How many deals are you staffed on at a time? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Trying to gauge what is a reasonable number of deals to be on at one time. I've been getting staffed on as many as 4 or 5 active deals at once and it has been miserable (V10 M&A). A lot of my deals are staffed with only one or two juniors so we can't always split work based on who has more capacity.

How many deals are you normally on at once? I know some groups like exec comp or tax might be on tons of deals at once. Particularly interested to hear data points from people in groups like M&A, Capital Markets, etc.

[Anonymous User]

First year in NYC corporate, have been the only junior on all of my deals. I have been staffed on two deals at a time, three max. It has been enough to hit 200+ hour months every month since February.

[Anonymous User]

I'm in a corporate specialist group. I'm always staffed on at least 3, but often 10+ deals at a time. Usually it's just an hour or so a day per deal, so it ends up being like 6-8 hours a day, which is perfect. Rarely a few deals will pick up at the same time and suddenly it's like a 17 hour day, but usually then people are super accommodating (If I just say "I can't get to this for another like six hours" they'll always just accept that and deal with it without pushing back on timing).

Moral of the story: only go into specialist groups, kids. If I were in M&A I'd jump out my window.

[Anonymous User]

I’m in executive comp and am usually staffed on at least 35 active deals at a time. Of course my involvement in some deals will be minimal where I may spend just an hour or two then I won’t hear about that deal for months (if at all). My hours are probably better overall than corporate, but I’m also billing to 10+ matters a day with most entries being an hour or less.

[Anonymous User]

I'm in a corporate specialist group. I'm always staffed on at least 3, but often 10+ deals at a time. Usually it's just an hour or so a day per deal, so it ends up being like 6-8 hours a day, which is perfect. Rarely a few deals will pick up at the same time and suddenly it's like a 17 hour day, but usually then people are super accommodating (If I just say "I can't get to this for another like six hours" they'll always just accept that and deal with it without pushing back on timing).

Moral of the story: only go into specialist groups, kids. If I were in M&A I'd jump out my window.

Do you typically get urgent/weekend/holiday requests as a specialist? How's the predictability?

[Anonymous User]

I’m in executive comp and am usually staffed on at least 35 active deals at a time. Of course my involvement in some deals will be minimal where I may spend just an hour or two then I won’t hear about that deal for months (if at all). My hours are probably better overall than corporate, but I’m also billing to 10+ matters a day with most entries being an hour or less.

Literally same. And you never know which one is going to blow up.

[Anonymous User]

I'm in a corporate specialist group. I'm always staffed on at least 3, but often 10+ deals at a time. Usually it's just an hour or so a day per deal, so it ends up being like 6-8 hours a day, which is perfect. Rarely a few deals will pick up at the same time and suddenly it's like a 17 hour day, but usually then people are super accommodating (If I just say "I can't get to this for another like six hours" they'll always just accept that and deal with it without pushing back on timing).

Moral of the story: only go into specialist groups, kids. If I were in M&A I'd jump out my window.

Do you typically get urgent/weekend/holiday requests as a specialist? How's the predictability?

Compared to general corporate: much more predictable / rare to get urgent weekend stuff, but typically have at least a little bit. I only bill on weekends when I absolutely need to, and probably have one weekend a month with 0 hours billed, will usually bill 3-5 hours on a given weekend, and only like once a quarter or so will I have a weekend with more than 10 hours billed. Usually it's more like, on a Sat afternoon get an email saying they need something done over weekend (rather than getting a Saturday 8pm email requiring a Saturday 10pm turn-around).

[Anonymous User]

Depends if you're specialist vs straight M&A. Looks like the specialists weighed in at 4-10 or so deals at a time, but the time commitment isn't as much as M&A. I'm a 6-7th year corp associate doing the M&A quarterbacking. V50 firm, I think. Anyway, I try to keep at least 2-3 deals going at a time, as well as about 25-30% of my week being taken up by non-M&A projects like contract drafting, corp-governance, NDAs, and random other shit clients bother you about. Most of the time, I time it right where one closes and just as that happens another is starting to pick up. Taking an intentional sabbatical right now as I was annualizing 3000 hours from January until June and already hit my billing requirement for the year earlier this month (billing year ends in November) - so this time I didn't time it right and had five deals all closing w/in two weeks.

[Anonymous User]

Depends if you're specialist vs straight M&A. Looks like the specialists weighed in at 4-10 or so deals at a time, but the time commitment isn't as much as M&A. I'm a 6-7th year corp associate doing the M&A quarterbacking. V50 firm, I think. Anyway, I try to keep at least 2-3 deals going at a time, as well as about 25-30% of my week being taken up by non-M&A projects like contract drafting, corp-governance, NDAs, and random other shit clients bother you about. Most of the time, I time it right where one closes and just as that happens another is starting to pick up. Taking an intentional sabbatical right now as I was annualizing 3000 hours from January until June and already hit my billing requirement for the year earlier this month (billing year ends in November) - so this time I didn't time it right and had five deals all closing w/in two weeks.

Do you sleep/weekend?

[Anonymous User]

EC/VC midlevel here who does M&A on the side.

Seven company- or investor-side financings and three small M&A deals at the moment but main drag is the 70 company clients that are constantly pestering you to do their little projects all the time.

[s1m4]

EC/VC midlevel here who does M&A on the side.

Seven company- or investor-side financings and three small M&A deals at the moment but main drag is the 70 company clients that are constantly pestering you to do their little projects all the time.

What is considered a small M&A deal? This load sounds crazy!

[Anonymous User]

.

[Anonymous User]

Chiming in as a transactional tax associate to add context -- if we're talking about number of deals at any stage (meaning from conception/engagement to closing), I probably have 30-40 ongoing at any one time. As others said though, particular deals heat up and cool down on a daily basis, so it's a completely a different rhythm from corporate. One thing that I like about this is that you get more variety day-to-day and I'll often switch from one matter to another when I get tired of the first one.

[Anonymous User]

EC/VC midlevel here who does M&A on the side.

Seven company- or investor-side financings and three small M&A deals at the moment but main drag is the 70 company clients that are constantly pestering you to do their little projects all the time.

ec/vc associate here. This sounds insane. Like, more hours than there actually are in a month. I literally don't understand how you can do all this.