DavisPolk v. Skadden v. Kirkland (NY) Forum

[Anonymous User]

Want to do general corporate, not sure which group. Which firm has best ethos?

[Anonymous User]

There's no "best" ethos, it depends on your own personality and values. Kirkland and DPW are very different in that regard. Try to talk to as many associates and partners, look at their bios, and visit their offices as much as possible. It's absolutely true that even Big Law firms have personalities. You need to figure out which one meshes with yours.

[JustLurking47]

In my experience, there’s something to be said for joining a firm where your preferred practice group is its “bread and butter” - when the time comes to choose a group, you won’t have any trouble claiming a spot.

Davis Polk probably has a great M&A group, but it’s generally known as a finance (i.e. capital markets and banking) firm. Kirkland does a ton of PE M&A (and the sponsor finance work that goes along with it), so you’d get substantive experience right away, but Skadden is recognized as the more prestigious M&A firm and does more public company deals. Obviously, all great options, so can’t really go wrong.

As far as culture goes, they’re all prestigious and big money makers, so that’ll be the main “ethos”, but I know associates at each one who have had great experiences, and they’re all big enough to have both nice partners and mean partners.

[Anonymous User]

Just going on the common stereotypes here (but I was a gov paralegal and worked with all three, so can confirm this was at least true in my experience):

DPW people are REALLY nice. Like REALLY nice. Their work all seemed kind of boring (all capital markets and banking stuff) but they are REALLY nice. They all seem super close and friendly with each other, almost like they actually *enjoy* working together. This might be because they do it so much they have nothing else in their entire lives to enjoy.

Skadden is slimy. They are shady and arrogant and mean. Almost everyone I've met who had a REALLY bad OCI experience had it with a Skadden partner. As a paralegal, they actively tried to make my life miserable more than once and laughed about it to my attorneys when it happened. They're the type of firm that will bring a junior associate out in front of a judge to make a show about how the junior did all the work, and then in the hallway they will eat that junior apart for something that was definitely the partner's fault (I have witnessed this happen more than once).

Kirkland is *the* Biglaw sweatshop. They hire a bajillion people and work them to death because they're okay with ¾ of them leaving in three years. The ones who stay make partner in like six years and know basically nothing and are also the sort of people who were capable of staying at Kirkland for six years, which does not make them great to work for. If you want to learn really quickly why a lot of people hate Biglaw, work at Kirkland. (Also--I've met a lot of lawyers who moved from one firm to another, and most of them won't talk bad about their old firm or even say where they came from. Every lawyer who has ever openly talked to me about leaving their former firm was a Kirkland lawyer.)