PW DC Overview? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I feel like PW DC gets little discussion here compared to PW NY or any of the other DC shops (usually one of the "Wimer v. Cov v. GDC" type threads end up becoming a "reg vs. lit" type discussion).

For commercial lit, which is what I'm most interested in, Chambers lists PW as Band 1 along with K&E, W&C (I thought they were more white collar, but perhaps that's just what gets the most attention), and GDC. Beyond that rough ranking, what is the PW DC office "known for" / how should I think about differentiating commercial lit there vs. the other players in the area?

[Anonymous User]

They’re probably best known for having an insane appellate litigation shop after they poached Kannon, but it’s quite small and probably impossible to work in.

[Anonymous User]

They’re probably best known for having an insane appellate litigation shop after they poached Kannon, but it’s quite small and probably impossible to work in.

As someone who works there (caveat that I'm a first-year so my impression might be off), it's actually pretty easy to get a taste of the appellate stuff. If you express interest, they'll try to put you on something, and Kannon goes out of his way to reach out to all the juniors to see if they want to work on appellate matter. As you said, the appellate team here is quite small (just a handful of lawyers) and they've got a ton of business for their size, so there's a lot of work to spread around to people outside that small group. I imagine if you did well with that work, they'd be happy to give you more. I've worked on a couple cert petitions and have been asked if I'm interested in working with them more.

Outside of that, I think our biggest specialty is probably antitrust, particularly criminal and civil litigation. The DC office does most of the antitrust work in the firm (outside of merger clearance and the like, which I think is more often handled under the transactional umbrella), and I think we're pretty well-regarded for it. We just represented Apple in the Apple v Epic litigation, for example. We do a lot of internal investigations and FCPA work, too, and we do a lot more government-facing work than the NY office, although I think we're not really well-known for that compared to the larger DC shops. They're really working on growing the DC office, though, so perhaps we'll get some more clout there. And there's obviously general commercial litigation, too - we're a small office, but we handle a solid chunk of PW's litigation business. I have no idea if there's anything specific that sets us apart there, tbh.

One thing that may differentiate us from other DC litigation firms is that there's a lot of emphasis on making sure juniors get broad exposure to a lot of different practice areas. I'm a first year, and my caseload is around 40% antitrust, 25% general commercial litigation, 25% government investigations, and a variety of other stuff (appellate stuff, large-scale government-facing pro bono, very small-scale individual-representation pro bono). I get the impression people don't really start specializing until the mid-level years, and the staffing team makes a solid effort to get you on the types of matters that you're interested in. The specialization occurs by just getting cozy with senior people that tend to do whatever thing you're interested in sticking with rather than by being officially assigned to any particular practice group.

Versus PW's NY office, DC is SO much smaller - still fewer than 100 lawyers, I think. Everyone in the office knows everyone else at least a little, and the general vibe is very casual and friendly. We've been working more across offices since it's been remote, and the NY lawyers are noticeably more standoffish and frankly often unpleasant to work for - I do my best to stay busy with DC work so I don't have to work with the NY people. I'm not keen on going back to the office (3 days a week, starting mid-September), but I do look forward to getting more separation from NY again. In my experience, PW's DC people respect weekends and personal time more (with the expectation that you're still getting your work done, obviously - by the numbers, I think we actually bill slightly more than our NY litigators do). Outside of office size and personality, the other main difference is that DC is purely litigation. We have like three transactional lawyers in the office, and they're all relatively senior people who moved here from NY for lifestyle/family reasons and continue to do all their work with NY teams.