Starting a Career in New York Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm considering a few different offers (NY and otherwise) and wondering whether this "start your career in NY for the best experience" advice is really credited. I hear it often from New York lawyers and wonder whether it's true or it's just something they tell themselves to convince themselves they made the right devision. Granted, I think I'm interested in transactional (M&A, capital markets, or something of the like).

Is this a flame or is it legit?

[arklaw13]

From what I understand it's pretty legit in terms of exit options. A V20 or higher NYC firm is pretty much the best thing to do if you want to do something like M&A --> in-house.

[Tiago Splitter]

It's not bad advice if you don't know where you want to end up, especially if you want transactional. But if you know where you want to be five years from now, just start there if possible. The tough decision is what to do when where you want to be five years from now doesn't do the kind of work you want to do.

[Anonymous User]

I'm considering a few different offers (NY and otherwise) and wondering whether this "start your career in NY for the best experience" advice is really credited. I hear it often from New York lawyers and wonder whether it's true or it's just something they tell themselves to convince themselves they made the right devision. Granted, I think I'm interested in transactional (M&A, capital markets, or something of the like).

Is this a flame or is it legit?

It's not flame. Take cap markets - nearly 100% of the bank / underwriter representation is done out of New York. You might get to do those deals on other cities, but it'll generally arise out of your representation of local issuers / borrowers, and the deal flow is much, much less - they might access the market once every couple of years, but a bank client is doing deals literally every week. You can console yourself by reviewing periodic reporting from the issuer down the street, but trust me, it aint the same.

Similarly, M&A. The vast majority of serious buyside representation is done out of NY. There are a handful of exceptions - Ares or Bain hiring LA or Boston firms, respectively; TPG sometimes uses Ropes as well (but IIRC, more often they use Cravath, Cleary et al. out of NY). M&A attorneys in other cities are either doing small to middle market deals between local companies or representing local clients when they're bought out. (Note that when those local clients are bought out, you've just lost that cap markets client.)

There are exceptions to the NY rule. As noted above, Ropes has a great transactional practice in Boston. K&E does great work in Chicago, and their Chicago office probably has the best restructuring practice in the country, inclusive of NYC. A couple of the firms with big NY practices have good offices in LA - but emphasis on "a couple". For certain sectors, other cities beat NYC - venture capital / tech out of SV/SF, or energy out of Houston. But those fields really aren't that big, and the scope is very limited. When a tech company makes it big and wants to access the capital markets to finance a serious transaction, that deal will be handled by at least one NY firm, and maybe NY firms on both sides (albeit, perhaps, one with a SV office). For any hostile (or competitive) energy M&A deal, NY firms are likely to be in the lead, often working with the company's usual Texas counsel.

TL;DR - for corporate work, with a few widely known exceptions, you simply must start in NY to get exposed to the best training and the highest volume of deal flow. And doing deals is how you learn your trade in corporate, and what builds the skills you need either to advance within a firm or to be attractive as a in-house hire.