Top Law Schools

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Usually if you liked one, you probably hated the other, so it's weird to see these as the firms you're deciding between. I will try to keep this neutral, though.

1) This i choice is really a "personality of the firm" issue more than anything, in my opinion. At either firm, the associates you meet as a summer will, in many cases, be gone before you even start working, so don't base your decision on individual people you met at interviews. Hell, some of them may have quit since you interviewed. But the culture is easy to identify and fairly stable.
2) The partnership prospects are essentially 0 anywhere you go, and since basically all associates will switch firms once or twice if they're trying to make partner, this shouldn't really be part of your consideration.
3) the "global reach" issue is not just about where you want to go, but how spread out the firm's resources are. With a smaller (but still big) firm, you'll know more of the partners and more about the work going on in the firm. With a bigger firm (Latham) you'll have more people in the same class year as you, so you will have a bigger built-in social net at work.


I've listed some other considerations below.

- Irell
* pays (substantially) more, generally beats the market
* theoretically lower hours threshold for bonus
* hasn't laid people off, and probably won't
* has all of its operations locally based, so all the top partners are within an hour of each other
* nerdy but fun culture
* nearly all lit, in mostly patent, securities, and (recently) white collar areas
* in West LA (Century City)

- Latham
* pays less
* broader range of practice areas firm-wide, though I can't speak it it's LA offices specifically
* theoretically an "LA" firm but is really a NYC firm with it's biggest office and most of its operations in NY
* mega-firm has more resources available to you, but then you get more bitchwork as a result
* corporate work is starting to come back, so perhaps Latham's layoff extravaganza will allow the firm to recover with the economy
* fratty culture
* in Downtown LA

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FWIW, according to my schools career services, of the people who get offers at both Latham and Irell, about 85% choose Irell (and that was before this economy with Latham first years getting "Lathamed" --LinkRemoved--). I think the only logical way you can choose Latham is if you want corporate work and don't mind the risk that you could be Lathamed in your first 4 months of working there.

I think Irell is pretty much a no-brainier- especially in light of Latham's recent firing practices.

I agree with nealric.

FWIW, according to my schools career services, of the people who get offers at both...

How'd you get this data? How'd you find out it was available? I'm asking because I'm curious about whether my school's career services has data like that, and whether I'd have heard of it if they did.

Irell and it's not even close.