Practice Group Choices: M&A, Finance, Employee Benefits/Executive Compensation? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I have to pick a practice group. I am interested in potentially joining all 3 of them and have enjoyed my time doing work for each one. In particular, I am most interested in doing Employee Benefits/Executive Compensation. Ideally, I would like to stay at a big law firm long-term, but since that may not be possible, I also have to consider exit opportunities. However, I heard that exit opportunities can be a little bit more limited and am a little worried about specializing so early. (if this is helpful, this is in the context of biglaw; has strong groups in all 3).

[Anonymous User]

TBH I don't believe this is real. Like you don't know the exits or merits of each. Maybe it's just the phrasing.

99% of people would / should take Employee Benefits. The reason why most don't is because they don't have the opportunity as they are scarcer. And so they end up being pushed into finance or corporate churning docs. Employee Benefits has way better hours, way less / if any firedrills, much harder to fuck up in, way easier and has great exit options.

Finance exits are crap - banks, whoopdedo - and corporate better, but you're going into one of the worst QOL practice groups to get a QOL exit at some point maybe potentially...

1% of people love all the whizzy finance terminology and get off on all the project management / herding cats; love all the checklists and sh1tstorm of halfbaked documents in corporate; love, love, love organisation, have supernatural attention to detail, no friends and a 100% dedication to life in the office...maybe finance / corporate is the right answer for them.

[Anonymous User]

Anon, because I recently made a similarly tough decision.

I don't know anything about Finance, so I won't comment there.

M&A will give you broader exit options in-house, but the exits can often be quite boring. I think the long-term in-house path can be quite interesting, but I'd hate to be a junior M&A in-house lawyer. M&A associates sometimes exit into business development roles, which would definitely be more interesting than junior M&A in-house legal work, but you also are no longer in a legal role (a plus to some). Generally, M&A people have a much higher probability of becoming a GC somewhere, but that's pretty far down the line.

Exec Comp/Employee Benefits has ample in-house roles too. Not a lot of people are in this practice, and it's probably on the opposite end of desirability as M&A for most lawyers (all of whom have next to no clue what the practice does). Most people think Exec Comp/Employee Benefit groups are ERISA hell, which is not the case any more if you're at one of the more prestigious corporate shops. ERISA work is generally too low margin there. There is a lot of substantive variety from tax to securities to employment law, and you get real responsibility much sooner than you would in M&A. I also think the diligence is much more interesting (and less plentiful). The big downside (or upside for some) is that you juggle a lot of deals compared to M&A associates who might only be working on 1-3 deals, depending on how massive they are. Because it's deal work at the end of the day, you're also a slave to the economy and deal timelines.

[Anonymous User]

Anon because I work in Exec Comp / ERISA and there really aren’t many of us plus I’d be easily identifiable.

I think there is a lot of misinformation on here regarding the exit options for transactional benefits and exec comp. Because those are high margin, bet the company types of issues, a lot of in-house departments outsource them when they need advice.

I know many people at these types of firms that don’t have the knowledge/understanding to go into an in-house position advertised for ERISA/Benefits/Comp. These associates are just specialty M&A associates who would be competing against other M&A associates for general corporate in-house roles.

If you’re in exec comp/ERISA, you probably need to learn Title I or qualified plans or health and welfare. If you look at many of the postings, they look for one of those three sub-specialties. There aren’t many in-house jobs that look for people who focus on severance agreements, incentive comp and bonus structures (most look for Title I).

An associate at a top corporate firm’s executive compensation team will have almost 0 knowledge on qualified plans outside of basic due diligence. Depending on the firm’s clientele, some associates will get exposure to Title I (investment management, fee disclosure type of work). That’s why a lot of these firms actively hire former corporate tax and m&a associates into their groups (and give them Mid-Level class standing).

I’m not saying you shouldn’t take a position in exec comp/benefits (I love working in the area). But if your main focus is on great in-house positions, I don’t think it’s the best practice group unless you’re at a firm that does a wide range of exec comp and benefits (for example, Ropes).

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Thank you! I found the area interesting as well. What would you say are some common exit options if not in house?

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Thank you! I found the area interesting as well. What would you say are some common exit options if not in house?

I'm the anon with the third post in this thread. I think the other anons were a bit too pessimistic about exit options. There are more than enough benefits counsel positions out there, and you can easily sell yourself in a way to get those gigs. Another relatively common exit is HR Director. I don't know how the arena looks for compensation consultants, but I imagine that could be doable too.

[Anonymous User]

Im the anon from the fourth post. There are a lot of benefits jobs in-house and HR Director, etc. I wasn’t being pessimistic about those job options.

I’m just being completely honest about the fact that HR Director and many of the in-house benefits jobs aren’t really avenues for an exec comp associate at a big m&a firm, unless it’s a firm that has associates do all of benefits (ranging from QP, to Title I, to due diligence, to exec comp). Some firms have the two groups in completely separate practices. For example, someone doing exec comp at Kirkland won’t be a real candidate for an HR Director position (but an employee benefits associate at Kirkland will).

Those jobs want people to work on like 401(k) plans, employee handbooks, health and welfare plans. Someone who works in exec comp at any V20 isn’t necessarily going to have that background knowledge.

The most common exit option I’ve seen is one of the jobs above to a lower ranked V100 that does more QP work, then on to Director of HR or Benefits counsel. Or some go in as senior manager/director to the Big 4 doing Comp & Rewards (this would be a good exit option, I guess, since that is also big dollar work-409A, 280G, etc.).