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I am a 3L and have worked on ISDA and swaps-related documentation for both of my summer jobs. You are right, there are big changes happening in this space related to Dodd-Frank. Frankly, I am not sure if it is a growth area or a dying animal. I am happy to discuss in more detail offline. Feel free to PM me.

As the above poster said, yes, DF will certainly bring some big changes. But I wouldn't count on this having a huge impact on hiring for lawyers. I interned in risk management/ compliance for a long time at a bank, and while the bank's attorneys or GC may give sessions on ISDA documentation and draft up the general policy/ procedure for it, all of the actual documentation work was done by the compliance / risk management team. They were looking for a legal intern to help with some DF memos this summer, but they also made it abundantly clear that though the intern would be helping in a legal capacity,they would be part of a compliance team. So I guess bottom-line is, yes, it's growing, but in compliance. If you're cool with not exactly practicing law, it seems like a good deal to me since the pay and hours are decent.

know some derivatives lawyer from my vault 15 who went to banks. from their departure emails they were going in as "derivatives counsel." not sure how much of help this is, but looks like such in house positions do exist.

bump

I personally think this is a hot area. Not sure what a person in an "ISDA Documentation Position" does but I imagine there are plenty of compliance positions available as every ISDA Master Agreement requires a legal opinion as to its enforceability. Despite others, I think compliance is actually practicing law.

Prior to school I worked in CCR so would deal with ISDA and CSA negotiations with clients. The lawyers, primarily compliance I think, would actually draft and I guess confirm the terms, but our team along with the relationship people would decide on what they should be from a "business" perspective.

I don't see what immediate effect D-F will have on this area though, banks use ISDA and CSA agreements to protect themselves, and already have a vested interest in their own well-being that D-F shouldn't affect. It always seemed to me that the ISDA MA just contained boilerplate language and we simply filled in the details of our desired terms, so I have no idea what there actually is for lawyers to do. I remember emailing compliance occasionally with questions or certain document requests, but frankly I can't imagine the position is all that exciting.