PW NY or DPW NY Forum

[Anonymous User]

Having a hard time choosing between the two. I am interested in litigation and antitrust. Seems like Paul, Weiss is stronger in litigation but I am interested in DPW because of culture/fit.

[Anonymous User]

DPW is just as strong for litigation and has equally good exit options. Also has a better culture — no yellers.

[Anonymous User]

I think there is some misnomer that Paul, Weiss is super elite for litigation. Back in the day that may have been the case, but their corporate department has grown significantly since 2020 and now comprises most of their work. Davis Polk is also heavily corporate, but they are very much peer firms. I would give a slight edge to Paul, Weiss for appellate work but the DC appellate shop is very tough to get into without a COA clerkship.

I would also ensure that Paul, Weiss will let you do corporate. They are much laxer in their hiring standards for students who state they want to do corporate work, and are much pickier for aspiring litigators. Also, I know several people who wanted litigation but were placed in corporate by Paul, Weiss because that is where the bodies were needed.

[Anonymous User]

What's DPW's antitrust practice like? Don't really hear much about it. Do they do antitrust litigation, or mostly just the merger review/analysis stuff?

[Anonymous User]

It's pretty robust. They do both civil and criminal antitrust trial work -- it's a lot, lot more than supporting the corporate department.

[Anonymous User]

What's DPW's antitrust practice like? Don't really hear much about it. Do they do antitrust litigation, or mostly just the merger review/analysis stuff?

DPW antitrust doesn’t have the best rep within the litigation department. Some difficult personalities in that group.

[Anonymous User]

Oh, so we know about Art and his rep here at TLS...

[Anonymous User]

Oh, so we know about Art and his rep here at TLS...

Wait is Art bad lol. I was a summer at DPW a few years ago and he was so nice to us summers haha.

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

PW has been actively recruiting litigation associates across all class years which is notable bc the lateral market is generally slow.

[Bramwell]

I’d vote PW solely on basis of DPW’s 4 day/week in office policy.

[Anonymous User]

PW also provides lunch. DPW lit is extremely busy and is hiring laterals too.

[Anonymous User]

Oh, so we know about Art and his rep here at TLS...

Wait is Art bad lol. I was a summer at DPW a few years ago and he was so nice to us summers haha.

Mercurial is a fair description, I think.

[Anonymous User]

What's DPW's antitrust practice like? Don't really hear much about it. Do they do antitrust litigation, or mostly just the merger review/analysis stuff?

DPW antitrust doesn’t have the best rep within the litigation department. Some difficult personalities in that group.

Cosigning this take as a former DPW associate.

[Anonymous User]

I don’t know much about DPW but I lateraled out of PW as a junior. This was fairly recently, and I still have friends who are there.

PW is a difficult place to work, both for lit and corporate. A friend of mine in lit billed close to 2800 hours his first year. They are desperately hiring laterals in all groups (unlike most firms in this market) because the attrition is awful - while I was there, there were multiple departure memos every week. Part of the lit attrition is that many juniors leave for clerkships (the previous poster is right that PW tends to hire law review types for litigation, and those people self-select into clerkships), but PW generally has a bad attrition problem because the the culture is not good. They also staff very leanly for the type of work they do, which means that associates are just overworked as a rule.

I am now at a different firm and it’s a completely different experience. It’s still biglaw, but the culture is better by orders of magnitude. I will say that part of it is just V10 culture by nature of the high-stakes work they do and the clients they have. I don’t know that DPW is materially better in that respect.

[Anonymous User]

I don’t know much about DPW but I lateraled out of PW as a junior. This was fairly recently, and I still have friends who are there.

PW is a difficult place to work, both for lit and corporate. A friend of mine in lit billed close to 2800 hours his first year. They are desperately hiring laterals in all groups (unlike most firms in this market) because the attrition is awful - while I was there, there were multiple departure memos every week. Part of the lit attrition is that many juniors leave for clerkships (the previous poster is right that PW tends to hire law review types for litigation, and those people self-select into clerkships), but PW generally has a bad attrition problem because the the culture is not good. They also staff very leanly for the type of work they do, which means that associates are just overworked as a rule.

