• Home
  • News
  • Wachtell Nabs Top Spot—Again—in Prestige Rankings

Law Firms

Wachtell Nabs Top Spot—Again—in Prestige Rankings

Posted Aug 19, 2009 7:48 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is No. 1 in Vault’s prestige rankings by law firm associates, keeping its top spot for the seventh straight year.

The rankings are based on overall prestige, departmental prestige, regional prestige, diversity and quality of life, according to Legal Blog Watch.

The top five are the same as last year, except Skadden has traded places with Sullivan & Cromwell, according to Above the Law.

Other changes: Latham & Watkins dropped from No. 7 last year to No. 17 this year. Cadwalader, which was No. 26 two years ago, is now at No. 60. And Weil Gotshal jumped from No. 9 to No. 6, “one small perk of having the world's pre-eminent restructuring group during an economic crisis,” according to Vault’s managing editor Brian Dalton, writing at Vault's Law Blog.

The top 10 are:

1) Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

2) Cravath, Swaine & Moore

3) Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom

4) Sullivan & Cromwell

5) Davis Polk & Wardwell

6) Weil, Gotshal & Manges

7) Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

8) Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

9) Covington & Burling

10) Kirkland & Ellis

Comments

1.

B. McLeod
Aug 19, 2009 8:16 AM CST

BigLaw “associates” ranking the relative “prestige” of large firms.  What a hoot!

Flag this comment

2.

Prestige man
Aug 19, 2009 9:15 AM CST

I do not have any prestige!!!

Flag this comment

3.

Rath
Aug 19, 2009 1:29 PM CST

B. - How else would you expect a professional service site that caters to employees to rate law firms?  If you put much thought into it there are only 2 meaningful methods of ranking law firms.  The way the Vault does it (by associate review), and the way the American Lawyer does it (by gross revenue, revenue per lawyer, and profits per partner).  A client rating system would be impractical and unreliable.

Take note that Reed Smith is in the third tier of the ratings at number 71 which is consistent with the rankings of some the law schools from which their associates graduated.

Flag this comment

4.

B. McLeod
Aug 19, 2009 2:19 PM CST

Well, Rath, since they are purporting to rate “prestige,” maybe they should have the idle rich, or even the general public do it.  I don’t think BigLaw “associates” are going to know.

Flag this comment

5.

Pinky
Aug 19, 2009 2:56 PM CST

Rath,
I’m curious about your comment linking the ranking and tiers of law school graduates, since not all Wachtell attorneys attended top 10 schools - a quick review shows plenty of lower tier schools.  What is your point?

Flag this comment

6.

Rob
Aug 21, 2009 3:46 AM CST

Rath - what’s wrong with asking clients?
http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/morgan_lewis_tops_list_of_go-to_law_firms_for_fortune_100

Flag this comment

7.

BR
Aug 21, 2009 4:42 AM CST

Who cares? 
This is even more ridiculous that most of the other articles about prestige and elitism.
Isn’t being a member of the bar prestigious enough?
I guess not, if you’re a pretentious, self absorbed and monumentally insecured poser.

Flag this comment

8.

Bill
Aug 21, 2009 5:51 AM CST

#7 - +1

Flag this comment

9.

Peter
Aug 21, 2009 7:10 AM CST

I don’t see any John Doe & Associates on the list!  :~)

BigLaw rules!

Flag this comment

10.

Tom
Aug 21, 2009 7:31 AM CST

I find it perplexing that Rath and many others equate being a great student with being a great attorney when, in practice, there is no real correlation.

I’m at a small firm (15 attorneys) but function as in-house to a very large organization, and regularly do deals with the attorneys who supposedly make the big firms great.  While not a universal truth, their hubris generally costs their clients while my client benefits.  Their client doesn’t know how much better of a deal they could’ve gotten if they evaluated their counsel on merits rather than “prestige” . . . and how much money they could have saved.

#7 - Nailed it.

Flag this comment

11.

Rath
Aug 21, 2009 7:32 AM CST

B. - They are purporting to rank the firms by prestige among their associates, as the survey itself conspicuously discloses, and as everyone who has seen this listing for over 2 decades knows.  Notwithstanding your implication by using the word “associates” in quotations, they draw the ratings from confirmed associates at each firm.

Pinky - First, it was a jab at Reed Smith, but aside from, that top 10 does not equal Tier 1.  Tier 1 are the top 100 and there few if any attorneys outside of Tier 1 law schools at Wachtell, or any other of its peer firms.

Rob - If you can’t see the obvious problems with asking clients I’m not going to bother to educate you on the issues regarding reliability of such ratings, which don’t exist in any reliable ranking system.  If you actually bothered to read the article you linked, that is not even a ranking system purporting anything about prestige among any group, merely statistical information on volume of litigation for fortune 100 companies.  Clients were not consulted in compiling those statistics.

BR - Law school students who aspire to work at BigLaw care, to a certain extent, BigLaw cares because it affects their marketability among the top law school graduates from the top law schools.  The rankings are done each year largely for the benefit of the former as the Vault caters to employees.

Flag this comment

12.

Kevin
Aug 21, 2009 7:43 AM CST

Awesome, thanks for this article.  Now the next time this comes up in a debate at the bar, I’ll have a source to point to.

Oh wait, that won’t happen because normal people couldn’t give 2 yanks about “prestige”.  The only people this matters to are the lawyers that work in these firms so they have yet another useless measure with which to compare themselves to each other, outside their piles of money they’re too busy to spend.

