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Suppose you can't / don't want to live in NYC, but really want to do transactional work. What would be the next best market, in terms of quality of work, career prospects, etc? I'm guessing it has to be one of LA, Chicago, or Silicon Valley.

Relatedly, what market would give you the best prospect of moving to NYC a few years down the line, if any?

Anonymous User wrote:Suppose you can't / don't want to live in NYC, but really want to do transactional work. What would be the next best market, in terms of quality of work, career prospects, etc? I'm guessing it has to be one of LA, Chicago, or Silicon Valley.

Relatedly, what market would give you the best prospect of moving to NYC a few years down the line, if any?

I would say SV of the markets you listed. Houston is also hot.

As I understand it, the work varies a bit based on market. It's hard to compare them because energy work is different from VC work which is different from M&A. I could be totally off base (not a lawyer and know very little about transactional work) but I think it depends a lot on what you actually want to do.

What does "best" even mean?

Any major market is going to have a good number of deals. There are companies based all over the country, and they likely dont want to add to expenses by traveling to NYC for weeks to negotiate a deal. LA, Chicago, SV all have a good transactional market. As someone said, Houston is hot as well, there were a ton of deals and IPOs launched there in 2014. But its a niche area, focused on the energy sector by and large.

Chicago (I'm biased) tons of PE firms here and a healthy number of Blue Chips headquartered near enough to make Chicago the go-to market for most of them. Thereis such a variety here that it keeps you interested. NY only wins because the bankers are there so you can work on everything from NY. But Chicago reps a bulk of the companies opposite the bankers.

Charlotte son

Chicago is second, in my mind. SV can't afford/won't pay biglaw rates so I don't really think of them as a hub for corporate work.

Boston, Philly, LA, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta are all probably in that third tier below Chicago but above more regional cities.

TCR is - there is no "second best market" - every other transactional market is small compared to NYC. What you need to do is be at the small number of firms in each market that get what transactional work is there. Boston doesn't have a ton of transactional work, but Ropes Boston does. Chicago has some transactional work but its divvied up between a small number of firms - obviously, working at K&E Chicago will give you great transactional experience akin to working at any white shoe firm in NYC. There are a handful of really good transactional practices in LA, too.

Transactional work in Houston and SV is fairly specialized, so you need to be mindful that it may not port back to NYC as easily. There is (comparatively) very little VC or oil & gas work done out of NYC. That being said, if you're working in a practice area that will "travel" back to NYC - e.g. securities, PE work - then Houston or SV can also be great options if you're at the right firms.

TL;DR - if you're excluding NYC and want to do transactional, you need to focus on firm quality much more than market.

Either LA or SF, because of the access to excellent Mexican food.

flawschoolkid wrote:Either LA or SF, because of the access to excellent Mexican food.

If this is factor, go all in on Texas.

London. By deal volume, other than new york nothing comes close.

I hate to ask the obvious question - but I notice that DC is excluded here. Is going corporate in DC a problem (provided you're still in V20/V10/etc)?

zacharus85 wrote:I hate to ask the obvious question - but I notice that DC is excluded here. Is going corporate in DC a problem (provided you're still in V20/V10/etc)?

Yes. While DC and Northern Virginia do have a small market for corporate, it's tiny compared to even Chicago and LA. Legal work in DC revolves around regulations and litigation--corporate is a tiny practice area.

I asked a tax partner at a NY V20 a similar question about tax practice a while ago. His view was that the best secondary market was Chicago. From what I recall, he said it was the only market with enough of the right kind of deal volume to allow junior (tax) associates to build up the same skills and knowledge base as NY. Of course, I guess that only applies if you want to engage in the same kind of tax practice as the NY firms.

Anonymous User wrote:

zacharus85 wrote:I hate to ask the obvious question - but I notice that DC is excluded here. Is going corporate in DC a problem (provided you're still in V20/V10/etc)?

Yes. While DC and Northern Virginia do have a small market for corporate, it's tiny compared to even Chicago and LA. Legal work in DC revolves around regulations and litigation--corporate is a tiny practice area.

There's a few notable exceptions (Carlyle Group is DC based).

AntipodeanPhil wrote:I asked a tax partner at a NY V20 a similar question about tax practice a while ago. His view was that the best secondary market was Chicago. From what I recall, he said it was the only market with enough of the right kind of deal volume to allow junior (tax) associates to build up the same skills and knowledge base as NY. Of course, I guess that only applies if you want to engage in the same kind of tax practice as the NY firms.

Not sure what "right kind" means, but I think Dallas is probably the new Chicago. By that I mean that you can do international work, you can do real estate, private equity, energy, basically every area that is going to have unique tax aspects. Some may disagree, but I don't hear anyone talking about Chicago as a big market for future growth. Dallas has fewer bank clients than NY but I think that applies almost equally to Chicago. Dallas has more blue chip companies than Chicago and more are moving south every day.

