Wall Street

Open Thread: Will Your Firm Get Some Scraps?

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More law firms are benefiting — at least in the short term — from Wall Street jumping the shark.

The WSJ Law Blog has a roundup of the newest firms to come away with a piece of the bankrupt pie. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton advised Barclays on their scavenging Lehman’s North American business, while Davis Polk & Wardwell helped your nominally “free-market” government bail out AIG.

But the financial crisis is far from over. Which firms are still left to benefit as the financial sector careens down the off ramp of success? We know Simpson Thacher has done a lot of work with Washington Mutual, and we know WaMu is about as stable as Courtney Love after a Seattle rainstorm. Will Simpson be able to cash in on a WaMu sale, or will Weil just add another bloodied notch to their belt?

Anybody else with their hand out? After the jump.


Even the law firms with stable clients can’t be sure if they’ll get the big-time fees that are floating around out there. When Morgan Stanley buys something (their financials are great! no really!) what are the odds that they jump to Wachtell like everyone else?

Most associates don’t really care about which firm has what client, until bonus time. Firms have been crying poverty for most of the year, but with the fees that some of these firms will be earning … let’s just say that we can’t wait to see what Weil doles out this Christmas. Some associates won’t stand for tepid bonuses when they read about all the high profile clients their partners are bagging. “You should be happy to have a job” simply won’t fly at some of the top law firms, economic indicators be damned.

So which is the next firm that will be made stronger by the financial implosion? And will any of that blood money trickle down to the associate level?

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Meltdown World: A Mid-Week Legal Round Up [WSJ Law Blog]

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