Jul 16, 2026 · 38 min · 11 segments
Send us Fan Mail New York’s legal market is changing. For those long established firms, pressure is coming from multiple directions. The city is now…
Tyler CircuitGuestAnd look, to start, I think one of the most obvious ways in which, one of the most illustrative ways really in which the market there is changing and, and which everyone likes to talk about is the challenge facing white shoe firm Cravath, one of the oldest and most prestigious and most successful New York global-- well, f- New York firms or firms anywhere in the world really in its history.
But is undoubtedly going through a serious, uh, uh, patch of difficulty at the moment.
Cravath lost their fifth litigation partner in a year, uh, when Tim Cameron, uh, moved from there to Simpson Thatcher at the end of last week.
And Cravath, of course, is just in three locations, New York, London, and Washington, DC, but really it's still a New York firm.
Uh, but that so far, at least on the surface, doesn't seem to have stopped the rot, I suppose.
I mean, that's not to say that the people they don't have there still aren't amazing.
Uh, they very much are, and they very much are still doing some amazing top work.
But there is undoubtedly a leak that is at risk of turning into a flood, I suppose we could say there.
You know, I'm gonna take this with a very large dollop of salt frankly because Cravath is still a, uh, remarkably successful machine.
You know, it still ranks really high in the Vault rankings, which is the big rankings for, um, uh, uh, reputation and prestige and so on.
Um, and in many ways it still leads the market certainly [chuckles] certainly in terms of, uh, associate salaries.
So it isn't so much a, uh, an, a marker of decreased quality or in some cases decreased, uh, prestige because some of that still attain-- uh, uh, um, obtains with Cravath.
But, but what, what it's shown is that Cravath has been unable to adapt and most importantly, unable to grow in that time.
Your point about, um, it not having many offices outside New York is a really important one, which we're gonna be discussing in a big way [chuckles] in this podcast because, um, the difficulty of expanding for firms, those firms that, that find it very difficult, who which, which are inelastic, uh, in their structures and in their culture are facing very severe headwinds at the moment, and Cravath is one of them.
And look, to start, I think one of the most obvious ways in which, one of the most illustrative ways really in which the market there is changing and, and which everyone likes to talk about is the challenge facing white shoe firm Cravath, one of the oldest and most prestigious and most successful New York global-- well, f- New York firms or firms anywhere in the world really in its history.
But is undoubtedly going through a serious, uh, uh, patch of difficulty at the moment.
Cravath lost their fifth litigation partner in a year, uh, when Tim Cameron, uh, moved from there to Simpson Thatcher at the end of last week.
And Cravath, of course, is just in three locations, New York, London, and Washington, DC, but really it's still a New York firm.
Uh, but that so far, at least on the surface, doesn't seem to have stopped the rot, I suppose.
I mean, that's not to say that the people they don't have there still aren't amazing.
Uh, they very much are, and they very much are still doing some amazing top work.
But there is undoubtedly a leak that is at risk of turning into a flood, I suppose we could say there.
You know, I'm gonna take this with a very large dollop of salt frankly because Cravath is still a, uh, remarkably successful machine.
You know, it still ranks really high in the Vault rankings, which is the big rankings for, um, uh, uh, reputation and prestige and so on.
Um, and in many ways it still leads the market certainly [chuckles] certainly in terms of, uh, associate salaries.
So it isn't so much a, uh, an, a marker of decreased quality or in some cases decreased, uh, prestige because some of that still attain-- uh, uh, um, obtains with Cravath.
But, but what, what it's shown is that Cravath has been unable to adapt and most importantly, unable to grow in that time.
Your point about, um, it not having many offices outside New York is a really important one, which we're gonna be discussing in a big way [chuckles] in this podcast because, um, the difficulty of expanding for firms, those firms that, that find it very difficult, who which, which are inelastic, uh, in their structures and in their culture are facing very severe headwinds at the moment, and Cravath is one of them.
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