In terms of OP, I recommend Dallas if you're looking for Texas COL but with a greater variety of transactions than Houston.

zacharus85 wrote:I hate to ask the obvious question - but I notice that DC is excluded here. Is going corporate in DC a problem (provided you're still in V20/V10/etc)?

Look carefully at those firm's attorney numbers by practice area. I doubt there will be large corporate groups in DC at any of the top firms there.

Anonymous User wrote:Not sure what "right kind" means, but I think Dallas is probably the new Chicago. By that I mean that you can do international work, you can do real estate, private equity, energy, basically every area that is going to have unique tax aspects. Some may disagree, but I don't hear anyone talking about Chicago as a big market for future growth. Dallas has fewer bank clients than NY but I think that applies almost equally to Chicago. Dallas has more blue chip companies than Chicago and more are moving south every day.

http://www.siteselection.com/issues/201 ... metros.cfm

AntipodeanPhil wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Not sure what "right kind" means, but I think Dallas is probably the new Chicago. By that I mean that you can do international work, you can do real estate, private equity, energy, basically every area that is going to have unique tax aspects. Some may disagree, but I don't hear anyone talking about Chicago as a big market for future growth. Dallas has fewer bank clients than NY but I think that applies almost equally to Chicago. Dallas has more blue chip companies than Chicago and more are moving south every day.

http://www.siteselection.com/issues/201 ... metros.cfm

Fine, I'll bite.

1) Goes by number of sites, hard to tell why the nominal number is significant. Jobs or dollar value are 2 that would make much more sense.

2) The Chicago pool pulls from three different states worth of projects. I'm not saying those wont generate legal work in Chicago. But if you use this concept, then at least some of Houston, Dallas and Austin should be pooled. Increased activity in one city generates more legal work in the others.

Also, Chicago has more than 3 times more than New York and New Jersey combined?

3) Indianapolis has 52 projects on here. Kansas City has 85. Louisville/Jefferson County has 86. Baltimore has 60.
But Austin Freaking Texas only has 53. If you actually think those numbers reflect the economic viability of these areas, I would love to hear your explanation of this.

4) I don't know for sure if this applies to Chicago, but I strongly suspect it does, and it certainly applies to Kansas City and NY/NJ. These cities will offer tax breaks to companies to move to the other city, for instance between NY and NJ. So, on paper, it looks like a new company is opening an office. Really, the city just paid a bunch of money to move a company 20 miles. It generates increased construction (maybe) but that's it. There won't be any new jobs or new legal work apart from the agreement itself. Texas also uses tax breaks but it uses them generally to pursue businesses outside of Texas. So, sites in Texas actually represent a new company, whereas plenty in NY/NJ or Kansas City will be a new "site" without any new business in the area.

And I can go on. I know there are people on here who will defend Chicago to the death.

Some of the local concern stuff misses the point since a lot of transactional work isn't really locally based. You'll do a deals out of a Chicago office for a delaware LLC w/ a headquarters in Michigan for a PE firm out of Connecticut. A lot of work is more firm specific than market specific, though that applies differently to something like VC work (mainly out of CA) or energy (TX). Though that's a different question than the one being asked here.

re DC: Definitely not a big corp focus. Some firms still do it, but you'll probably have to be more educated going into the process to be conversant at OCI to not have some eyebrows raised.

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Texas in general is growing and a terrific place to hone transactional skills but there are more blue chips and fortune 500s in the middle of the country that use the large Chicago firms than probably anywhere else. Chicago pulls from Missouri, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, etc. more than Texas pulls from anywhere outside Texas (or any other market for that matter). NY is the best because all the banks are there so they are in on pretty much all the deals in one way or the other.

London is a nice answer but if you are there as an American JD you are just doing American Cap Markets mostly and its very hard to become a licensed UK counsel so it's kind of a non-starter.

nonsharepartner wrote:Texas in general is growing and a terrific place to hone transactional skills but there are more blue chips and fortune 500s in the middle of the country that use the large Chicago firms than probably anywhere else. Chicago pulls from Missouri, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, etc. more than Texas pulls from anywhere outside Texas (or any other market for that matter). NY is the best because all the banks are there so they are in on pretty much all the deals in one way or the other.

London is a nice answer but if you are there as an American JD you are just doing American Cap Markets mostly and its very hard to become a licensed UK counsel so it's kind of a non-starter.

"Texas Dominates 2014 F500 List with 52 Companies": http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2014/ ... anies.html

Are you people seriously comparing the economy of the entire state of Texas with a single city? Houston and Dallas are two completely different legal markets over two hundred miles from each other.

It makes sense to talk about Texas as one market if you go to law school in another state, but in practice, even Fort Worth and Dallas have independent identities in terms of the legal communities in each place.

I am familiar with the legal markets in Chicago and in Texas. There are many, many great things about practicing in Texas, but some of you are being ridiculous.