Looking for info on New York firms with satellite offices in Toronto

[StoneMason]

Incoming 1L this fall. In doing my research, I've noticed that alongside the typical Bay St Big Law firms (seven sisters et al), there's also an option to recruit for firms based in NY with satellite offices in Toronto (Skadden, Paul Weiss, etc). 

Wanting some more information on these firms and how they rank up against the likes of Davies, Blakes, etc. Asking in terms of type of work, prestige, pay, etc. 

If anyone has any info would really appreciate it! 

[QueensDenning]

Type of work depends on the firm (I believe Skadden's Toronto office is only capital markets?). Pay is drastically higher (US big law rates). 

The only people I know who interviewed at these firms were medalists/dean's list at a minimum.

[StoneMason]

7 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

Type of work depends on the firm (I believe Skadden's Toronto office is only capital markets?). Pay is drastically higher (US big law rates). 

The only people I know who interviewed at these firms were medalists/dean's list at a minimum.

Oh wow. Confirmed they pay NY rates despite being in Canada? That's a huge difference

[NewJd5726]

Know someone who worked in one of those offices.

Yes they're paid NY rates (in USD). The lawyers in those offices are NY licensed lawyers and practice exclusively NY law, mostly capital markets.

They're definitely competitive positions because of the compensation, but also because those offices only hire 1 or 2 students per year each. Your law school plays a big role here. I believe 1 or 2 of those offices OCI exclusively at UofT and Osgoode. 

[QueensDenning]

Skadden and PW both OCI at Queen’s 

[helloall]

They're not all NY firms, but the firms with significant American presence include:

NY Market Scale Firms: Paul, Weiss; Skadden; Shearman & Sterling

Toronto Market Scale Firms: Dickinson Wright; Cozen O'Connor, Baker & McKenzie; Dorsey & Whitney; Mintz (Davies scale); DLA Piper; Dentons

Neither: Clyde & Co.; Lippes, Mathias; Hodgson Russ; Littler Mendelson; Ogletree Deakins

Only the NY marketing paying firms, and possibly Mintz, are competitive.

[blahblahlaw]

I've talked to someone who works at Skadden (Not professionally, a friend of a friend) and is somewhat involved in hiring. He said they have been caring less about the school prestige in the past few years. Take that with a grain of salt tho! 

[Turtles]

3 hours ago, helloall said:

They're not all NY firms, but the firms with significant American presence include:

NY Market Scale Firms: Paul, Weiss; Skadden; Shearman & Sterling

Toronto Market Scale Firms: Dickinson Wright; Cozen O'Connor, Baker & McKenzie; Dorsey & Whitney; Mintz (Davies scale); DLA Piper; Dentons

Neither: Clyde & Co.; Lippes, Mathias; Hodgson Russ; Littler Mendelson; Ogletree Deakins

Only the NY marketing paying firms, and possibly Mintz, are competitive.

Almost all are correct. Dorsey pays in-between Toronto and NYC scales, for example. 

From those I know, typically the rule is they pay NYC rates if you practice US law and have to be US qualified (almost always NY bar, but some are flexible if you already have for other big US states), while they pay Toronto rates if you practice Canadian law and have to be Ontario qualified.

[JackoMcSnacko]

5 hours ago, blahblahlaw said:

I've talked to someone who works at Skadden (Not professionally, a friend of a friend) and is somewhat involved in hiring. He said they have been caring less about the school prestige in the past few years. Take that with a grain of salt tho! 

Likely was only the case for laterals during the 2021 hiring frenzy.  Almost certainly no longer applicable. 

I don't know exactly how many students the three NY-scale firms hire every year into their TO office, but I would be surprised it totals more than 3-5 between all three firms in any given year.  I doubt these firms are lacking high quality applicants to fill these few spots - I expect these spots to be more competitive than any NY-based position at a NY firm.

[BlockedQuebecois]

7 hours ago, JackoMcSnacko said:

I expect these spots to be more competitive than any NY-based position at a NY firm.

My understanding is that these positions are actually significantly less competitive than NY-based positions at the same calibre of firm. 

Rightly or wrongly, there’s an impression in the market that those firms’ Toronto offices do less high profile and interesting work than the top tier Toronto firms. Combined with the fact that it locks you into a very narrow band of practice areas, the people I have seen gravitate to those jobs are largely people who struck out in the NY recruit. 

