NYC V5 Corporate Associate (Second Year) Taking Questions Forum

[minnbills]

why do you want to leave NY?

[Anonymous User]

OP here.

What happens if you fail the NY bar exam the first time? Any anecdotes? I know that there are older threads on here of people saying you generally get a second shot but curious if that's true for V5 firms? I know you only work at one of them and can't speak for them all (unless you know stories from friends at other places), but any recent info/insights would be helpful.

At my firm, it's not a problem at all if you fail once. I think it's that way for pretty much every firm, at least all the ones that I'm aware of. That said, if you fail, you might be expected to use your vacation time the month prior to the February bar to study (though that's based on secondhand info). If you fail twice in a row, you might have some issues (though I haven't seen that happen to anyone here).

In the event you don't pass, you'll blend right in with the people who did pass but don't get their bar application completed until late (due to waiting on affidavits) and have "Not Admitted" in their email signature until late the next year anyway. No client's gonna scrutinize your email signature and assume you failed.

I write all this as someone who was very convinced I had a real chance of failing the bar and ended up doing fine.

why do you want to leave NY?

I like it here, it's just not where I want to live long-term. It's more the thought of raising kids here that I'm averse to. I'll miss the variety of potential corporate legal jobs that New York has to offer, though.

[Anonymous User]

Bumping this.

A big motivation of mine for creating this thread was to help people through the OCI recruiting process, so feel free to ask away there, too (on top of anything about firm life generally).

[NoBladesNoBows]

Bumping this.

A big motivation of mine for creating this thread was to help people through the OCI recruiting process, so feel free to ask away there, too (on top of anything about firm life generally).

Thanks so much for this, I find candid advice from experienced people extremely useful. Do you know of any particularly helpful resources for a junior associate? I know how important it is to establish a good "brand" from day one and how significantly it can affect other peoples' impressions of you, the work you receive in the future, and assumptions (ex. someone who has a good reputation and makes a minor mistake is probably seen as just having been a little overworked, whereas someone with a mediocre reputation will be more likely to be viewed as lazy or intellectually subpar). I'd like to really maximize my effectiveness from day one but find that there's a real dearth of information available to lawyers. For example, you get tons of hits if you google how to be a successful banker or consultant, but very few for corporate lawyer.

This could be corporate specific or more general, just interested in your thoughts.

[Anonymous User]

Bumping this.

A big motivation of mine for creating this thread was to help people through the OCI recruiting process, so feel free to ask away there, too (on top of anything about firm life generally).

Thanks so much for this, I find candid advice from experienced people extremely useful. Do you know of any particularly helpful resources for a junior associate? I know how important it is to establish a good "brand" from day one and how significantly it can affect other peoples' impressions of you, the work you receive in the future, and assumptions (ex. someone who has a good reputation and makes a minor mistake is probably seen as just having been a little overworked, whereas someone with a mediocre reputation will be more likely to be viewed as lazy or intellectually subpar). I'd like to really maximize my effectiveness from day one but find that there's a real dearth of information available to lawyers. For example, you get tons of hits if you google how to be a successful banker or consultant, but very few for corporate lawyer.

This could be corporate specific or more general, just interested in your thoughts.

OP here. Sure thing. Do you know what corporate group you'll be going into yet?

The most important thing as a junior, though, is to just not be dead weight. It's expected that you don't know a lot yet, but as long as you come in willing to work, you'll be good. I don't mean coming in before and leaving after your seniors, not at all, just that if someone asks you to do something you get it done in the time allotted. People are happy to accommodate non-work needs as long as you communicate them (looking at you, first year who goes to the gym for 2 hours with five things on their plate, due the next day, without telling me). Just communicate your other needs. If you come across something you don't know in a document, that's totally fine, but when you ask me, I should be able to tell that you've at least thought about it first ("unsure what to put here but i'm thinking _____, based on _____" vs. "here are five things I don't know, fill them in for me").

