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Anyone have insight into their NY office? Can’t find much info about them on forums. Very interested because they are so international, interested in lateraling abroad some day.

Can’t offer any insight on their NYC office, but I’ve worked with their European (London, Paris, Madrid) offices as a client on several occasions and had good experiences. If I had to guess, it’s probably not getting top tier M&A work, but very good international arbitration work.

Very good at energy and projects--including in Asia.

nealric wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:20 am

Can’t offer any insight on their NYC office, but I’ve worked with their European (London, Paris, Madrid) offices as a client on several occasions and had good experiences. If I had to guess, it’s probably not getting top tier M&A work, but very good international arbitration work.

At my V10, doing M&A, we had two deals I can think of where the client had used HSF for earlier deals when they had been smaller companies (in London), so they had drafted a lot of the existing corporate agreements. When the sophistication of the counterparty and the size of the transaction were big enough, the client moved to a "big name" firm to handle it. Nothing against HSF at all, but I've never actually seen them on a M&A deal.

hamfan1614 wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 11, 2022 2:53 pm

Anyone have insight into their NY office? Can’t find much info about them on forums. Very interested because they are so international, interested in lateraling abroad some day.

Where, exactly, do you want to lateral abroad to? HSF is strong in some locations and weaker in others.

Y

Ideally would like to lateral somewhere in Asia.

Take a look at some of the comments in this forum - albeit about Freshfields, but the same arguments apply when looking to work in the NY satellite office of a UK-based firm.

safepairofhands wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 15, 2022 1:35 pm

Take a look at some of the comments in this forum - albeit about Freshfields, but the same arguments apply when looking to work in the NY satellite office of a UK-based firm.

What are those arguments? What are the negatives of working in an NY satellite of a UK firm? I don't care much about prestige in the States- are exit opportunities significantly worse or something?

Check out the comments on Freshfields on this forum: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=310795&p=10487590#p10487590

Specifically the point about the NY office of one of these Magic Circle firms generally being small. That means you are not cutting your teeth on some of the better work. YMMV but it also may mean your boss in NY is a bit of a nobody when it comes to the firm's global Partnership and is not able to pull as many strings / make things happen in terms of moving you laterally to another office when you're ready for it.

As long as you start at one of the top firms in your market for your practice group, top firms in other markets should be able to recognize that(assuming your experience/practice group translates to the new market).

Final thought - if looking for truly international firms that are strong in both NY and Asia, a firm like White & Case deserves as much attention as a Magic Circle or Herbert Smith Freehills type firm in my opinion.