Granted, small sample size. I only know four people that have worked at those places (which isn’t nothing, because they generally hire one or two students per year, but isn’t a huge number). 

[QueensDenning]

I know someone who was hired at one of these firms for their Toronto office, did a split NY/Toronto summer and opted to be hired back into the NY office for after 3L. That wouldn't make sense if these positions were significantly less competitive than NY-based positions at the same calibre firm. Very small sample size but still. Regardless, I don't know how much more competitive a position can get, because the Toronto offices of these NY firms only really interview medalists or close to it. 

[Rashabon]

8 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

I know someone who was hired at one of these firms for their Toronto office, did a split NY/Toronto summer and opted to be hired back into the NY office for after 3L. That wouldn't make sense if these positions were significantly less competitive than NY-based positions at the same calibre firm. Very small sample size but still. Regardless, I don't know how much more competitive a position can get, because the Toronto offices of these NY firms only really interview medalists or close to it. 

How wouldn't that make sense? They did a split summer which is already not the same thing and just because they were competitive for the Toronto office doesn't preclude them from being competitive for the New York office. That's bad LSAT logic.

The Toronto offices are great, but do not have the same upside or potential as the New York offices. They aren't the highest profile mandates and it's often in a supporting role on cross-border work. Great pay and you get to stay in Toronto though and the talent there is top notch. I like working with them and I should probably give one or two of my contacts at Skadden a shout and go for lunch soon.

[Ben]

12 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

Regardless, I don't know how much more competitive a position can get, because the Toronto offices of these NY firms only really interview medalists or close to it. 

That's absolutely not true lol

[GoatDuck]

13 minutes ago, Rashabon said:

The Toronto offices are great, but do not have the same upside or potential as the New York offices. They aren't the highest profile mandates and it's often in a supporting role on cross-border work. Great pay and you get to stay in Toronto though and the talent there is top notch.

What's the downsides of working at those firms then? If you can get NYC salary while living in Toronto, that sounds like the best of both worlds. Is it that working at these firms isn't as prestigious, or that you don't get the same job security due to doing less high profile work?

[AHappyLawyer]

1 hour ago, GoatDuck said:

What's the downsides of working at those firms then? If you can get NYC salary while living in Toronto, that sounds like the best of both worlds. Is it that working at these firms isn't as prestigious, or that you don't get the same job security due to doing less high profile work?

You're doing the same find and replace Note Offering for senior notes due 2035 at 2.2% for the underwriters again and again and again.

[Rashabon]

1 hour ago, GoatDuck said:

What's the downsides of working at those firms then? If you can get NYC salary while living in Toronto, that sounds like the best of both worlds. Is it that working at these firms isn't as prestigious, or that you don't get the same job security due to doing less high profile work?

Basically what @AHappyLawyer said (although you're not getting 2.2% anywhere any time soon 🙂). My experience with Skadden (and I use the same guy on every single offering) is doing U.S. 144A wrappers for my offerings. So while I'm working on different IPOs and public offerings for a dozen issuers, they are rolling the same document forward each time and giving the same closing opinion each time for good money, but little creativity. Also coordinating cross-border review of equity incentive plans. That's not to say that's their exclusive focus by any stretch, or that when things are busy they don't do more. But that's a big part of it, and they aren't a massive business generator either. Skadden's big money mandates are coming from U.S. clients in New York. Their mandates in Toronto are usually coming through someone like me.

And it's not just about prestige. There's a ceiling. You're not going to be a top partner and a big revenue generator sitting in Toronto doing cross-border faciliatory work for Canadian clients. Some people are more than happy to do the gig but it can get very same-y in a way that even regular capital markets work is not. I can't speak for certain about how broad the opportunities are generally.

I'd take the job over doing capital markets work at certain firms in our market for sure, but there are other firms (the top of Canadian market ones) where eventually you outpace your counterpart.

[helloall]

37 minutes ago, Rashabon said:

I'd take the job over doing capital markets work at certain firms in our market for sure, but there are other firms (the top of Canadian market ones) where eventually you outpace your counterpart.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post, but couldn't you simply lateral from the NY firms to the top Canadian firms? I've read that people might take a class year hit, but it still seems worth it to start off at P,W or Skadden in Toronto.