Flag this comment

13.

Abner Stanwick
Aug 21, 2009 7:47 AM CST

I dealt with an associate from Wachtell once.  The guy had a red stain on his collar that looked like blood from nicking himself while shaving…and his shoes looked like he had just walked through the desert they were so dusty.  Prestige?

Flag this comment

14.

Rath
Aug 21, 2009 8:04 AM CST

Tom - Please quote where I equated being a great student with being a great attorney.  For that matter please quote where I equated coming from a Tier 1 or high ranked law school equates with being a great student?

clients.

I’ve worked with plenty of lawyers from Tier 1 law schools and even some from T14 law schools that were less than impressive and also worked with quite a few lawyers from lower Tier law schools that were excellent attorneys.

The point of talking about law school pedigree with BigLaw is that, for better of for worse, BigLaw relies almost entirely, if not exclusively, on law school pedigree in selecting their summer associates and associates, and rely in part on those pedigrees to appear elite to clients.  My bringing up law firm pedigree with Reed Smith is in connection with the unprofessional manner in which the firm conducts itself in its recruitment efforts with law schools.

Flag this comment

15.

B. McLeod
Aug 21, 2009 10:19 AM CST

Yes, Rath.  I got that.  I understand it is a ranking by “associates.”  My point is as to the comical nature of that.  “Associates” in BigLaw are fungible, expendible and regularly subject to attrition rates that will result in most of them leaving or being cast out of BigLaw within their first decade of practice.  They are a very low-ranking life form in the world of Law, and even their information on the state of their own firm is very incomplete.  This survey is akin to having chain gangs in various state penal systems attempt to rate the relative “prestige” of state penal systems.

Flag this comment

16.

Anthony c. Raccuglia
Aug 21, 2009 11:04 AM CST

A law firm in peoria advertises as a member of your selected group of 100 lawyers.He has t.v. ads thruout Peoria,Illinois and the entire state.His name is Jay Jansen and his office is in Peoria, Illinois.Please confirm or disavow his representation.Thank You.

Flag this comment

17.

Mikey
Aug 21, 2009 11:34 AM CST

Two words: Circle Jerk

Flag this comment

18.

M.L.
Aug 21, 2009 11:48 AM CST

What a waste of my time.  Goes to show what the ABA cares about: big law firms and their precious egos.

Flag this comment

19.

Mike
Aug 21, 2009 11:50 AM CST

Hmmm….top 8 are all NYC HQ’d based Firms.  I guess none of us are any good unless we work in NYC.  These prestige rankings are nothing but an advertisement for a clique of Firms that operate as a mutual admiration society.

Flag this comment

20.

BMF
Aug 21, 2009 12:04 PM CST

#15: McLeod rocks! 
#19:  Funny. Most of the non-lawyers in this area have never heard of these firms. Occasionally, some of their associates come to to town from the LA office for intimidation purposes. The local judges usually don’t give a r*tz*ss.

Flag this comment

21.

Lee
Aug 21, 2009 12:46 PM CST

No doubt that John Adams and Abraham Lincoln had to deal with the “prestigious” firms of their day.  Can anybody today name those “prestigious” firms?

Maybe it is enough to strive to be the best lawyer I can be, and to draw hope and inspiration from other “average” lawyers like Adams and Lincoln.  They are venerable, not this Letterman-like top-10 list.

Flag this comment

22.

Are you kidding me ABA?
Aug 21, 2009 3:29 PM CST

This ABA-accredited Vault top-10 Prestige list has now confirmed for me that my life is worthless. 

You see, I received offers from 7 out of the top-10 firms on this list.  It was a grueling decision and I thought I made the right choice at the time.  I actually accepted one firm’s offer and then had “accepter’s remorse” so I retracted my acceptance and accepted at another firm and it was a big issue at the time. But the dean at my top-tier ABA-accredited law school made a couple of phone calls on my behalf and helped me get out of the jam.  Now today I come to learn that I picked the one firm that has been bumped from its top-10 prestige spot.  Tell me ABA, why should I show my face at this disgraceful firm on Monday morning?

Now I will probably amount to nothing in life and my girlfriend will probably break up with me once she get word of this.  If she doesn’t break up with me, I will break up with her for wanted to stick it out with such a loser.

Flag this comment

23.

Bean Counter
Aug 21, 2009 3:34 PM CST

BR @ #7 and Kevin @ #12 nailed it. 

“Prestige” is not client service and is not quality of the firm.  If you read the article on judgment against Microsoft, the number 6 most prestige firm just lost a big case.  And the judge awarded an additional $40M to the otherside because the defense attorney from this “prestige” law firm behaved badly. 

So much for prestige…

Flag this comment

24.

DCEsq.
Aug 21, 2009 9:25 PM CST

At least anyone in a firm has a theoretical chance of winning this so-called “prestige” (as undefined as the “reasonable man”) by hoping that his or her firm crawls its way painfully up the list.  Solo practitioners and government attorneys, on the other hand, will have to settle with sitting at the back of the bus and catching strains of the raucous Top 10 stories of the folks sitting up front.  Sane attorneys of all types refrain from riding that bus and take the train instead.

Flag this comment

Add a Comment

We welcome your comments, but please adhere to our comment policy.

Commenting has expired on this post.