NYC Lit Paul Weiss, Gibson or WilmerHale
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 9:27 am
PW, GDC Wilmer?
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My impression is that Wilmer is more selective and less of a sweatshop/factory for junior associates.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:10 pmthere are ~40 Wilmer associates in the NY office across all practice groups (corporate, lit, etc). lit is ~30 of that.
not sure why you'd consider Wilmer when you're looking at Gibson and PW, which are top NY BigLaw lit practices
I haven't worked there so I can't speak to the hours.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:21 pmMy impression is that Wilmer is more selective and less of a sweatshop/factory for junior associates.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:10 pmthere are ~40 Wilmer associates in the NY office across all practice groups (corporate, lit, etc). lit is ~30 of that.
not sure why you'd consider Wilmer when you're looking at Gibson and PW, which are top NY BigLaw lit practices
ah got it, separate filter on websiteAnonymous User wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 8:14 pmAssociates become Senior Associates very quickly at Wilmer. You'll see that MANY senior associates clerked at COA.
PW and GD are big offices where they take on very document intensive cases and investigations in which junior associates spend hours reviewing documents, drafting internal emails for seniors, and the like. If you want to be able to do more sophisticated analytical things like draft briefs as a junior, then perhaps Wilmer is better. But there's no guarantee anywhere. So much of whether you get good work as a junior is blind luck.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 10:18 pmSorry to hijack. Is there any difference in how substantive the work they will give you is or how interesting it will be ?
Lol, OP please disregard this advice.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 8:54 pmAll three are solid firms, but in my (limited) experience, Wilmer will probably have the least substantive work of the three--I was at a firm before (not one of these three) who used to say Wilmer associates did the work our associates could've done in high school. This was at least sort of true--on the matters we were co-counsel for, they did a lot of the grunt work on trials and investigations while we were doing the more intense and complicated stuff. PW has a fantastic reputation in trial work and a lot of really good lawyers, so definitely a respectable work if you want to do trials. Gibson is the easy choice, though, if you care about quality of work and developing fast. It takes forever to make partner but the free market system means you can work on pretty much anything you want anytime you want, so if you don't want to do discovery or whatever you...like...just don't do it. Plus their appellate practice (if you can hack it there) is the best.
OP, I am not so sure you should disregard this advice. Search of Chambers or even the firm Wikipedia pages basically aligns with this. Gibson is an absolute powerhouse in lit, especially appellate, and the free market system makes it so you can do pretty much whatever you want (including in any of Gibson's offices regardless of where you sit)--which is definitely not true at a firm where someone is staffing you onto cases and determining how much and what work you will do. I can get behind a lot of reasons for putting Wilmer or PW above Gibson, but they're going to have to be more specific based on what you want to do. If your only concern is quality/substance of lit work, go Gibson.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 10:51 amLol, OP please disregard this advice.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 8:54 pmAll three are solid firms, but in my (limited) experience, Wilmer will probably have the least substantive work of the three--I was at a firm before (not one of these three) who used to say Wilmer associates did the work our associates could've done in high school. This was at least sort of true--on the matters we were co-counsel for, they did a lot of the grunt work on trials and investigations while we were doing the more intense and complicated stuff. PW has a fantastic reputation in trial work and a lot of really good lawyers, so definitely a respectable work if you want to do trials. Gibson is the easy choice, though, if you care about quality of work and developing fast. It takes forever to make partner but the free market system means you can work on pretty much anything you want anytime you want, so if you don't want to do discovery or whatever you...like...just don't do it. Plus their appellate practice (if you can hack it there) is the best.