I am now at a different firm and it’s a completely different experience. It’s still biglaw, but the culture is better by orders of magnitude. I will say that part of it is just V10 culture by nature of the high-stakes work they do and the clients they have. I don’t know that DPW is materially better in that respect.

Can you be a bit more specific (to the extent reasonable) rather than just very high level generalizations about how or why or in what way the culture is bad/they have a bad attrition problem?

[Anonymous User]

I don’t know much about DPW but I lateraled out of PW as a junior. This was fairly recently, and I still have friends who are there.

PW is a difficult place to work, both for lit and corporate. A friend of mine in lit billed close to 2800 hours his first year. They are desperately hiring laterals in all groups (unlike most firms in this market) because the attrition is awful - while I was there, there were multiple departure memos every week. Part of the lit attrition is that many juniors leave for clerkships (the previous poster is right that PW tends to hire law review types for litigation, and those people self-select into clerkships), but PW generally has a bad attrition problem because the the culture is not good. They also staff very leanly for the type of work they do, which means that associates are just overworked as a rule.

I am now at a different firm and it’s a completely different experience. It’s still biglaw, but the culture is better by orders of magnitude. I will say that part of it is just V10 culture by nature of the high-stakes work they do and the clients they have. I don’t know that DPW is materially better in that respect.

Can you be a bit more specific (to the extent reasonable) rather than just very high level generalizations about how or why or in what way the culture is bad/they have a bad attrition problem?

These are a few issues that, in my experience, cause the bad culture and heavy attrition. Granted, as I said earlier, some of this might be stuff that happens at other firms and/or is more of a V10 problem than a PW problem. But as far as I have seen, PW has worse attrition at the associate level than other V10s (possibly with the exceptions of Kirkland and Simpson, which I have also heard horrible stuff about).

- The firm takes on more business than it has the capability to staff appropriately. This leads to teams and entire groups being underwater and tremendous pressure on associates, all the time. Rather than having busy periods and down periods, people are just busy all the time. This is true of both corporate and litigation.
- Juniors have centralized staffing, and the (corporate, I cannot personally speak to litigation) staffers engage in CYA at the expense of associates, which means that they force juniors to take assignments even when their plates are totally full. The only way you get out of something is if you're literally not sleeping. This happens at the midlevel level too.
- Partners (and most senior associates, with the exception of a few really good ones) do not have the time or inclination to teach because they're so busy. They are largely unapproachable. There's one in the group I used to work in who literally does not speak to junior associates or copy them into team emails as a rule, and this isn't unique. There's a night and day difference between this and my current firm, where partners go out of their way to teach you stuff, sit with you, make sure you know what you're doing, etc.
- There is a culture of doing everything ASAP, all the time. Obviously sometimes fire drills are inevitable and unavoidable, but the firm culture makes you feel like everything is like that all the time. My current firm is not like this and it's a tangible difference. I'm not a pure corporate associate anymore, so that accounts for some of it, but my corporate friends have confirmed this. I regularly worked/was on call until midnight at PW, and it is extremely rare that I do that now. When I get an email after 7 PM-ish, partners/senior associates generally indicate that it can be done in the morning unless it's an extremely urgent matter.
- The firm has spent years cultivating its relationship with Apollo, which means that Apollo is a priority client, and they are not easy or particularly pleasant to work for.
- The firm has a lot (a majority?) of lateral partners, who were poached from other firms (such as Kirkland) because they are enormous rainmakers. These people are generally not pleasant to work for if you're an associate, both personality-wise and because their deals are hellish.

[Anonymous User]

thanks, this is very helpful. I'm at K&E, this sounds like pretty much the same culture/mentality -- partner profits come at the expense of associates' well-being/mental health.

[Anonymous User]

A few unsolicited thoughts:

- The firm takes on more business than it has the capability to staff appropriately. This leads to teams and entire groups being underwater and tremendous pressure on associates, all the time. Rather than having busy periods and down periods, people are just busy all the time. This is true of both corporate and litigation.

This is standard at a lot of biglaw firms. I experience this at my V25 and I've heard people even at midsize law firms who say the same, albeit with slightly lower hours threshold. Every highly profitable firm will have this issue because partners never turn down work and ever growing profit margins demand high productivity.

