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By what year should an average associate in a typical corporate M&A practice start drafting initial drafts of the purchase agreement and other primary documents?

Anonymous User wrote:By what year should an average associate in a typical corporate M&A practice start drafting initial drafts of the purchase agreement and other primary documents?

Varies wildly by how important/novel the deal is and probably by firm too, so your "should" is weird.

I've seen 4-5th years do this.

Depends wildly on groups and partners. I started drafting the deal docs in the second half of my 3rd year for either small shitty deals or for one particular partner. But I also work with partners who will never let you touch primary deal docs no matter your seniority or if they do it’s only to run their changes.

As others have said, it totally depends. I worked on the main deal docs as a first year for this super small deal for a friend of the firm. Generally I think you should start towards the end of your third year and then be working on them for most deals by the middle of your 4th year.

I'm a fourth year. Really partner dependent. Some partners don't even tell me they're signing up a deal. They just send me the executed PSA and tell me to work it. Other partners will send me the LOI and ask for me to send the other side a PSA. Some partners will do the same but review and revise the PSA before sending it.