The other part of being a good junior (and the most obvious thing you can do) is not make careless mistakes. Not making careless mistakes is honestly a learnable skill. If you draft a small document, make sure all your capitalized terms are defined. Rely on precedent where available, but make sure everything's updated (no stray references to 2016, etc.).

As far as actually learning the nuts and bolts of your practice group, there's no real fix for Cap Markets except doing it (same goes for the others, largely). M&A is less technical, but after you start, maybe ask a second year to explain how a merger agreement works briefly. Finance is hard, but there's this LSTA book on credit agreements that your firm may be able to provide you free of charge. For funds, open up the basic LP agreement or whatever else, but largely just pay attention to the things people are doing - if you're low on the totem pole in a deal and the senior's busy on some major agreement, try to understand what it is they're doing so that you have context. You don't need to be able to do it yourself, but you should know what it is they're doing and what it generally accomplishes. It's okay that nothing makes sense as long as you keep an open mind and pay attention to everything that's going on.

The only way you can really butcher a first impression is by doing something UNUSUALLY bad. If you turn your phone off after 6 p.m. or for the whole weekend when you already know things are very busy, I (as the senior or midlevel) will probably mention that to other people my year. I won't snitch to a partner, but if one of them works with you next, it's not a good look. Nobody's looking for a genius junior, just someone who communicates and is generally responsible.

[NoBladesNoBows]

Bumping this.

A big motivation of mine for creating this thread was to help people through the OCI recruiting process, so feel free to ask away there, too (on top of anything about firm life generally).

Thanks so much for this, I find candid advice from experienced people extremely useful. Do you know of any particularly helpful resources for a junior associate? I know how important it is to establish a good "brand" from day one and how significantly it can affect other peoples' impressions of you, the work you receive in the future, and assumptions (ex. someone who has a good reputation and makes a minor mistake is probably seen as just having been a little overworked, whereas someone with a mediocre reputation will be more likely to be viewed as lazy or intellectually subpar). I'd like to really maximize my effectiveness from day one but find that there's a real dearth of information available to lawyers. For example, you get tons of hits if you google how to be a successful banker or consultant, but very few for corporate lawyer.

This could be corporate specific or more general, just interested in your thoughts.

OP here. Sure thing. Do you know what corporate group you'll be going into yet?

The most important thing as a junior, though, is to just not be dead weight. It's expected that you don't know a lot yet, but as long as you come in willing to work, you'll be good. I don't mean coming in before and leaving after your seniors, not at all, just that if someone asks you to do something you get it done in the time allotted. People are happy to accommodate non-work needs as long as you communicate them (looking at you, first year who goes to the gym for 2 hours with five things on their plate, due the next day, without telling me). Just communicate your other needs. If you come across something you don't know in a document, that's totally fine, but when you ask me, I should be able to tell that you've at least thought about it first ("unsure what to put here but i'm thinking _____, based on _____" vs. "here are five things I don't know, fill them in for me").

The other part of being a good junior (and the most obvious thing you can do) is not make careless mistakes. Not making careless mistakes is honestly a learnable skill. If you draft a small document, make sure all your capitalized terms are defined. Rely on precedent where available, but make sure everything's updated (no stray references to 2016, etc.).

As far as actually learning the nuts and bolts of your practice group, there's no real fix for Cap Markets except doing it (same goes for the others, largely). M&A is less technical, but after you start, maybe ask a second year to explain how a merger agreement works briefly. Finance is hard, but there's this LSTA book on credit agreements that your firm may be able to provide you free of charge. For funds, open up the basic LP agreement or whatever else, but largely just pay attention to the things people are doing - if you're low on the totem pole in a deal and the senior's busy on some major agreement, try to understand what it is they're doing so that you have context. You don't need to be able to do it yourself, but you should know what it is they're doing and what it generally accomplishes. It's okay that nothing makes sense as long as you keep an open mind and pay attention to everything that's going on.

