Activist Hedge Fund Forum

[lawstudent212]

Anyone work as in-house counsel for an activist hedge fund? Curious about the general lifestyle / comp.

[Anonymous User]

Olshan, Schulte, Cadwalader are the three big activist advisory practices. my firm only does activist defense - find it interesting, but as unpredictable as M&A, and can turn into a sale process depending on how situation evolves

not a lifestyle move

EDIT: I see you're actually talking about in-house. no experience there, but just impressionistically I'd think that many in-house lawyers at funds with some activist work wouldn't do exclusively activism advisory, but would be generalists interfacing with Olshan/Schulte/Cadwalader, along with the investing folks, as needed

recent activist matter I did, to my knowledge had no in-house involvement. was the founder/principal/whatever at the fund + outside counsel.

Elliott might have some AGC-type specialists, just given their size

[lawstudent212]

Thanks for the insight. Yeah, my role would be more of a generalist at an activist fund. They do a proxy fight every 6-9 months so that is relatively rare.

[persia1921]

Limited experience with activist work in a firm (and none in-house), but I will say that the little bit I did at the firm was super painful. It is VERY contentious work (which is probably obvious) and folks' patience wears thin quickly. I also found the work to be incredibly tedious (e.g., scraping bylaws to make sure you don't miss a line in how to submit proposals, etc.) It may be for some but it definitely was not for me. Maybe a different story in-house though.