- Juniors have centralized staffing, and the (corporate, I cannot personally speak to litigation) staffers engage in CYA at the expense of associates, which means that they force juniors to take assignments even when their plates are totally full. The only way you get out of something is if you're literally not sleeping. This happens at the midlevel level too.

Workload coordinators have the worst job on the planet because they can't make everyone (anyone?) happy. I happen to think it's better than having to tell a partner no to their face, but if the coordinator doesn't listen then I agree this is pretty shitty. I have to push back on my coordinator at my V25 (which took time to get the balls to do), but unlike what you're reporting it works fine for me.

- Partners (and most senior associates, with the exception of a few really good ones) do not have the time or inclination to teach because they're so busy. They are largely unapproachable. There's one in the group I used to work in who literally does not speak to junior associates or copy them into team emails as a rule, and this isn't unique. There's a night and day difference between this and my current firm, where partners go out of their way to teach you stuff, sit with you, make sure you know what you're doing, etc.

This sounds toxic (though you shouldn't be knocking on a partner's door with associate level questions). I'm not sure other V10s would be any better, though.

- There is a culture of doing everything ASAP, all the time. Obviously sometimes fire drills are inevitable and unavoidable, but the firm culture makes you feel like everything is like that all the time. My current firm is not like this and it's a tangible difference. I'm not a pure corporate associate anymore, so that accounts for some of it, but my corporate friends have confirmed this. I regularly worked/was on call until midnight at PW, and it is extremely rare that I do that now. When I get an email after 7 PM-ish, partners/senior associates generally indicate that it can be done in the morning unless it's an extremely urgent matter.

Same as above, shitty but probably common among peer firms.

- The firm has spent years cultivating its relationship with Apollo, which means that Apollo is a priority client, and they are not easy or particularly pleasant to work for.
- The firm has a lot (a majority?) of lateral partners, who were poached from other firms (such as Kirkland) because they are enormous rainmakers. These people are generally not pleasant to work for if you're an associate, both personality-wise and because their deals are hellish.

Sound unique to PW, though maybe applicable to KE as well, which does a lot of lateral hiring. FWIW most of the lateral partners at my firm are great.

[Anonymous User]

Current PW corp mid.

Juniors have centralized staffing, and the (corporate, I cannot personally speak to litigation) staffers engage in CYA at the expense of associates, which means that they force juniors to take assignments even when their plates are totally full. The only way you get out of something is if you're literally not sleeping. This happens at the midlevel level too.

You can, in fact, say no to the staffers. Usually after they ask me twice they go away.

Partners (and most senior associates, with the exception of a few really good ones) do not have the time or inclination to teach because they're so busy. They are largely unapproachable. There's one in the group I used to work in who literally does not speak to junior associates or copy them into team emails as a rule, and this isn't unique. There's a night and day difference between this and my current firm, where partners go out of their way to teach you stuff, sit with you, make sure you know what you're doing, etc.

This is not at all the case in my experience. It's true that, like, the super-senior partner on the deal probably is just emailing the junior partner and the senior associate. But I have felt like people really try to develop me so I can do more stuff and be more helpful. I've found almost everyone reasonably "approachable."

There is a culture of doing everything ASAP, all the time. Obviously sometimes fire drills are inevitable and unavoidable, but the firm culture makes you feel like everything is like that all the time. My current firm is not like this and it's a tangible difference. I'm not a pure corporate associate anymore, so that accounts for some of it, but my corporate friends have confirmed this. I regularly worked/was on call until midnight at PW, and it is extremely rare that I do that now. When I get an email after 7 PM-ish, partners/senior associates generally indicate that it can be done in the morning unless it's an extremely urgent matter.

Unless I'm on a deal actively closing, I'm not "on call" for new stuff (for that night, etc) past 8, and - again, unless closing is very soon, I'm usually putting it off to the next day. I definitely have late nights, not claiming otherwise, but they've been pretty predictable, and rarely have been for bullshit reasons.

The firm has spent years cultivating its relationship with Apollo, which means that Apollo is a priority client, and they are not easy or particularly pleasant to work for.

I get the sense that they are no more or less demanding than peer PE shops (to be clear, pretty demanding); if you want to avoid Apollo work entirely that's definitely possible at PW.