The only way you can really butcher a first impression is by doing something UNUSUALLY bad. If you turn your phone off after 6 p.m. or for the whole weekend when you already know things are very busy, I (as the senior or midlevel) will probably mention that to other people my year. I won't snitch to a partner, but if one of them works with you next, it's not a good look. Nobody's looking for a genius junior, just someone who communicates and is generally responsible.

Great advice, thanks a lot. I'll be doing primarily M&A with some CapM and LevFin. Clients are mostly PE.

[Anonymous User]

OP.

Great advice, thanks a lot. I'll be doing primarily M&A with some CapM and LevFin. Clients are mostly PE.

You'll do great. Attitude's 90% of being a good junior, and if you so much as care you'll be a good associate.

[Anonymous User]

Have some free time through this weekend so bumping back up.

[4LTsPointingNorth]

When do you decide when it's "safe" to leave the office for the night? Do you check out with everyone you expect you might receive work from or wait for them to leave first? What about during a slow week with no imminent closings?

How helpful/useful are service departments/paras and how much freedom do you have to use them on your matters? Any tips on delegating effectively to them?

[Anonymous User]

Thank you so much for doing this, OP and the other posters who provided helpful insights -- I am currently going into OCI next week and have been reading this thread religiously! I've been looking at the bios of my interviewers and their practices range from M&A/funds/cap markets/derivatives/REITs, etc. My question is, do you advise asking questions specific to their areas if all that I know about corporate work is gathered from the Chambers guide and this post? I figured I'd throw in questions about the firms, too, but just in case I run out of those questions, I want to know what kind of practice-related questions these people would expect a 1L to ask. Thanks again!

[Wadajr]

Hi OP, thanks for doing this. I’m a 0L about to start in the fall at a top 6, and I’m trying to get a good sense of what a lot of the various transactional practices entail. I’ve looked at a lot of V5’s practice area descrirptions, but these tend to be a little vague.

Would you mind breaking the following three practice areas down in terms of the kind of legal issues you end up working on and dealing with for me?

Corporate Governance
M&A
General Corporate

[Anonymous User]

When do you decide when it's "safe" to leave the office for the night? Do you check out with everyone you expect you might receive work from or wait for them to leave first? What about during a slow week with no imminent closings?

How helpful/useful are service departments/paras and how much freedom do you have to use them on your matters? Any tips on delegating effectively to them?

I've never felt pressure to stay in the office past 5:30-6, though I often stay later to the extent I have work and would prefer to be able to print out lots of docs/use double monitors. My desk space is also better at work. If you set up a home office, get an ultrawide monitor or dual screens, and working at home will feel infinitely better (I can count the number of times I've come into the office on a weekend on one hand).

As far as leaving for the night and forgetting about work, if you're a junior, it's good practice to check in with the senior before totally bailing (or just make sure you check your phone later) to the extent people are still expecting work from you. Ex. Calling a senior to say, "I'm relocating home but expect to have X to you by first thing tomorrow morning" or similar. Most of the time all the senior cares about is tasks not slipping back. If you have no urgent tasks and nobody's expecting anything from you urgently, feel free to bail without notice.

Paralegals at my firm have mattered much differently group to group. They weren't useful in M&A minus very select, low-pressure situations. They're very useful in Capital Markets to the extent they help with certain portions of the diligence process among other things (throwing together binders with precedent closing sets and corporate documents, compiling fact back-up, putting together call logs, etc.). They're indispensable in finance work in dealing with collateral. You should feel free to delegate to them, but the buck still stops with you, so you need to review everything. If the paralegal's not good, I wouldn't trust them with any more than is necessary.

Thank you so much for doing this, OP and the other posters who provided helpful insights -- I am currently going into OCI next week and have been reading this thread religiously! I've been looking at the bios of my interviewers and their practices range from M&A/funds/cap markets/derivatives/REITs, etc. My question is, do you advise asking questions specific to their areas if all that I know about corporate work is gathered from the Chambers guide and this post? I figured I'd throw in questions about the firms, too, but just in case I run out of those questions, I want to know what kind of practice-related questions these people would expect a 1L to ask. Thanks again!

