Attention Young Legal Deal Makers: Did You Make the Cut?

The excellent DealBook Special Section, in today’s New York Times, has a piece by Andrew Ross Sorkin that the New York deal lawyers among you will love. It’s entitled The Facebook of Wall Street’s Future:

Here is a snapshot of more than 100 people who make up the next generation of deal makers, everyone 40 years old or younger and linked by where they went to college (and chosen based on dozens of interviews). Think of the list as a Facebook of Wall Street’s future.

This is not an exhaustive inventory of all the up-and-comers on Wall Street, where new faces constantly come up with the next clever idea. But it demonstrates the power of certain schools as career starting points.

In terms of law schools — there are lots of business schools on the chart, too — the “certain schools” include Harvard, NYU, Georgetown, and Penn (among others; these four seem to have the most graduates on the map — 6, 6, 4, and 4, respectively).
Correction: Oops, sorry (and thanks to this commenter for pointing out our error). Columbia Law School has 7 featured alums. CLS, holla!
It’s tough to escape “tier-ism,” even when you move from the heart of the legal world to the point where it overlaps with the deal world. But do take note of the large area at the center of the illustration for people with “No Graduate Degrees.”
Some of the names on the map will be familiar to ATL readers. A few shout-outs, after the jump.


One tipster pointed out:

I personally witnessed law firm PR machines trying to get their people on there… Check out the only law firm associates that appear to be on there: Melissa Sawyer and Danny Serota of Sullivan & Cromwell.

Sound familiar? Think there might be a reason for it?

Why yes! Didn’t both Melissa Sawyer and Dan Serota make cameo appearances in Aaron Charney’s original pro se Complaint, in the famous case of Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell? Could their placement on the NYT’s list of top young dealmakers, perhaps aided by S&C’s PR operation, represent an attempt to distance them from that distasteful litigation?
For the record, though, Sawyer and Serota aren’t the only Biglaw associates on the map; there are several others. One of them is Wachtell Lipton’s David Shapiro, a colleague of ours from our WLRK days. Rumor has it that a partner basically had to order the famously hardworking Shapiro to take a vacation (after he went for some ridiculously long period of time — we’re talking YEARS — without taking time off).
Addendum: One source pointed out to us: “Check out the largest grouping on the chart: ‘No Graduate Degrees’ (31). Doesn’t the size of this group partially undermine the thesis of this graphic, which is all about educational connection? Do the ‘No Graduate Degree’ people have alumni events where they get together and talk about their lack of graduate or professional education?”
Rebuttal Addendum: But inclusion of the “No Graduate Degrees” people still has some point, since their undergraduate educational connections are reflected.
P.S. We’ve filed this under “Shameless Plugs” because we contributed a piece to the Special Section.
The Facebook of Wall Street’s Future [DealBook / New York Times]
Earlier: For M&A Lawyers, Is the Premium Party Over?

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