Aiming high is so gauche. Striving to be the best, so very American. The awful burden of working for one of the top outfits in your field—and having to admit it! The horror! Please. We beg you. Steer clear of the jobs listed here. They are the prime career choices of the moment—the very positions that lead to public humiliation and private shame. Consider yourself warned.
LARGE FIRMS
Allen & Overy
Top Five Offices | London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Brussels, Frankfurt
Total attorneys | 2,033
Major departments/practices | banking, project finance, tax
First-year pay | $125,000
2001 summer associates | 45
2001 fall first-years | 17
Who to call | Elizabeth Papas, recruitment coordinator, 212-610-6300
Web site | allenovery.com
Random firm-name anagram | REVEAL ONLY
Is “global domination” on your career to-do list? Do you believe that the borderless economy will change the world? Do you like the pubs in London? Check out what Allen & Overy has been up to lately.
For the past several years, A&O has been on a worldwide growth bender: “the project,” one Europe-based partner calls it, with James Bond élan. The 2,033-attorney firm—with such big-name international clients as Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and offices in several Bond-like locales (London, Hong Kong, New York, Moscow)—earned a spot in 2000 as one of the top two shops, in terms of the number and value of project finance deals, on the planet. That was before A&O lured attorneys from the lucrative—and growing—bankruptcy and restructuring group of New York’s Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. It was before A&O caused a stir in New York in February by grabbing senior mergers-and-acquisitions and securities partner Daniel Cunningham from Cravath, Swaine & Moore (A&O also recently landed top new partners for its Hong Kong, Madrid, and Hamburg offices). And it was before the firm advised Credit Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs International on one of the largest initial public offerings in the UK, in 2001. “Well done!” as Q might say.
A&O’s leading position in the trendy global law movement is itself part of the firm’s current appeal. And international transactional work gives lawyers a chance to shape new law to a degree that domestic work typically doesn’t. The fact that A&O’s largest office is in London, arguably the world’s hippest legal hub right now, also ups its heat index. This fall, A&O will recruit on U.S. law school campuses for just the sixth year. To help feed its growing need for associates—the firm’s New York office has expanded from 2 lawyers in 1985 to 60 today—A&O plans to talk to hundreds of students at 13 campuses. Last year, the firm hired 45 summer associates and 17 fall first-years.
To borrow from Q again, “Good luck, James!”