No problem, good luck with OCI.

Don't feel the need to ask them specific questions about specific parts of REITs, derivatives, etc. I promise you nobody expects you to know anything about those. It's totally fine to ask how they got into REITs work, though, or what they like about their practice group. I wouldn't bother trying to sound technical.

For what it's worth, I think some of the best questions are just follow-ups on things they've already said. If an interview feels more like a dialogue rather than a Q&A session, that's probably a good thing. You can ask about things they mention in passing earlier ("You mentioned the free-market system briefly earlier. How's that factored into your own experience at the firm?") or just keep the dialogue running on stuff you ask ("How'd you get into REITs work?" "I met a guy in the group who really mentored me early on." --> ask about mentorship.).

Hi OP, thanks for doing this. I’m a 0L about to start in the fall at a top 6, and I’m trying to get a good sense of what a lot of the various transactional practices entail. I’ve looked at a lot of V5’s practice area descrirptions, but these tend to be a little vague.

Would you mind breaking the following three practice areas down in terms of the kind of legal issues you end up working on and dealing with for me?

Corporate Governance
M&A
General Corporate

Hard to do succinctly, though I know it's vague.

M&A is more intuitive than you'd think. Think about it like buying a car from a shady guy on craigslist. To capture a couple stages of this process in brief (and I'm not mentioning parts of the process, but as far as an overview for a 0L, this should give you an idea):

• You don't want to make a price offer until you know exactly what condition the car's in: you've been shown a picture, but you also want pictures from other angles, and you want to make sure that the picture's even of the same car. You therefore do a lot of diligence on the car to make sure that the car's in exactly the shape it's claimed to be. Based on the diligenced condition of the car, you think it's worth $10,000. You reach an agreement to pay $10,000 for the car (i.e., you sign a merger agreement or purchase agreement).
• After you've agreed on price, you still need to pick the car up (i.e., the period after you sign the purchase agreement and before you close the deal... in M&A, there's often a gap because you need to get antitrust/regulatory approvals among other things). You want to make sure the seller doesn't trash the company between when you agreed to pay $10,000 and before you pick it up. As a result, the merger/purchase agreement will contain a lot of covenants obligating the seller to do certain things during this period to keep the company in good shape, not issue a lot of weird stock options to executives (beyond what would normally happen), to keep financial records in a similar way to the way they'd been doing them, etc.
• You meet the seller and exchange the cash for the car (i.e., closing the M&A deal).
• Earlier in the process, before you agreed to pay the seller $10,000, you were worried about finding things a few months after the sale of the car that you couldn't know early in the process - like a hidden brakes problem (no clue but you get the picture haha). Your diligence gave you some comfort, but you reserved the right in the purchase agreement to make some small price adjustments based on the performance of the car after the sale. (This is largely relevant to private M&A, rather than public.)

Obviously there are a lot more places where this gets more complex, due to the scale of companies vs. a car, regulators, etc., but at its core it mostly makes sense. Also throw in people freaking out at every step of the process because (1) they're selling the company they've painstakingly grown, (2) a lot of money's involved, and (3) everyone will make a large sum of money upon the transaction's completion. You can also have auctions where there's more than one bidder. That said, you can see how diligence is really important (diligence and the resulting valuation are two of the biggest things investment bankers will do), as well as having an agreement that allocates risk properly.

For corporate governance, it's largely woven into M&A or Capital Markets work rather than being its own group at most places. But when you're a public company, you have a lot of baggage in terms of public disclosure, and there's always a lot of scrutiny over each of your actions. You want advice. If someone wants to buy your company and you don't want to sell, or if there's a pesky shareholder, you want to know what your options are.

General Corporate is a fairly meaningless badge. I guess it'd just mean that you could do several different types of corporate work. It's a firm by firm thing. Capital Markets and bank loans are two ways a company can finance their activities, though, so that's part of what you might be doing. For example, if you want to buy a company, you're almost always not going to do it with your company's profits alone... you're going to take out some debt to do it.

