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With everything being equal, which specialty gives you the "best" exit opportunities? I understand that "best" is not really defined and I think different people will determine "best" differently.

In my opinion, I think tech trans gives you the "easiest" path inhouse. However, the jobs you can get with tech trans may not be the best. I noticed just anecdotally that many GCs and AGCs (aka higher ups) come from M&A backgrounds. Not sure if others think the same way.

Most in-house attorneys have M&A backgrounds

thexfactor wrote:With everything being equal, which specialty gives you the "best" exit opportunities? I understand that "best" is not really defined and I think different people will determine "best" differently.

In my opinion, I think tech trans gives you the "easiest" path inhouse. However, the jobs you can get with tech trans may not be the best. I noticed just anecdotally that many GCs and AGCs (aka higher ups) come from M&A backgrounds. Not sure if others think the same way.

This has been my experience too. Tech trans can go in house first but I think often the more GC-track positions are M&A and corporate generalists with a couple years more BL experience.

Any thoughts on cap markets? Especially curious about options coming from DPW/Cleary

I've been told tax, but you have to actually like tax. I think part of the reason many GCs have an M&A background is because there are so many M&A lawyers in corporate.

Labor and employment folks have pretty consistent exit ops

I heard restructuring gives kind of hard to come by but very good ones that are not legal positions.( Business positions) also though tax gives good ones in variety of areas. Also I've heard employee benefits gives good ones in house

Any thoughts on exit options from real estate?

ditto to restructuring, especially if you're at a firm that does creditors works or works with funds.

If you look at goinhouse.com you can see that almost half the jobs require experience handling technology /IT related contracts. The secret is that there aren't many tech trans associates vs M&A in big and middle size law firms.

From my experience, a typical M&A practice is a lot different than what most junior to mid level counsel do inhouse.

In terms of supply and demand, it seems that most firms have A LOT more M&A associates vs tech trans or other specialists. I'm not sure exit opps for tax is better than tech trans. There are roughly a similar amount of associates in each specialty but there are a lot more jobs available for tech trans.

I heard that real estate is pretty hard to go inhouse. There aren't many positions available for pure real estate attorneys.

RaceJudicata wrote:Labor and employment folks have pretty consistent exit ops

Seconded, especially if you have experience in employee benefits / executive compensation