Reaching out to a different office as a summer Forum

[Anonymous User]

I am an incoming corporate summer at a v50. The firm has an office in the middle east in the country where my family is from and I speak a bit of the language. I’m happy with the location of my office and have no interest in living in the middle east. That being said I would definitely enjoy trying my hand at deals in this country. From what I understand they do not have any summers there, but in the past have included summers on a handful of their deals. Would it make me look too gunnery if I hit up one of the partners over there saying I was interested in being staffed on one of their deals? I know in practice it will likely suck, with calls at awful times, but I’d be very curious to have the experience.

[NoLongerALurker]

Won't be too gunnery to put your hand up / mention it. Just mention it to whoever staffs you early on and they'll file it in the back of their mind and if anything comes up they'll consider roping you in, which is really all you can hope for.

[namefromplace]

Yeah definitely not gunnery, and you have a good reason to want to work on the project. I think it's one thing for someone to reach out to say, a London office because you "think it would be really cool to work in London," but if your family is from there and you speak the language, that's a solid reason for your interest. I second what the above poster said about speaking to whoever is staffing the summers, but if your program allows you to seek out your own assignments (which it probably will) then I would also shoot and email to an attorney working in the office you're interested in working with and try to set up a networking call. Assuming it goes well, you can mention you'd like to see how deals work in that office and you can ask them if they have any assignments you can work on.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Thanks, both of you, for the helpful advice. I know my firm uses a free market system for assigning work, so I think I will definitely try and advocate for myself.