[Anonymous User]

OP again. Bumping because I'm doing my first set of interviews this season later today. I'll keep this thread alive through the bulk of August (at least through the peak of recruiting).

[Anonymous User]

Thank you OP! How would you handle when there is a generally quieter interviewer who does not really bring up new topics after you answer? Do you keep the awkward silences for a few seconds (see if they want to follow up) or do you initiate the questions? I feel like I did the latter a bit too much today and thinking back, I don't know if it's annoying to them. Any insight would be appreciated!!

[Anonymous User]

Thank you OP! How would you handle when there is a generally quieter interviewer who does not really bring up new topics after you answer? Do you keep the awkward silences for a few seconds (see if they want to follow up) or do you initiate the questions? I feel like I did the latter a bit too much today and thinking back, I don't know if it's annoying to them. Any insight would be appreciated!!

Sometimes it's honestly not your fault, and it's the interviewer who's difficult to talk to. Don't mind a single bad interview.

You can try to fight a dull response, though, by providing answers to questions that leave opportunity for the interview to follow up. If they ask how your 1L summer job was, and you say "Good, it was fun," that's a bad answer. There should be something for them to follow up on. Instead of "Good," you can say, "I really loved working at the SEC here in New York. I was part of a team in the Enforcement Division, and I got involved in a lot of the testimony leading up to a breach of fiduciary duty hearing." The interviewer then has a number of things they might be interested in and can latch on to continue the conversation.

If the interviewer says something in response to one of your answers about their own firm, experience, or whatever, feel free to follow up on that, too. If you hear anything interesting, feel free to ask more about it on the spot.

For the most part, though, just realize that interviewers generally don't want to have a boring interview, either. We'll generally try to keep the conversation going, too, to the extent we can (though again, occasionally you'll just run into a dud).

[Anonymous User]

This might be asking for a lot but having been in a firm for some time, and likely having worked across from or have friends at other firms, could you describe some differences between V5 firms and their peers such as DPW, STB, maybe Cleary? I’m interested in perceived differences as far as variances in M&A and capital markets practices, as well as general culture, hours, and possibly exit opportunities if you feel that some offer better exit opportunities than others. I know this has been covered in various threads but updated info is always helpful and there’s always slightly different opinions on firms.

Also, is the preftige (or exit opportunities) really worth the demanding workload required by these types of firms?

[Anonymous User]

This might be asking for a lot but having been in a firm for some time, and likely having worked across from or have friends at other firms, could you describe some differences between V5 firms and their peers such as DPW, STB, maybe Cleary? I’m interested in perceived differences as far as variances in M&A and capital markets practices, as well as general culture, hours, and possibly exit opportunities if you feel that some offer better exit opportunities than others. I know this has been covered in various threads but updated info is always helpful and there’s always slightly different opinions on firms.

If you have specific questions about specific firms, maybe post non-anonymously and I can PM (or just post the specific question here). I'm reluctant to write an essay on different firms, though.

The exit opportunities at all these firms are fine, though. The client bases and practice groups may be slightly different, though - Davis has a thriving bank regulatory group, as well as Real Estate and Funds, while Cravath just has M&A, capital markets and finance on the corporate side. They literally don't do other corporate work. Cleary and Simpson do a good chunk of PE M&A, but still do plenty other work as well. At Davis and Cravath, you'll be representing a lot of banks in the capital markets and finance space, but Cleary and Simpson will probably have increased company-side work (i.e., the issuers/borrowers, vs. the lead lending bank/similar).

I'd try to think about exit options differently than simply "better" or "worse" at this level, as there's nobody who will say, "We had a good Simpson candidate, but a Cravath application just came in so let's chuck that first one out." Prestige doesn't work like that and there's zero reason to think the Simpson lawyer's less capable. If you're picking a firm, think about where you'll get the best training for the sort of work you want to do, as whatever interview for your exit is going to focus on the deals/tasks you've done rather than just fixate on the firm itself.

