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Having been located in the city for over 130 years, Sidley & Austin can be considered as much of a Chicago institution as bratwurst, deep dish pizza, and snow. The firm features a strong litigation practice and a top-notch corporate department. History: branch explosions Sidley & Austin, founded right after the Civil War in 1866, has developed into one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world. The firm's history has been punctuated by a series of occasional growth spurts. In 1972, for example, Sidley merged with national law firm Leibman, Williams, Bennett, Baird, and Minow, vastly increasing its presence in both Chicago and Washington, DC. The firm pulled off another merger in 1996, taking in 21 new lawyers from Richards, Medlock, & Andrews, a move that both enabled Sidley to double its patent and intellectual property practice and to open a fully-functioning branch office in Dallas. Major offices outside Chicago include Los Angeles (opened in 1980); New York (1982); Washington, DC (1963 - the largest branch outside Chicago); London (1974); Singapore (1982); and Tokyo (1990). In the spring of 1999, Sidley further capitalized on its global reputation when it opened an office in Hong Kong to cover project finance, securitization, and corporate finance transactions in China. Two weeks after announcing the new branch, the Ministry of Justice of the People's Republic of China approved another office in Shanghai, China. Sidley & Austin was one of only six U.S. firms to receive a license. Bigger is better Sidley & Austin proves the old adage that "size matters." The firm has nearly 900 lawyers (making it the 13th-largest firm in the world) on three continents and handles issues in every legal field extant. Sidley's largest office, home to well over 400 attorneys, has emerged over the years as a force on the Chicago, national, and international legal scenes. The reputation of the Sidley corporate department is unparalleled in Chicago, and the Sidley name carries significant weight on both coasts and abroad. Clients turn to the department for a wide variety of dealings. Securities offerings are a major area of expertise - while the firm dropped the top spot to Cadwalader in 1999, Sidley still ranked second overall for public commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) deal activity, according to a survey by Commercial Mortgage Alert. The mergers & acquisitions practice has held its own as well. In March 2000, the department represented Tribune Co. in its $8 billion bid for L.A.-based Times Mirror Co. as well as Lucent Technologies in its agreement to buy cable TV tech developer Ortel Corp. for $2.95 billion. Brave new world Times are changing at Sidley. In February 1999, the firm announced that litigator Charles W. Douglas would succeed R. Eden Martin as chairman of the Management Committee, the body that handles Sidley's day-to-day operations. Douglas inherited the title in April 1999. By the end of the year, some major structural changes were instituted at the firm, most controversially de-equitizing up to 33 partners and creating a new retirement policy (which lowered attorneys' required retirement age). The moves are part of an effort to keep up with what Thomas Cole, the chairman of Sidley's 30-member executive committee, called "an increasingly competitive environment." Public notice for public service Sidley possesses an impressive pro bono record as well. "The firm as a whole encourages" pro bono work by counting it towards billable hours and giving out an award for the top pro bono contribution each year. Sidley lawyers have racked up more than 24,000 hours in each of the last five years, providing assistance to a number of worthy organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, the AIDS Legal Counsel, and the National Veterans Legal Services Project. The firm also furnishes the Uptown Hull House Legal Clinic with legal personnel and in late 1998 created a public interest fellowship for summer associates in conjunction with Columbia University Law School and New York University Law School.
