“The City”, of course, is none other than New York City. How did Latham & Watkins catapult itself in 20 years from occupying one floor in the Lipstick Building to becoming “the building’s biggest tenant, sprawling over 16 floors and more than 300,000 square feet” “This year the firm’s New York office became its largest, with around 270 lawyers, who serve a client list that reads like a Wall Street directory. In some areas Latham now competes head-on with the vaunted New York firms.” These quotes come from Andrew Longstreth’s very interesting American Lawyer June 1st Article entitled: Princes of the City Andrew quotes Latham’s New York partner William Voge:
“Our view 20 years ago was that if we wanted to succeed in New York, we [had to] play on the same playing field as Cravath, Davis Polk, S&C, Skadden, Simpson Thacher,” recalls Voge. “That we had to be sharing in their market share and not on the next level down-that was unequivocal.”
I highly recommend the article for a good overview of what it takes to make it (or maybe not make it) in The Big Apple. Photographs in this post are courtesy of Galinsky