Paul Weiss v. Skadden (NYC) Forum

[Anonymous User]

Enjoyed meeting people from both firms and I'm primarily interested in litigation. I think I'd wanna work in government at some point. Is there a material difference between the two for career outlook?

[Anonymous User]

Enjoyed meeting people from both firms and I'm primarily interested in litigation. I think I'd wanna work in government at some point. Is there a material difference between the two for career outlook?

Both are great firms. But if litigation, Paul Weiss.

[Anonymous User]

Enjoyed meeting people from both firms and I'm primarily interested in litigation. I think I'd wanna work in government at some point. Is there a material difference between the two for career outlook?

PW associate with friends at both firms. Some thoughts:
1.) Both are, realistically, great choices for what you want.
2.) If you want to do white-collar type stuff, a slight edge to PW - but the reality is that a lot of things need to break right to get to be SDNY AUSA or whatever.
3.) To my understanding, Skadden has a bunch of "specialist" litigation groups - a friend of mine does essentially only antitrust work, for example. That's not the case at PW, where you're a generalist for quite a while.
4.) Look to culture: I think PW is more low-key than Skadden.
5.) Geography - PW is basically a NYC only shop (DC does some appellate and antitrust litigation, that's about it to my understanding - the other offices are quite small). Skadden has lots more offices, if you want to end up somewhere else might not be bad to go there.

[Anonymous User]

Both fantastic options. Congrats. As everyone notes, if you wanna do litigation, the edge still goes to PW. Skadden's lit group is no slouch tho, so not a crazy choice if you end up picking Skadden.

[jnewsham]

I'd have guessed that Paul Weiss sent more people into government — they have a progressive reputation, with alumnus Hakeem Jeffries in Congress, Alex Oh having briefly had a leading role at the SEC, and former AG Loretta Lynch at the firm — but a quick LinkedIn search finds almost 2x as many Skadden alumni listing the DOJ as their current employer than Paul Weiss.

Of course, there are many ways to serve in government. Neither is a bad option.

[Anonymous User]

Enjoyed meeting people from both firms and I'm primarily interested in litigation. I think I'd wanna work in government at some point. Is there a material difference between the two for career outlook?

PW associate with friends at both firms. Some thoughts:
1.) Both are, realistically, great choices for what you want.
2.) If you want to do white-collar type stuff, a slight edge to PW - but the reality is that a lot of things need to break right to get to be SDNY AUSA or whatever.
3.) To my understanding, Skadden has a bunch of "specialist" litigation groups - a friend of mine does essentially only antitrust work, for example. That's not the case at PW, where you're a generalist for quite a while.
4.) Look to culture: I think PW is more low-key than Skadden.
5.) Geography - PW is basically a NYC only shop (DC does some appellate and antitrust litigation, that's about it to my understanding - the other offices are quite small). Skadden has lots more offices, if you want to end up somewhere else might not be bad to go there.

This. I'm a PW associate with close friends at Skadden. Good people at both places; both places can and will work you hard. The major difference (that you will notice and that actually is a big deal) is that PW's litigation group is a generalist group. Assuming you choose litigation at the end of your summer, you would get an offer into the lit group and starting your first year, you can take any type of litigation matter and will likely get some of everything, although you can request certain types of matters, and those types of requests are taken seriously, especially when you go through a partner. This is great to get a feel for what you might like, and then midlevels tend to specialize, although they don't have to. From what I understand, Skadden's litigation group has discrete practice areas, and you would start in one of those your first year.

[Anonymous User]

This is OP - thanks for the helpful responses and advice everyone!