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Assuming both are on the Cravath/Milbank scale (equal pay), what’s the day-to-day difference between being an associate doing litigation work at a V10 firm vs a V100 firm?

Sure, PPEP/PPP are different — but what’s the difference in the day-to-day junior or midlevel associate experience?

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 13, 2025 7:58 am

Assuming both are on the Cravath/Milbank scale (equal pay), what’s the day-to-day difference between being an associate doing litigation work at a V10 firm vs a V100 firm?

Sure, PPEP/PPP are different — but what’s the difference in the day-to-day junior or midlevel associate experience?

More or less doc review. More matters vs less higher value matters. Less substantive opportunities.

I started out at a firm that was V-15 at the time and then lateralled to a firm that was around V-65.

This was 2016-2019 range.

The V-15 had a more national practice, bigger cases, and a stronger national brand when I looked to lateral. Downside was lots of doc review and limited responsibility.

The V-65ish was headquartered in the city I was working in, which was nice, and took on much smaller cases (think state court cases worth under $10 mn), but also had some huge cases. I thought the experience I gained was more useful from this firm. But when I eventually looked to lateral, I did notice, unfortunately, that my application seemed less attractive than from my previous firm, even though I was a 4-5 year in my prime lateral years (COVID may have exacerbated this, as I left before the 2021-22 hiring boom).

TL;DR, I thought the lower-ranked firm had better litigators, but the higher-ranked firm had more sophisticated work and better exits. YMMV.

AUSA3B wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 21, 2025 10:36 am

I started out at a firm that was V-15 at the time and then lateralled to a firm that was around V-65.

This was 2016-2019 range.

The V-15 had a more national practice, bigger cases, and a stronger national brand when I looked to lateral. Downside was lots of doc review and limited responsibility.

The V-65ish was headquartered in the city I was working in, which was nice, and took on much smaller cases (think state court cases worth under $10 mn), but also had some huge cases. I thought the experience I gained was more useful from this firm. But when I eventually looked to lateral, I did notice, unfortunately, that my application seemed less attractive than from my previous firm, even though I was a 4-5 year in my prime lateral years (COVID may have exacerbated this, as I left before the 2021-22 hiring boom).

TL;DR, I thought the lower-ranked firm had better litigators, but the higher-ranked firm had more sophisticated work and better exits. YMMV.

Which firm would’ve been better for lifestyle and partnership prospects?

It's a bit tough to say. The V-15 was an equity-only model whereas the V-65 has NEP model.

My sense was that the V-65 was much more straightforward--though not easy, of course. Basically, work hard in a practice area, make the right partner connections, and after enough time (no up or out, so sometimes people would get promoted around year 15) make NEP, and hope to build a business.

My other sense is that it's easier (though difficult) to build a business with regional corporate clients vs. the V-15, which had a lot of institutional clients. The flipside to that is the V-15 seemed to have more service partners.

I think it's also worth re-emphasizing that this is all for litigation. My understanding is that the transactional work at the V-65 is with much smaller companies.

I work in government now and was fairly junior at both firms so I'm probably not the best source for this stuff. That's why I'm being a bit impressionistic.

But overall, I don't have too many great things to say about the V-15 other than it looks great on a resume. The V-15 was much more opaque about professional development, skills development, and business development.

In a perfect world, I'd want to start off in a law firm that 1. offered a reasonable amount of transparency; 2. had good connections in my desired market; and 3. the je ne sais quoi of chemistry/personalities (which the summers can give you a flavor of, but probably not entirely so).