Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:02 pm
Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:47 pm
Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:26 pm
Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:55 pm
Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:35 pm
Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:56 am
Anonymous User wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:22 am
How about you stick out your neck and point to what's wrong rather than giving a throwaway response. OP here is generally correct on these points. At my T-14, LW offers were on par with those around them at v5 and those that went there had offers from peer Vault firms. On the other hand, for KE you mostly just needed a pulse for an offer (this is even more true for lateraling) and I knew several people below median that went to K&E. People forget that these surveys are primarily filled out by first and second years who come in with their law school mentality and bias. While LW certainly has the Chambers recognition to compete with the top, I think they and KE each have their own strengths making this a wash.
As far as sweat shop rep, not to say you won't be working hard at LW but KE has a notorious sweatshop and harsher personalities than you'll find at LW. People also just generally dislike working across from them. This ends of factoring into what is ultimately a very small difference between #5 and #7.
Agreed, similar to what I’ve seen/experienced
Not the quoted og OP
GPA data at my T14 indicates Latham is not selective at all whereas K&E targets around top 40%. Not sure why this debate is being had though. They're both massive firms, they're both dominant in their respective home markets and relatively okay in NY, and they're both the least selective V10s.
OG op, directly above is wrong - LW
is more selective.
At my non-NYC t-14, LW generally requires ~3.8 whereas KE requires just under ~3.7 (generally speaking). That makes LW selectivity on par with GDC/Skad, quite a bit more selective than KE/STB/PW/DPW, and just slightly less selective than SC/Cravath.
Though if you are targeting NYC offices, I would expect LW selectivity to decrease relative to some of the white shoes headquartered there, but definitely not as compared to KE.
Do you mean NYC non-T14? Those are INCREDIBLY high cutoffs.
Also anecdotally at NYU law Latham is the least selective of all the above mentioned firms with a median gpa of around 3.45-3.50ish.
This is simply just not true ... (1) NYU never provides median numbers, they only provide average callback GPAs, in 3 categories: no GPA requirement, 3.4+ and 3.6+ (the statistical meaning and difference between average and median I'm sure you understand); (2) out of all the above mentioned firms, KE, GDC are also in 3.4 groups, PW corporate (according to my counselor) is way less selective than the above firms. Also just to remind you: 3.4+ is above median at NYU after 1L, traditionally close to top 30%, since median used to be lower than 3.3.
According to my friend at CLS, the Harlan scholar rate of callbacks are significantly higher for LW. LW offers 90%+ callbacks to Harlan scholars (on par with SC/Cravath/DPW), where KE is close to 50%.
They are both good, large firms, and top notch in the market, no sure why people are obsessed over the selectivity. They obvs have difference practice focuses so just pick the one you are more interested in if you are fortunate enough to be picking between those two.
Seems like a KE troll or two are generating mass confusion. Agree with the above and previous OP re LW being much more selective than KE and on par with the traditional New York elites. Ymmv depending on which LW office
The current generation of lawyers definitely weigh culture more heavily than ever in the past. There is simply more career choices now that can pay just as well or slightly below (e.g. tech), plus there's a greater emphasis on actually wanting to work at a place that is not toxic at a bare minimum. This is not just in law but generally across all industries. Remember the manifesto for Goldman that forced all the banks to at least facially try to appear that they care about culture and the wellbeing of their analysts?
This shift in paradigm does not only affect the law firms themselves but also the clients - where do you think the clients are coming from? If your firm was toxic and you left and go in-house, do you think you are more or less likely to want to continue working with your old firm on the opposite side? Of course some people when choosing firms, and even clients, will continue to inevitably base their decisions on selecting a firm based on prestige, which in itself is colored by the selectively of firms (and to large degree, rightfully so). Big law always had a turnover problem - arguably, for the reasons above, culture is playing a bigger role in a person's decision in leaving if they are deciding to leave for another a law firm, or even to an extent by going in-house. There's just a greater systemic risk to firms now if your firm has a shitty culture that trickles down.
While I understand that there are other rankings that may be better suited to measure "culture" and that Vault rankings has always been traditionally measured by prestige, I do believe that for the reasons above, the definition of prestige itself is shifting away from just a firms' sensitivities with respect to someone's school or grade. Even if we don't look at the role of culture and how that plays a role in how people view prestige, we will continue to see an increased number of the top % at top schools funneling to firms with great culture, especially for firms that arguably don't differ all that much when you want the "best training".
