Need help picking restructuring firm Forum

[pigoso]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if anybody had any insight into DPW, Weil, and KE's restructuring department. I've been doing some reading on TLS and I know the hours can be brutal and that Weil/KE does debtor work while DPW does creditor work, but is there a significant difference in the type of things you learn in different firms? Also, are there significant differences in exit ops for debtor/creditor practice?

Also, for any restructuring associates at DPW/Weil/KE, do you do a pretty good mix of creditor/debtor work? It seems like every partner I've talked to at the three firms say they do a pretty even mix, but is that really true? Are Weil/KE associates actually doing any amount of significant creditor cases?

Thanks!

[Anonymous User]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if anybody had any insight into DPW, Weil, and KE's restructuring department. I've been doing some reading on TLS and I know the hours can be brutal and that Weil/KE does debtor work while DPW does creditor work, but is there a significant difference in the type of things you learn in different firms? Also, are there significant differences in exit ops for debtor/creditor practice?

Also, for any restructuring associates at DPW/Weil/KE, do you do a pretty good mix of creditor/debtor work? It seems like every partner I've talked to at the three firms say they do a pretty even mix, but is that really true? Are Weil/KE associates actually doing any amount of significant creditor cases?

Thanks!

Pretty sure at least KE its like 95% debtor, which is the "better" side for Rx (or so I've heard)

[Anonymous User]

I am not at any of the above firms but I am in RX.

DPW is mostly a (very good) creditor shop with an emphasis on bank reps. Like many large RX practices, they seem to be putting an effort into obtaining more debtor mandates, because debtor mandates = $$$. But, I would expect DPW to predominantly remain a creditor's shop for the foreseeable future.

On that note, I disagree with the notion that debtor = "better". They can definitely be better from the partners' perspective at an EWYK shop because, as mentioned above, $$$. But that does not trickle down to associates. The practices are just different. You can find some pretty good discussion of that in this forum already, so I'm not going to go into how. There is a case to be made that exit opps are better with creditor experience vs. debtor experience, but that is a tricky subject that calls for a more nuanced analysis. That said, a lot of the exit opps are going to be to other RX firms regardless of where you start out, so bear that in mind.

Re: creditor work at Kirkland/Weil:

Kirkland does a decent amount of creditor work, but it's miniscule in proportion to its debtor work. IDK how that interacts with the free market system, but I would not go to Kirkland with the intention of doing creditor work.

When I interviewed at Weil, I was told that they do something like 70:30 debtor:creditor work, which I think is accurate, but the creditor work is predominantly staffed by midlevels+. Again, would only go there if comfortable with the idea of exclusively doing debtor work.

FWIW I actively avoided debtor work, but I think there's a reasonable case for pursuing any constituency (including, e.g., UCC work) as long as you understand what they do.

Anyone who reflexively tells you to pick either Kirkland or Weil simply because they're the "top RX practices" probably has a surface level understanding of the RX world. You really need to look deeper than that IMO.

[Anonymous User]

This RX thread from a few months back contains a bunch of perspectives on debtor vs. creditor (and more). I found it helpful when choosing between RX groups.

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