The firm has a lot (a majority?) of lateral partners, who were poached from other firms (such as Kirkland) because they are enormous rainmakers. These people are generally not pleasant to work for if you're an associate, both personality-wise and because their deals are hellish.

In my experience, whether I like someone or not doesn't track with lateral status. Some are great, most are fine, a few are actively bad - I think about the same for PW internal partners.

[Anonymous User]

PW has the stronger antitrust group, though DPW is solid as well.

- mid-level at Band 1 antitrust shop

[Anonymous User]

I don’t know much about DPW but I lateraled out of PW as a junior. This was fairly recently, and I still have friends who are there.

PW is a difficult place to work, both for lit and corporate. A friend of mine in lit billed close to 2800 hours his first year. They are desperately hiring laterals in all groups (unlike most firms in this market) because the attrition is awful - while I was there, there were multiple departure memos every week. Part of the lit attrition is that many juniors leave for clerkships (the previous poster is right that PW tends to hire law review types for litigation, and those people self-select into clerkships), but PW generally has a bad attrition problem because the the culture is not good. They also staff very leanly for the type of work they do, which means that associates are just overworked as a rule.

I am now at a different firm and it’s a completely different experience. It’s still biglaw, but the culture is better by orders of magnitude. I will say that part of it is just V10 culture by nature of the high-stakes work they do and the clients they have. I don’t know that DPW is materially better in that respect.

Can you be a bit more specific (to the extent reasonable) rather than just very high level generalizations about how or why or in what way the culture is bad/they have a bad attrition problem?

These are a few issues that, in my experience, cause the bad culture and heavy attrition. Granted, as I said earlier, some of this might be stuff that happens at other firms and/or is more of a V10 problem than a PW problem. But as far as I have seen, PW has worse attrition at the associate level than other V10s (possibly with the exceptions of Kirkland and Simpson, which I have also heard horrible stuff about).

- The firm takes on more business than it has the capability to staff appropriately. This leads to teams and entire groups being underwater and tremendous pressure on associates, all the time. Rather than having busy periods and down periods, people are just busy all the time. This is true of both corporate and litigation.
- Juniors have centralized staffing, and the (corporate, I cannot personally speak to litigation) staffers engage in CYA at the expense of associates, which means that they force juniors to take assignments even when their plates are totally full. The only way you get out of something is if you're literally not sleeping. This happens at the midlevel level too.
- Partners (and most senior associates, with the exception of a few really good ones) do not have the time or inclination to teach because they're so busy. They are largely unapproachable. There's one in the group I used to work in who literally does not speak to junior associates or copy them into team emails as a rule, and this isn't unique. There's a night and day difference between this and my current firm, where partners go out of their way to teach you stuff, sit with you, make sure you know what you're doing, etc.
- There is a culture of doing everything ASAP, all the time. Obviously sometimes fire drills are inevitable and unavoidable, but the firm culture makes you feel like everything is like that all the time. My current firm is not like this and it's a tangible difference. I'm not a pure corporate associate anymore, so that accounts for some of it, but my corporate friends have confirmed this. I regularly worked/was on call until midnight at PW, and it is extremely rare that I do that now. When I get an email after 7 PM-ish, partners/senior associates generally indicate that it can be done in the morning unless it's an extremely urgent matter.
- The firm has spent years cultivating its relationship with Apollo, which means that Apollo is a priority client, and they are not easy or particularly pleasant to work for.
- The firm has a lot (a majority?) of lateral partners, who were poached from other firms (such as Kirkland) because they are enormous rainmakers. These people are generally not pleasant to work for if you're an associate, both personality-wise and because their deals are hellish.

Can you expand on why deals for rainmakers are hellish? Are they more complex?

[Anonymous User]

Both are pretty much the same firms. Similar size, strong in litigation and transaction, similar perks, similar reputation, both somewhat overrated. Flip a coin

[Anonymous User]

Bumping this. What would you pick if you were a shy person (so not as good networking) and interested in general litigation. DPW seems to have a better culture from what I can tell on the outside. However, chambers says Paul Weiss is band 1 and DPW is band 2, but maybe that is close enough to be indistinguishable. It also seems like the litigation department at Paul Weiss may be more powerful and less secondary to corporate then at Davis Polk?

Also to the extent it matters coming in after a clerkship, so I am wondering if either firm values clerkships more.