Why is there so much hate for Quinn Emanuel? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Lohier?

He’s sent like 4-5 clerks in a decade and a half on the bench. That’s not a feeder. CA2 is weak anymore.

I mean, he has 8 feeds in the last 5 years, not exactly bad numbers

Does he really? That's elite for CA2.

At least 8, I didn't do a super diligent search or anything - just finder key'd the wikipedia lists. One to CJR and the rest to Kagan/Sotomeyer/Breyer so like, focused but decent

Still not feeder status though if you look at the other circuits. Honestly, does CA2 even come in the top half for circuits sending clerks to the court anymore?

I threw this out there as a reason why you guys are annoying and here you go, Ex A.

Lol agreed. Plus, 2-3 judges on the 6th (for example) groom 99% of that circuit's SCOTUS clerks. So sure, a Bibas or Pryor (11th) clerkship might be more impressive and important for top-end appellate lawyer wannabes, but on the whole, the 2d or the 9th are still, due to various factors, more competitive for prospective clerks generally than the 6th or the 11th.

[Anonymous User]

As one of the posters who have been contributing, I feel bad about hijacking a thread about Quinn. But it's OCI season, and impressionable law students are trying to do their research now, and it's important to call out BS where we can. Especially when the BS is advanced so forcefully, stubbornly, and repeatedly.

If this is how Cravath lawyers respond to undisputable facts, I can't imagine how forcefully they gaslight their recruits during callbacks etc. I worry in particular about high-achieving first-gen law students who just see the Vault ranking and are bamboozled into foregoing better options. This is an important decision, and if you have the grades to go somewhere better than Cravath, do your due diligence. Use the search function: there's a ton of great wisdom that's percolated in TLS through the years. Compare the associate rosters and make a decision for yourself.

Posts like these are so dangerous and really concern me. Advancing blatantly wrong views as if they were fact will lead many to forgo otherwise better long-term options.

Some on this thread have uncritically accepted that percentage of associates with COA clerkships is the best measure of firm quality. I have to wonder if there is some reverse engineering going on here. There is no reason for using this metric, especially considering that we have far better measures of quality (reputation scores, practice group ratings, mentoring, the rotation system, substantive experience, etc.).

Someone on here even argued that Cravath having more former associates in elite positions doesn't demonstrate the quality of its exit options. These arguments are reminiscent of the SLS copes regarding Stanford's poor East Coast placement. Ultimately, whether law students choose to accept these arguments is up to them, but it's important that we stop for a minute and ask whether we're knocking Cravath because of an emotional reaction we have toward their associates, or because we actually believe Cravath is a worse firm based on measurable standards. If we're honest, it's the former.

This is the biggest troll I’ve ever seen. The Stanford swipe gives it away. But claiming that this angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-pin bullshit is “dangerous” is also pretty obvious. It’s not like working at Cravath is all that stands between a lit associate and failure, mediocrity, and doom. Pretending that the stakes are that significant brands you as a troll or impossibly stupid.

Also how sad is it to consider trial exposure a “niche” experience for a litigator. Tell me you’re a corporate bro without telling me you’re a corporate bro.

You can say that, but if a law student were to follow previous anons' advice, they'd go to Patterson Belknap over Cravath. Band 3, 4, or 5 in almost everything, but Band 1 in associates with COA clerkships.

…yes, Patterson Belknap is a better firm for most litigation associates than Cravath. The talent gap is a symptom of the underlying reasons why—leverage and quality of work for associates, lifestyle, partnership prospects. Post-clerkship candidates are much more sophisticated about firms than 1Ls at OCI and the talent flows to places that offer the best experience.

This 100%. People aren't talking about clerkships just to be obnoxious or pretentious (yeah, sure there's a lot of obnoxious clerks out there, but different discussion and let's face it, all lawyers are like that). There's a reason why the law grads with the most options end up at certain places, and law students and potential laterals would be well-advised to investigate those reasons.

I would just refer you to my previous post where I was responding to the same point but made about Williams & Connolly. Over 75% of CSM associates come from the T6 and most have some combination of latin honors, clerkship, or law review. It's silly to argue that Patterson Belknap associates had options students going to most prestigious firm in the country didn't have. Plus, Selendy Gay recruits heavily from Cravath, and very few associates are leaving to go there. The truth is that small firms have the potential to fill up their ranks with a tiny number of COA clerks. And I don't doubt that many COA clerks, who are typically more academic and prefer a small environment, will choose boutiques. But very many do not, and very many of those go to Cravath. To the law students reading this, I encourage you to weigh the costs and benefits of choosing between a firm like Cravath/Wachtell and boutiques. Will you get more trial experience at a boutique? Yes. But when Cravath lawyers leave the firm and go to other firms, they are known for lawyering circles around others who didn't start at Cravath. That's the power of the rotation system and the sheer diversity of high-level work you get at Cravath. Keep in mind, associates are working on litigation related to antitrust, M&A, IP, and more; Cravath is well regarded in each of these areas, and so can offer training smaller boutiques cannot.

Again, many of you assess firm quality very oddly, especially considering we already can directly measure firm quality (but perhaps that leads to the outcome posters here do not like).

Hahahah ya know, growing up my mom was a pretty well known "hotshot" lit partner at W&C, and objectively a very smart lady with all the right trappings (HYS undergrad + law school, LR, appellate clerkship, ACTL, federal rules committee etc.) who also somehow managed to remain remarkably gracious and humble throughout her career. Anyway, she worked alongside a lot of Cravath partners as cocounsel on a major antitrust case over the course of several (long) years, and when I was gearing up to go through OCI at my T6 the only advice she ever gave me was "whatever you do, don't go to Cravath—they're the only ones who never seem to know that they aren't the smartest people in the room." For a woman who had approximately zero ego but with an almost palpable aversion to the "blowing smoke" types, I'm sure she'd be ~0% surprised to know that even now, in this year of our Lord, we can always count on their still being some cripplingly insecure Cravath associate out there haunting law school message forums, unironically proclaiming that they and their colleagues are doomed to "lawyering circles" around every other poor sucker lawyer who didn't have the good sense they did to serve The Firm Man, you guys really do live up to your reputation (it just may not be the one you seem to think you have)