Also, is the preftige (or exit opportunities) really worth the demanding workload required by these types of firms?

I honestly don't think the workload's more demanding at these firms than at other places (assuming the other places are big firms). To be fair, I haven't worked at those places, but I don't think I'm drinking the Kool-Aid when I say I'd be shocked if Arnold & Porter associates are working any less hard than Davis Polk associates, provided that we're comparing people in the same corporate practice group.

To elaborate on that - if you're doing M&A, you're going to work hard and there will be fire drills. To be clear, your client is either selling itself or paying hundreds of millions or more to acquire someone else. Executives' stakes are extremely high, and they're paying your bills. If they're freaking out about selling their company, it's contagious, as you'll have to be there to answer their questions, paper their documents and keep everything moving forward on time. Additionally, the amount of work in a deal doesn't change based on the dollar value (the smaller deals can be just as crazy). The huge ones might last longer (for antitrust/regulatory clearance reasons), but they're not more complex, and more deals in less time just means you'd be staffed again, anyway.

The way to decrease your workload is to pick a practice group with less demanding clients. If you're doing Trusts & Estates, your ultra high net worth family client isn't going to want to call you past 8 p.m. almost ever, and chances are things aren't fire drills. If you're doing capital markets, you'll have your fair share of fire drills but most emails you won't have to respond to instantaneously, as there's a clear process. If you're doing M&A, you need to make yourself responsive and get things done. These things don't change from firm to firm (except to the extent your firm just isn't bringing in deals, so there's nothing to work on to begin with).

[Anonymous User]

What happens if you fail the NY bar exam the first time? Any anecdotes? I know that there are older threads on here of people saying you generally get a second shot but curious if that's true for V5 firms? I know you only work at one of them and can't speak for them all (unless you know stories from friends at other places), but any recent info/insights would be helpful.

I'm another poster and have no clue if we work for the same firm, but I know at mine they tell you from the beginning that you have 9 months to be sworn in after our fall start date. That basically means you have until the end of the first June you are working there to be sworn in so you get one extra shot at the bar in February before they let you go.

[Anonymous User]

What happens if you fail the NY bar exam the first time? Any anecdotes? I know that there are older threads on here of people saying you generally get a second shot but curious if that's true for V5 firms? I know you only work at one of them and can't speak for them all (unless you know stories from friends at other places), but any recent info/insights would be helpful.

I'm another poster and have no clue if we work for the same firm, but I know at mine they tell you from the beginning that you have 9 months to be sworn in after our fall start date. That basically means you have until the end of the first June you are working there to be sworn in so you get one extra shot at the bar in February before they let you go.

OP here. That's super interesting. I haven't heard of that particular policy (if we're at the same firm!) but that makes a lot of sense.

[Anonymous User]

This might be asking for a lot but having been in a firm for some time, and likely having worked across from or have friends at other firms, could you describe some differences between V5 firms and their peers such as DPW, STB, maybe Cleary? I’m interested in perceived differences as far as variances in M&A and capital markets practices, as well as general culture, hours, and possibly exit opportunities if you feel that some offer better exit opportunities than others. I know this has been covered in various threads but updated info is always helpful and there’s always slightly different opinions on firms.

Also, is the preftige (or exit opportunities) really worth the demanding workload required by these types of firms?

Lol at this subtle yet egregious Latham trolling.

To be clear: Latham is not a peer to DPW, STB and Cleary in NYC. Full stop. To the extent there are any "perceived differences" in exit opportunities, DPW, STB and Cleary will have better ones than Latham.

HTH.

[Anonymous User]

The exit opportunities at all these firms are fine, though. The client bases and practice groups may be slightly different, though - Davis has a thriving bank regulatory group, as well as Real Estate and Funds, while Cravath just has M&A, capital markets and finance on the corporate side. They literally don't do other corporate work. Cleary and Simpson do a good chunk of PE M&A, but still do plenty other work as well. At Davis and Cravath, you'll be representing a lot of banks in the capital markets and finance space, but Cleary and Simpson will probably have increased company-side work (i.e., the issuers/borrowers, vs. the lead lending bank/similar).