On similar train of thought, it's hard to argue against the fact that clients simply aren't just flocking to "prestige" anymore, otherwise firms like KE or LW would not be able to grow into monstrous proportions. I acknowledge that the business models for these giants are fundamentally different to some of the other V10s, especially smaller shops like Cravath, this is just another aspect of how we should approach prestige different. It is clear part of the success of the new business model is simply having more bodies - but not just any bodies, bodies that can be spread around to clients without being spread too thinly. This not only does this play a big role in capturing clients/portion of their work because you have more clients feeling that some of these bigger shops are more "dedicated" to them, it also plays a big role in also stealing the top partners from firms at the very top of V10 simply because they get paid so much more. While this is speculation, you can see firms like Cravath panicking as their old model simply stopped working and all of a sudden within 2 years they are changing their partner-pay structure and opening a new office in DC to gain more presence.
Overall, I hold no position as to where KE or LW should stand exactly within the V10, for the reasons above, the way the market (whether it be students or clients) views prestige is simply shifted to mean something else other than grade sensitivity - as to what extent, that is something I do not have a basis in arguing, but there is definitely at least a shift. Even if we look at grade selectivity alone, as everyone is doing above, it objectively does not make sense to compare grade selectivity to larger shops and smaller shops. Assuming the proportion of people who choose big law more or less remains the same across all law schools in the US (
https://www.lawschooltransparency.com/t ... llment/all), we can see that overall class sizes have pretty much been steady and even decreasing. If the % of the top students are not changing because the class sizes aren't increasing, even if you do not accept the premise that culture is a new motivating factor and the % of top students are no longer going to the top of V10, since KE and LW are hiring so much more students, the overall GPA range gets diluted just because they need more bodies. So its stupid to look at an average GPA gatekeeper, when you need to be looking at the raw number of students at the top% at each firm. From the perspective of "how easy it is to get in" - sure but that is not what "old prestige" is about. This metric also would not account for laterals - which have increased and dominated for the past few years. Because people emphasize culture more, people at top% at top schools who are at upper V5 (or TLS' consensus of what upper V5 is) flocking over to KE or LW. That is simply the object truth.
Everyone knows that grades =/= success. Larger shops like LW and KE are unique because even if their standards are lower in compared to the top V10 simply because they need more people, as purely raw number basis as opposed to % basis as discussed in the paragraph above, by having the fiscal capability to function as such a large shop and not be like DLA Piper, Norton Rose and etc., they have the opportunity to not only capture people who didn't go to the best schools or got the best grades, but ended being an amazing fucking lawyer. I mean many of the old-school successful partners at V5, even at Wachtell (who had a bunch of NYU lawyers because old-white shoe discriminated against jewish people), did not come from the top schools. By being a larger shop, you don't lose out on the opportunity cost of possibly discovering talent that V5's won't even take a look at. I think we can also agree that success can be captured by intrinsic skills, such as social skills - I don't think its unreasonable to conclude that overall, people at the very top of the classes, especially for top schools, are less sociable and more awkward. Tying things back into culture, there's a greater emphasis in the market for culture now - even client side. Big law firms generally self-select as to who rises at the very top. Bigger firms who are not as selective but at the same time maintain quality like KE and LW are able to, more than likely than not, to capture to find/mold successful lawyers that were gatekept because of grades, that have skills sets on par with upper V5, plus be sociable and pleasant to be around. Again, you can take a look at any V5, including Wachtell, and see many of their upper echelons did not come from top schools. It is funny now, these ultra selective firms now won't even look at a school even if you were at the top10 of your class, despite the fact that they have very successful lawyers who came from schools they would even bat an eye on nowadays.
