Untitleddestiny wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:42 am
You seem to be misunderstanding. First, M&A is not lit. The point I was making is that W&C is not even better at all lit and the types of lit they are better at are not the most profitable (which may impact partnership odds from W&C because prestige be damned a patent litigator with a 3x larger book is more likely to make partner than a W&C associate with a smaller book). I was also using figures like RPL as an indicator of prestige.
My point is that if W&C actually gets significantly higher end work, why is it that this higher end work that theoretically should result in higher fees and need additional specialization/skill leads to lower revenue per lawyer by a significant margin? At first glance it would appear to prestige is overblown.
For other guy, no I'm not at Quinn, I just think the prestige whoring is silly. Again the main sell seems to be it will make your
partnership odds higher through prestige, but what I'm saying is gunning for that seems crazy no matter what firm you are at and bettings 100s of k in associate salary to do it seems insane. I'm also just having trouble understanding how prestige can help you get partnership over specializing in a more lucrative niche of litigation at another firm. Attracting 50 clients based on prestige that will bring in $1m each will have the same impact as 1 that will bring in $50 (and 1 client is easier to deal with).
Based on your post history, you're at most a first or second year associate. I don't think you have the understanding of how these firms operate that you think you do.
a) At firms like W&C, MTO, etc., most people who make partner aren't making it because they have gone out and hustled to build a self-sustaining book of business as associates. They make partner because they've done enough stellar work for enough people, and maybe some of those people think they have potential to eventually bring in clients. Maybe it's different at firms like QE with tighter partnership criteria. But at low leverage, non-lockstep firms, it's not really essential that each partner pull their weight generating business, and virtually no newly-elect partners are bringing in business prior to making partner. To take another example, MTO has something like 100 partners out of 200 attorneys, many of which bring in little to no business on their own; they're spending most of their time servicing cases, but the Brad Brians of the world are doing most of the rainmaking.
b) The bolded falsely conflates rates and revenue with RPL/PPP. W&C's rates
are lower than you'd expect given their stature, but the real differences on the revenue side are in the staffing models. And the reason why firms like W&C continue to attract top candidates who wouldn't work at a QE or similar big firm is that lean staffing models are at least perceived as more attractive to associates for reasons of associate development, feeling like you're a real lawyer rather than a discovery monkey, etc. It leads to less revenue for the firm on a per capita basis, especially in PPP, but makes sense for the types of cases these firms pitch for -- equally high-level and high-profile, just go look at press releases, but not the types of gigantic, sprawling cases where firms can really churn the bill with half a dozen first years doing doc review.
c) The underlined is not why partnership odds are higher at the W&Cs or MTOs of the world. The odds are higher because of how the low-leverage model works, not because of some amorphous "prestige." It's a little hard to get a real rate because there is not 100% overlap between high-end firms' summer hiring and postclerkship hiring, but even assuming something all of their summers return (which, from experience, is an overestimate): W&C takes 40 summers a year, hires almost no laterals, and elects ~5 attorneys to partnership a year (eyeball it at 12-15% partnership odds). MTO takes 25 summers a year, hires ~5-10 laterals on the high end, and elects 3-5 attorneys to partnership a year (roughly same odds). Those odds are
crazy high by the standards of top firms. Quinn's tougher to figure out because they stopped having a summer program for a while but my napkin math got roughly 5-8% depending on year. That's actually higher than I expected; from having done these calculations years back most firms of QE's size are well below that. But it's still a third to a half the odds of what you're looking at at quasi-boutiques like W&C.