Davis has a thriving bank regulatory group, as well as Real Estate and Funds, while WLRK just has M&A, takeover defense, and restructuring and finance.

[Anonymous User]

This might be asking for a lot but having been in a firm for some time, and likely having worked across from or have friends at other firms, could you describe some differences between V5 firms and their peers such as DPW, STB, maybe Cleary? I’m interested in perceived differences as far as variances in M&A and capital markets practices, as well as general culture, hours, and possibly exit opportunities if you feel that some offer better exit opportunities than others. I know this has been covered in various threads but updated info is always helpful and there’s always slightly different opinions on firms.

Also, is the preftige (or exit opportunities) really worth the demanding workload required by these types of firms?

Lol at this subtle yet egregious Latham trolling.

To be clear: Latham is not a peer to DPW, STB and Cleary in NYC. Full stop. To the extent there are any "perceived differences" in exit opportunities, DPW, STB and Cleary will have better ones than Latham.

HTH.

I’m actually trying to guage any material differences between some of these firms. I’ve been lucky enough to get offers to CSM and STB, but I think that I’d personally enjoy my time more at Latham. Not sure how I should be weighing some of these soft factors though

[Anonymous User]

This might be asking for a lot but having been in a firm for some time, and likely having worked across from or have friends at other firms, could you describe some differences between V5 firms and their peers such as DPW, STB, maybe Cleary? I’m interested in perceived differences as far as variances in M&A and capital markets practices, as well as general culture, hours, and possibly exit opportunities if you feel that some offer better exit opportunities than others. I know this has been covered in various threads but updated info is always helpful and there’s always slightly different opinions on firms.

Also, is the preftige (or exit opportunities) really worth the demanding workload required by these types of firms?

Lol at this subtle yet egregious Latham trolling.

To be clear: Latham is not a peer to DPW, STB and Cleary in NYC. Full stop. To the extent there are any "perceived differences" in exit opportunities, DPW, STB and Cleary will have better ones than Latham.

HTH.

I’m actually trying to guage any material differences between some of these firms. I’ve been lucky enough to get offers to CSM and STB, but I think that I’d personally enjoy my time more at Latham. Not sure how I should be weighing some of these soft factors though

OP here.

Why do you think you'd personally enjoy your time at Latham more? I don't mean to say you wouldn't, I'd just caution you against developing a full impression of a firm based on a couple partners you met (unless you only want to work for those couple partners and you can guarantee that you'll do all your work for them). If you end up working for other people, they're not going to be carbon copies of the people you met... so don't make that your primary reason for coming to a certain firm. Every firm has partners that are wonderful to work for and a small minority to be avoided (if possible).

Some quick differences between the firms off the top of my head: I imagine that CSM and STB have deeper M&A benches than Latham. That's not a knock on Latham, it just means that there are more rainmaker partners bringing in different types of work at the former two (versus less people feeding more work down). Latham is a bigger firm than both and has some practices that the others don't (CSM's an easy example of the opposite, as it just has three corporate groups). CSM has the rotation system. Simpson has 2 or 3 rotations before you pick one. I'm not sure how Latham does practice groups/assignments. CSM and STB are lockstep. I don't know about Latham. Pick based on what's important to you (training, work, etc.)

Honestly, just do second looks at each and ask the questions you want to ask in order to make an informed decision. At the end of the day, it's fine to go with any of them as long as you're confident in that decision.

[v5junior]

Davis has a thriving ... Real Estate and Funds [group]...

No.

[Anonymous User]

Davis has a thriving ... Real Estate and Funds [group]...

No.

OP. Way to butcher statements with ellipses.

FIG is thriving, and I never said Real Estate and Funds were (just that Davis has those groups). The whole point of the statement, in context, was that not all firms have the same set of practice groups.