TL;DR (1) the metric for measuring prestige has shifted to simply not represent grade-selectiveness at entry anymore, and has shifted towards including factors like culture (both from clients and students), the ability to not thinly spread your lawyers amongst clients, and the very business structure of the firm. (2) This is not withstanding the fact that looking at grade-selectiveness at entry is simply a stupid way to look at prestige in the first place. (a) It is not weight-adjusted to the fact that KE and LW have WAY more lawyers (with law-school classes not changing, and even decreasing) in order to fill their demand, when instead you should be looking at the raw number of top% students at each school at each law firm and compare those raw numbers relative to the other firms. (b) It does not account for the fact that turn-over is greater than ever, with an ever increase number of top% students who were at very grade selective firms almost all hoping over to firms like LW in LA or other shops for a variety of reasons, including culture or taking things "more chill". (c) It does not account for the fact that mega firms like KE and LW have so much money that they're stealing practice-heads and top lawyers at grade sensitive firms to the point where Cravath had to fundamentally change their pay-structure and rethink their business strategy (i.e. opening firm in DC). (d) it does not account for the fact that by not being grade sensitive, you do not lose out on the opportunity cost of capturing talent that was not apparent at law school, whether it is just being very good at your job or having soft-skill sets, that is more than likely than not to exist at the lower% vs. the top% (since top% more likely to have more socially awkward people), all of which is ironic when you have firms that don't even "look at a school" despite how well you do and gatekeep you and have many of their top partners coming at these gate-keeping firms coming from schools on par with those "auto-reject schools). (e) Lastly, there is a greater emphasize than ever on culture, which I argue continues to color the definition of prestige more and more with each passing generation (with are current trajectory in societal values). For all these reasons, it makes sense why LW and KE are ranked so highly at V10. And it also the reason why LW is ranked higher than KE, which is culture. When general consensus across the board, whether its within the form or outside the firm (even despite not working a day in there) or in law schools agree that LW is the place you want to be if you want culture without sacrificing too much with respect to "prestige" and better training. Where on the opposite-end, it is clear as day what the culture is like at KE - even if we should not generalize, people just view KE as a toxic workplace, at least much more likely than all the other V10 firms.
LW, being a firm that is (1) so large and not suffer in quality (like Norton Rose, Dentons & DLA), (2) able to capture top partners of their respective practice areas from different firms, including TLS' real V5, (3) is one of the, if not the most, selected place to go to for lawyers who were at TLS' real V5/top% students at top schools who want to lateral because of great culture without sacrificing too much on "highest levels of quality of training", (4) market consensus to be a place with the best culture for a top ranked firm, increasingly capturing top% students at top schools who increasingly trend on placing a greater emphasis on culture, (4) capturing market share with respect the large institutional clients and (5) most importantly, as this is the basis for people on TLS arguing to rank LW lower, yes LW's NY office is not viewed as a peer and is well justified - but we should be looking at the trajectory of the firm, and inherent structure of how big law firms are shifting, and general movement and capturing of talent, whether it is at the student, associate or partner level. When we rank players in sports, newly-drafted/1-2 yrs in players are ranked highly or viewed to be "one of the best" despite just starting... they may not hit the ground running but people can recognize that this person will make it big. For all the reasons above, LW should be viewed that way, and how they should be viewed in the context of V10 rankings, that they are able to do so many things that other firms simply cannot or have not been having any success doing. Their New York office is a literally baby compared to old-white shoe firms, we need to view them like a top upcoming NBA talent, who may lack experience, but everyone can see that this player has so much potential and there's a rational basis of why LW climbed the ranks throughout the years. Just as we view newly drafted players, we should continue to view them highly until their drop off or everything was actually a fluke.
I personally think that at the current stage they should be ranked somewhere at #5-7 and learning more at 7. I think being ranked at #5 is simply just accounting for the reasons discussed above.
As for Kirkland, I think they are going to spiral out of control - while they have all the things above that LW has, they lack the culture, which arguably is the glue in tying all the pieces together. It is a trickle-down problem and it cannot be solved without substantially changing the structure of the place. This is what happens when you hire too many people without accounting for culture. When you start with partners who people don't like working with each other or with students, and the partners influence hiring, it dictates what the culture is going to be like. There's a huge systemic risk - it takes one bad even to blow up the entire thing (megafirm structure) and for partners to start jumping ship because for KE, arguably what ties the new partners that they stole and the respective practice groups that are built around them, is purely money. Also, Didn't Vault rankings come out prior to Paul Clement and Erin Murphy leaving? The media is still blasting KE - I would expect KE to continue to go down.
Lastly, it is important to keep in mind that anytime rankings come up, the people that care about posting and commenting on these threads have a selective-bias for people who care about rankings (obviously this includes myself). I think its reasonable that people shitting on LW or KE is not V20 but probably people at V1-15 or law students that care a bit too much about rankings. I don't think many, if at all, any Wachtell lawyers are on here commenting. If anything, its going to be people at firms ranked lower than LW or KE and is TLS'-consensus viewed to be higher, or people who work at a toxic work place who has nothing to tie to but the prestiege.