[Rashabon]

24 minutes ago, helloall said:

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post, but couldn't you simply lateral from the NY firms to the top Canadian firms? I've read that people might take a class year hit, but it still seems worth it to start off at P,W or Skadden in Toronto.

I think you are, but I'll address the separate question.

It's not "so simple" and depends on the practice area you want to work in as well as when you want to lateral. If you want to be a top tier Canadian capital markets lawyer, you may have a harder time since you're not doing any Canadian capital markets work, you're doing U.S. private placements. If you want to do private MA, yes definitely take the gig, but then don't go to the Toronto office where you won't be doing much of it. If you want to be a Canadian litigator, probably best to stay in Canada because you will be in further behind the eight ball than your corporate/commercial colleagues. You also take more than a class hit. My biggest client is the one I've worked for since 3 months into my career, and working for them has led to roughly 40-50% (or more at times) of my practice. Lateral from the Toronto office of one of these shops and you may be starting from scratch with little internal network and possibly an atrophied external network. I definitely don't think the best path to partnership in Toronto is by starting in New York.

As an aside, a bunch  of the people in the offices are laterals FROM the top tier Canadian firms. Make of that what you will.

[OKBLUEJAYS]

Worked in a Toronto office at a NY market paying firm and just stumbled onto this thread -- created an account basically to say this, but just to state the obvious, Rashabon very much knows what they're talking about.

Incidentally, based on what I saw when I was at the firm, the "best" Toronto associates were very good and well regarded in the firm but were stuck on deals that meant they couldn't really be "superstars" from the movers-and-shakers in HQ's perspective. If they were superstars, when they became senior the firm would basically say "You gotta come to NY to make it or be content to never break through and stick it out in Toronto." The hours were also absolutely horrendous (worse than NY, better than east Asia), but the level of independence and general competence was higher especially at the junior levels (since it's a small handful of really good students vs the HQ like hiring 100 people at once and letting years of natural atrophy do its thing). 

The idea that the work is very ultra niche and rote is more-or-less correct (but probably worth it for the pay differential, if you ask me). That said, in-house opportunities at major cross-border companies was very high, where you had the benefit of saying "I can handle all your US-facing stuff, oh and btw my current salary is huge so I expect to be paid damn well". RBC and certain dual-listed public companies need US-trained lawyers, for example, and I feel like anyone at these shops can probably like walk into a job at a place like that when they're fed up with law firm life.

 

[Legal warrior]

On 4/3/2023 at 4:08 PM, QueensDenning said:

Skadden and PW both OCI at Queen’s 

hey im an incoming 1l at queens interested in these firms

as far as relative “class ranking”, do these firms recruit from top 20 percenters? 15? Or even lower?

[StoneMason]

20 minutes ago, Legal warrior said:

hey im an incoming 1l at queens interested in these firms

as far as relative “class ranking”, do these firms recruit from top 20 percenters? 15? Or even lower?

Can't speak to the other schools but you generally have to be in the top ~20% at UofT to be considered a competitive candidate at PW/Skadden Toronto. I would assume it is similar for other schools. The reality is there simply aren't many positions every year so every distinguishing feature helps, with grades being an obvious one. This is not a strict rule of course. Someone I know landed one of these firms with above-average but not distinction-level grades (think 65-70th percentile) but had phenomenal work experience. 

Edited Friday at 12:30 AM by StoneMason

[GoatDuck]

25 minutes ago, Legal warrior said:

hey im an incoming 1l at queens interested in these firms

as far as relative “class ranking”, do these firms recruit from top 20 percenters? 15? Or even lower?

That’s what you need for Bay St positions. For Skadden and PW you’re probably looking at top 5% and even there it’s very unpredictable. 

[QueensDenning]

14 hours ago, Legal warrior said:

hey im an incoming 1l at queens interested in these firms

as far as relative “class ranking”, do these firms recruit from top 20 percenters? 15? Or even lower?

Top 5-10%. 

[Dinsdale]

Just to reiterate, at the Queen's/Western level, you need top 20-25% to be considered for Bay Street, let alone PW/Skadden, which are more competitive for obvious reasons.  There are always outliers, but generally speaking.  Question, though, from a few posts above: why are the hours even worse than at the respective NY offices?

Edited yesterday at 12:00 PM by Dinsdale