Resources for firm info

[Orbits]

I keep hearing the most important part of successful interviewing is showing that you know a lot about the firm. Does anyone have any tips on how to gather info on firms that would help one show they can distinguish Firm X from Firm Y. A lot of these huge multinational firms seem to be carbon copies of each other so I am having a hard time.

[themanwithnoname]

they are huge carbon copies of eachother. chambers and partners is good for giving specific information.

[xferlawstudent]

Martindale.com
Google.com
Firm's own website
CSO literature

They are pretty much all the same.  Absolutely know which cities they are in, approx how many lawyers, where the interviewer(s) went to UG and LS, any recent news about the firm, any recent HUGE cases the firm won, and read or skim anything the interviewer has recently written.

Although you probably shouldn't talk about it in the first interview, you should probably also be aware of the the billable hour requirement and starting salary.  Also, if you think you may want to split your summer, you may want to look into that at this stage.

For BIGLAW you can knock alot of this out on NALP.

[Orbits]

thanks but martindale and chambers seem to just be reproductions of the firms' websites. am i not looking at the right stuff?