Background And Recruiting
Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz is a legal firm founded in the year 1965. The firm is headquartered in New York and the founder members of the firm are Herbert Wachtell, Leonard Rosen, Martin Lipton, and George Katz. All the four members of the firm graduated from the New York University. The firm is very principled and rigid about its functioning and that is perhaps why the firm has been able to establish a name for itself in the law industry. Some of the aspects that helps Wachtell stand apart from some of its competitors is its pickiness in regards to choosing legal cases and recruitment of lawyers, its compensation for attorneys and fee structure for the clients, and its policy of choosing quality over quantity.
The above mentioned business strategy might not have helped Wachtell grow the way most of the other legal firms did during its time. However, with such defined principles and policies, Wachtell was able to get complete control over its scope and aspects of business which many few firms have been able to in the past. The uniqueness and magnitude of the cases handled by the firm has helped its attorney learn greater aspects of law and it also helped the firm coin some of the important legal phrases like “poison pill.” In today’s times, Wachtell is considered one of the leaders when it comes to handling cases dealing with mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, corporate governance, takeover defense, private equity, and shareholder activism.
When it comes to hiring its associates, the scenario is pretty competitive and Wachtell chooses only the best law students from the country. It does not have any cutoff marks for its new hires but almost all of the students who get into the firm as associates are some of the brightest minds from the top universities of America. In addition to recruiting law graduates, Wachtell also hires management graduates. Most of the law firms stay away from MBA students citing flight risks. The interview process is also very strenuous for the students and it consists of various stages. The number of students who go through these stages and get the final call from the firm is very low when compared to the number of people who applied for the job in the beginning. Most of the students who make through the interview process are selected based on their aptitude for law and the basic understanding of the past and present scenarios of the legal industry.
