I keep hearing that KE Restructuring has terrible exit options. Insight from current associates/partners? Forum

[Anonymous User]

2L Restructuring SA in the NY office. I feel uncomfortable asking associates about this right now (just finished my first week). Worried about all the buzz I hear about no good exit options.

[Lacepiece23]

2L Restructuring SA in the NY office. I feel uncomfortable asking associates about this right now (just finished my first week). Worried about all the buzz I hear about no good exit options.

TLS wisdom says that bankruptcy period has terrible exit options. YMMV. Good luck.

[Anonymous User]

I’m a 2L SA in Chicago - was originally in Rx but dropped it because of this. Debtor side Rx exits appear to be largely other firms; occasionally people will nab an emerging debtor gig or get lucky and go in house somewhere.

[Anonymous User]

2L Restructuring SA in the NY office. I feel uncomfortable asking associates about this right now (just finished my first week). Worried about all the buzz I hear about no good exit options.

Former KE Rx who has switched out.

Unfortunately true re exit ops. Most people end up going to other firms. In house gigs are significantly more rare and will almost always still be in the distressed debt or bankruptcy space (ie, distressed MA at a fund).

I’m grateful to KE Rx in the sense that it let me start at a top firm for my career vs significantly worse alternative options, but if decades of bankruptcy practice isn’t what you want out of a career, the data does show that you should switch practice groups before your 3rd year.

On doing that, the two most common switches are finance and litigation. They have the most in common with bankruptcy practice. Finance has decent exit options, significantly better than Rx but notably worse than Cap Markets or M&A. It does have generally better lifestyle - though it won’t at KE atm. You can reasonably switch to Capm or MA though, it will just be a bit harder. Litigation has better exits than Rx but worse than pretty much any corporate practice, but anecdotally the litigators that I know have made it work well for them.

Despite all of the bad news above, though - I actually really enjoyed my time at KE Rx. If you want a lot of responsibility as a junior you'll get it. It's definitely very "interesting" as far as Biglaw junior associate work goes. I'm sure it's not like this for every case but I was interacting with the company and advisors daily on substantive issues. I think if you just want a place to grow up and learn how to be a good junior associate and manager (as you get to 2nd and 3rd year) it's going to be a good temporary home for you. FWIW when I switched practice groups in my third year, I had no trouble at all finding a nice peer firm to land at and didn't even lose a class year. People really wanted K&E Rx associates because they know that I had likely handled more intense situations than equivalent juniors in other areas (the group's rumored lack of work at the moment aside). Also want to qualify that I was not in NY - ymmv when you're competing against Cravath. In my market KE is the undisputed leader (I'm aware that outs my market).