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I found an older thread on my second question here, but no one had replied to it with answers. I know that exit options in general have been discussed a lot on these forums, but I have searched and not found answers to these specific questions. Thanks for any help.

- How much more difficult is it to find exit options from a firm that handles middle market deals, rather than the usual V10/20 stuff? Let's say it's still a V firm. I understand that a lot of "going in-house" involves going to a client -- is it much more limited because smaller clients will have smaller legal departments? Is it really difficult to find a position at say a bank that isn't a client just through applying to a job opening or going through a recruiter? What are your options if you can't find an "M&A" gig? General corporate work at a non-financial entity? How difficult is that to find? I am not concerned with prestige or making a comparable salary to BigLaw -- just wondering how difficult that "second step" in a career to something with a better lifestyle than BigLaw would be.

- What about the options in private vs. public M&A?

- I know this will depend upon firm/particular situation, but how much time does one typically spend in M&A before one would have the capacity to go in-house? It looks like 3 or 4 years? What about to lateral?

- If the in-house options are more limited with smaller deals, how possible is it to lateral to a firm that has bigger clients, so that you could go in-house later on?

Any thoughts on this?

TL;DR = Is it much harder to find exit options when your firm does "smaller" deals?

Anonymous User wrote:Any thoughts on this?

TL;DR = Is it much harder to find exit options when your firm does "smaller" deals?

If you are only working on small deals for small, private family-owned businesses, your in-house exit options will be limited. Though, it really depends on what you want to do. For me, as a very broad generalization, I want to go to a Fortune 500 (optimally as high up on the chain as possible) because they handle complex matters, have large legal teams and there is room to move up in the organization. Most of these companies are public, so they want associates who have worked for public companies. If you've done deals for public companies, even in the middle-market, you will be fine...at least in this hiring environment. I'm guessing my aspirations are not unique.

With that said, at a V10-V20, you probably have a higher likelihood of going in-house for a client, because I'm guessing these firms do not work with a ton of clients that do not have in-house departments. I work for a v50-v75 firm that has lots of clients with no in-house department or maybe 1-2 lawyers, so exit options to clients are more limited. The disadvantage is that you do not get to know the people you join, so you just need to do your due diligence outside of work (i.e., you need to network to understand the culture of a company so you are not blindly joining a company that might suck).

Ultimately, if you get solid M&A experience, you lead deals, etc. then you will have some options. If you can get some securities compliance experience and experience drafting commercial agreements, too, definitely jump at it. Lots of corporate in-house gigs like to see these items on your resume and lots of M&A associates do not have it.

Of course, this is just my opinion, but FWIW I'm in the process of interviewing to jump in-house and this has been my experience and the experience of friends who've jumped in-house.

EDIT: You can go in-house as soon as 2 years, but that's a rarity. Most good jobs require at least 3-4 years. So much is what experience you have. You can apply to jobs that ask for 8 years of experience and land an interview as a midlevel if you can run a deal. Start looking sooner rather than later though because it is a long process (especially for smaller markets).

Very helpful. Thank you.