Names and numbers For recruiting purposes, Sidley & Austin targets the usual schools, with several solid Midwesterners thrown in for good measure: Boalt, Chicago, Chicago, Kent, Columbia, DePaul, Duke, Georgetown, Howard, Illinois, Indiana-Bloomington, Iowa, John Marshall, Loyola-Chicago, Michigan, Minnesota, NYU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Pennsylvania, Stanford, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Yale. The firm reports that in 1999 the top six schools from which the Chicago office drew were Northwestern, Yale, Duke, Chicago, Michigan, and Illinois. The name game is alive and well at Sidley; attorneys say law schools' reputations still carry more weight than any other factor in the hiring process. A litigator in Chicago puts it bluntly: "Sidley only interviews the best at the best schools. Unless you are in the top of your class (Nos. 1 through 5) at a regional law school, Sidley pretty much won't look at you." Another agrees that the firm "draws most heavily from top Chicago schools." But even with the pedigree of a top law school, grades still make or break candidates. An IP/Trademark practitioner in the Dallas office gripes that "hiring is very much tied to grades, sometimes to the exclusion of other very meaningful qualifications. As a result, some deserving candidates have been overlooked." Another litigator in the main office affirms the narrow window of opportunity; getting an offer at "most schools...means being in the top 10 percent of your class." This is not to say the system doesn't keep insiders guessing. Another Dallas IP/Trademark practitioner finds it "strange - and a bit unfair - that [the firm] will sometimes allow people to come in for interviews, even knowing that they do not meet the minimal standards and therefore cannot be hired." Charm works Others insist that additional factors come into play in deciding the fate of future lawyers. "One of Sidley's best features are its people. Hiring is competitive because Sidley not only seeks to hire smart people but also hires people with whom it is a pleasure to work," says another Chicago litigation associate. A counterpart in L.A. echoes that assessment, mentioning that "Sidley is selective as far as law school attended and journals go, but it tries to get the best and brightest and most well-rounded out of that 'smart group.'" For those interested in IP, note that "qualified candidates with the necessary scientific background are very much in demand." In fact, one patent attorney alerts Vault.com that the firm will be "less grade-conscious" when it comes to hiring. "Top five percenters with an engineering degree are not easy to come by," says that contact. Another agrees that "experience in technology is just as important as outstanding law school performance." Long on interviews means short on turn-around Adhering to standard operating procedure for a large law firm, "the interview process usually begins with a 20-minute on-campus interview, which is followed by a callback interview." Sidley pays for "reasonable airfare and hotel accommodations," except for first-year law students, who pay their own way. The entire callback session tends to be a slightly longer than average, "usually lasting five or six hours," a timespan that includes lunch. Candidates have between eight and 10 interviews of 30 minutes each with senior partners or associates; the firm tries to use interviewers from a fairly broad cross section of departments and practice areas. Breaking up the long interviewing day is "lunch, usually with junior associates." This gives the candidate a chance to meet prospective peers as well as to "ask questions on a more informal basis." Sidley does not dawdle when it comes to deciding whether to extend an offer. After the hearty meal, the payoff awaits for those who made the grade (or to be more precise, those who made the grades).
Social life and work shall not meet Associates express great respect for each other as colleagues, but most seem to draw the line at pursuing social connections outside of the office. Some attribute this to the fact that the firm is "extremely oriented towards ensuring that the associates are well-rounded persons and do not sacrifice their family and personal lives." This is "not a face-time firm;" attorneys want to get their work done and get out of the office. "Most attorneys are pleasant and professional but want to get home to their families," says a DC litigator. "This is not a firm where people spend a lot of time socializing with one another." This division between work life and social life brings mixed reviews. Many Sidley lawyers are relieved by the lack of pressure to schmooze outside of the office with their co-workers, but others wish there was a little more camaraderie in the evenings. Overall, most seem to appreciate the hands-off attitude associates find the atmosphere to be "collegial" and "warm" and note that "Sidley...does not strive to be the center of an attorney's social circle. Most attorneys have close friends here, but there is not an imperative to belong to a group." Or in other words, "this firm is not a frat house." Follow the leader Sidley associates tend to measure their own circumstances against those of other firms. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of salary. As a major player in the legal world, Sidley & Austin has been forced to keep up with the upward spiral of law salaries. While not a leader in the paycheck wars, S&A keeps up with the Joneses well enough; Sidley met other top firms in offering $125,000 a year to first-years in spring 2000. Some associates are more enthusiastic than others, exclaiming that "pay is excellent for hours worked and Chicago cost of living" or insisting that "the slightly lower salary at Sidley, as compared to other large firms, is a reasonable trade-off for the superior quality of life offered by the firm." All's fair in quality and quantity? The de-equitization of a number of partners had a profound impact on everyone at Sidley. Associates say they have to fight much harder to get quality work, because now the partners are running scared and taking the interesting material with them. Since the partner "restructuring," complains a Dallas associate, the partners "have been motivated to maintain their own billable hours, thus the quality of work and the quantity of training for the associates has been severely limited." Attorneys insist that the work the firm does is consistently "top-notch" - it's just not easy to get. You have to "be aggressive in asking for work you want to do. No one will hand you the good stuff."
Mary K. Arnberg Director of Human Resources-Legal (312) 853-7227
Baker & McKenzie;Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue;Kirkland & Ellis;Mayer, Brown & Platt;McDermott, Will & Emery; More Company Profiles For more career information, go to Vault.com ©2000, Vault.com Inc
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