RESULTS
Offices New York
Total attorneys 187
Major departments/practices Corporate/M&A | Complex Commercial Litigation
First-year pay $140,000
2001 summer associates 24
2001 fall first-years 7
Who to call Ruth Ivey, Recruiting Director, 212-403-1374
Web site Wlrk.Com
If your bottom line is the bottom line-that is, if your main concern is pure, unadulterated excellence-consider Wachtell, Lipton.
Results? New York-based Wachtell is one of the top-grossing firms in the country, raking in some $317 million in gross revenues last year. The 187-lawyer firm is widely considered the preeminent M&A shop on the planet (handling dozens of headline-making deals each year), and it takes on the biggest of the big commercial litigations (one recent suit involved the merger of Bank of America with NationsBank).
Oh, yeah: Wachtell boasts the highest average profits per partner of any law firm in the world: Its 72 equity partners take home an average of $3 million annually.
Wachtell’s superpremium status is built on a policy of hiring-and keeping-the very finest associates. The firm recruits heavily from elite law schools (Harvard, Yale, etc.), and compensation exceeds that of even other large New York firms (first-year salaries start at $140,000, fourth-years made up to $180,000 last year, and some bonuses topped $100,000). And the one-to-one ratio of partners to associates means lawyers receive significant personal attention and long-term grooming.
Wachtell recruits know full well that they’ll be logging whopper hours (some first-years bill nearly 2,500) and that they’ll rarely see friends or family, let alone have time to take up woodcarving. But that’s what they want. “I expected to work hard before I came here, and I haven’t been disappointed,” says third-year litigator Matthew Baughman.
Did we tell you this place is about results?
Also Consider
Minneapolis’s Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi (rkmc.com) boasts the second-highest profits per equity partner nationally-$2.8 million, according to a recent survey.
