Biglaw, Bonuses, Clerkships, Money, Skaddenfreude

Skaddenfreude: Cleary Gottlieb Is in Da Club

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The various comments added to our last post, stating that Cleary Gottlieb has joined the elite ranks of law firms paying $50,000 clerkship bonuses, are correct. Here’s the email, from CGSH partner David Leinwand:

From: David LEINWAND
Time: 2:01 pm

I am very pleased to announce that the firm will be increasing its judicial clerkship bonus for U.S. associates who complete one or more clerkships to $50,000. The increased bonus will be paid to associates who accept an offer to join the firm or complete a clerkship after January 1, 2007.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or Norma Cirincione if you have any questions.

David Leinwand,
on behalf of the Recruiting Committee

So who’s next? By conventional prestige standrads, we’d say Davis Polk. By profits per partner, it would be Cadwalader. According to the just-released AmLaw 100 rankings, Cadwalader is the most profitable NYC-based firm — excluding Wachtell Lipton, which pays no clerkship bonus, but compensates with a ridiculous year-end bonus — that has not yet joined the $50K club.
But don’t hold your breath for Cadwalader. Based on Anthony Lin’s fascinating profile of the firm, published back in February, it seems that CWT isn’t a big fan of “clerky” types:

Whereas [rival] firms lavish attention on Ivy League law graduates with prestigious judicial clerkships, [Cadwalader Chairman Robert] Link wants lawyers who want to be in the business and want to work hard in it. He said his ideal candidate would probably be someone slightly older with previous work experience, maybe on Wall Street.

He has no use for Yale Law School.

“I don’t think we even recruit there anymore,” he said of the law school often regarded as the nation’s most intellectual. “They don’t seem to produce the kind of lawyer we want.”

Ouch. And Yale, which sends a sizable percentage of graduates directly into judicial clerkships each year, is the most “clerky” of law schools.
Does the Future Belong To Cadwalader? [New York Law Journal]

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