client.

(3) Working in time zones across the globe for months on end can be a horrific experience. For example, consider if you're working on an M&A deal with a client in China, and you're based in NYC. Sure, you could adjust your sleep cycle so that you're always working on local time in China, but that's not feasible unless every single matter you're on is in China. As a result, you'll need to be awake and alert during both NYC local time and China local time, until that transaction in China closes.

[RPK34]

Congrats on all three offers (which is why I assume you're asking about the three).

As someone who has done some cross-border work before, I would hesitate towards putting a lot of weight into that type of work. It sounds glamorous at first, but in my experience, it tends not to be the opposite:

(1) To be crystal clear, you will not be advising on international law issues as a U.S. attorney. You might become adept at issue spotting ex-U.S. legal issues, but otherwise, foreign counsel (either within your firm or from peer firms in the local jurisdiction) will be jumping in to advise on those substantive issues.

(2) Often times, cross-border work means acting as a specialist / support attorney on U.S.-specific legal issues. My firm frequently has laterals who come from the NY offices of Magic Circle / UK Firms (e.g., Freshfields, Allen & Overy, etc.), and they often explain that they left because much of their work consisted of M&A specialist support for ex-U.S. deals. Most law students don't realize this, but acting as a specialist on a larger transaction tends to be a crappy experience. Your primary client is effectively your own corporate team, rather than the client itself. You get bossed around by the core corporate team, have constantly tight deadlines because extra time needs to be built in for the corporate team to review your work and integrate it into the transaction documents, you only work on a small sliver of the transaction as a whole, and you have much less interaction with the client.

(3) Working in time zones across the globe for months on end can be a horrific experience. For example, consider if you're working on an M&A deal with a client in China, and you're based in NYC. Sure, you could adjust your sleep cycle so that you're always working on local time in China, but that's not feasible unless every single matter you're on is in China. As a result, you'll need to be awake and alert during both NYC local time and China local time, until that transaction in China closes.

Also, let me just add that working with foreign justifications can be just mind numbing. A week before closing, you find out the acquisition agreement is subject to a 35% tax in Singapore unless the agreement is notarized and authenticated by the Singapore embassy - something foreign counsel should have told you a month ago, but just forgot to mention. So you spent your day tracking couriers and notaries, only for the document to get to the Singapore embassy to find out they need an additional form ever since 2015, but they just never added that to the website. Then when it gets to Singapore, you find out “notarized” in Singapore means witnessed by a governor, and some counsel is telling you Andrew Cuomo needs to notarize the contract. So you get on an all hands call for an hour, only to find out there was an exemption for this tax that the agreement might fit into. And so rather than explaining these exemptions in plain language, they send you a 14 page email which is essentially copied from a foreign tax treatise with a million different foreign concepts you don’t understand because you’re not a Singaporean tax attorney. So now PWC Singapore gets involved because someone needs to make a call on this, and PWC Singapore finally points out that the tax is only on the value of the assets inside Singapore, rather than the entire value of the contract and the sellers just pay the tax.

And now everyone is pissed, including your client, who you just subjected to 14 hours of phone calls and busy work over a $30K tax on a $1B deal. And now you just lost 3 days of time and obviously no one is going to move closing, so closing becomes a mad dash.

[Anonymous User]

Recently received an offer from Shearman for a lateral position. I didn’t take it because of the expectation that the firm seems to have about driving associates to the ground when it’s busy.

...

Can you talk about this expectation? I have heard good things about Shearman NYC but I am not on the ground in NYC and would love any insight.

[parkslope]

Congrats on all three offers (which is why I assume you're asking about the three).

As someone who has done some cross-border work before, I would hesitate towards putting a lot of weight into that type of work. It sounds glamorous at first, but in my experience, it tends not to be the opposite:

(1) To be crystal clear, you will not be advising on international law issues as a U.S. attorney. You might become adept at issue spotting ex-U.S. legal issues, but otherwise, foreign counsel (either within your firm or from peer firms in the local jurisdiction) will be jumping in to advise on those substantive issues.

(2) Often times, cross-border work means acting as a specialist / support attorney on U.S.-specific legal issues. My firm frequently has laterals who come from the NY offices of Magic Circle / UK Firms (e.g., Freshfields, Allen & Overy, etc.), and they often explain that they left because much of their work consisted of M&A specialist support for ex-U.S. deals. Most law students don't realize this, but acting as a specialist on a larger transaction tends to be a crappy experience. Your primary client is effectively your own corporate team, rather than the client itself. You get bossed around by the core corporate team, have constantly tight deadlines because extra time needs to be built in for the corporate team to review your work and integrate it into the transaction documents, you only work on a small sliver of the transaction as a whole, and you have much less interaction with the client.

(3) Working in time zones across the globe for months on end can be a horrific experience. For example, consider if you're working on an M&A deal with a client in China, and you're based in NYC. Sure, you could adjust your sleep cycle so that you're always working on local time in China, but that's not feasible unless every single matter you're on is in China. As a result, you'll need to be awake and alert during both NYC local time and China local time, until that transaction in China closes.

Also, let me just add that working with foreign justifications can be just mind numbing. A week before closing, you find out the acquisition agreement is subject to a 35% tax in Singapore unless the agreement is notarized and authenticated by the Singapore embassy - something foreign counsel should have told you a month ago, but just forgot to mention. So you spent your day tracking couriers and notaries, only for the document to get to the Singapore embassy to find out they need an additional form ever since 2015, but they just never added that to the website. Then when it gets to Singapore, you find out “notarized” in Singapore means witnessed by a governor, and some counsel is telling you Andrew Cuomo needs to notarize the contract. So you get on an all hands call for an hour, only to find out there was an exemption for this tax that the agreement might fit into. And so rather than explaining these exemptions in plain language, they send you a 14 page email which is essentially copied from a foreign tax treatise with a million different foreign concepts you don’t understand because you’re not a Singaporean tax attorney. So now PWC Singapore gets involved because someone needs to make a call on this, and PWC Singapore finally points out that the tax is only on the value of the assets inside Singapore, rather than the entire value of the contract and the sellers just pay the tax.

And now everyone is pissed, including your client, who you just subjected to 14 hours of phone calls and busy work over a $30K tax on a $1B deal. And now you just lost 3 days of time and obviously no one is going to move closing, so closing becomes a mad dash.

Just wanted to note that this was a very well-written horror story.