M&A versus Funds - Career Outlook & Exit Opportunities Forum

[Anonymous User]

As a very junior attorney at a V5 firm would love to hear the differences between M&A and Investment Funds practice. What is the day to day like + career outlook if you stay at a firm long term versus exit opportunities outside of law firm. Thank you!

[Anonymous User]

As a very junior attorney at a V5 firm would love to hear the differences between M&A and Investment Funds practice. What is the day to day like + career outlook if you stay at a firm long term versus exit opportunities outside of law firm. Thank you!

Exit opps probably better in M&A. You get broad transactional experience which is more valuable to different firms. Even non HF/PE/Banks do acquisitions and contract work, so they might have in house counsel to work on those things. Funds you pretty much need to go to a PE fund or HF.

Worked at a HF before becoming a lawyer. We actually had only 1 in house fund lawyer. Everything else farmed out really. But had like 4-5 in house deal lawyers.

[Anonymous User]

As a very junior attorney at a V5 firm would love to hear the differences between M&A and Investment Funds practice. What is the day to day like + career outlook if you stay at a firm long term versus exit opportunities outside of law firm. Thank you!

re: the day-to-day in a firm: anecdotally, I'm in M&A at a similar firm. One of my good friends is in funds. Her life is far more predictable than mine. She's not billing significantly less time than I am, but she can bill a lot more during the day and can consistently have more of a chance to switch off at night whereas it feels like I get at least half my billables after 6pm/on weekends. We're both annualizing 2200+, but hers feels far more humane. Just one data point, not sure if that's typical.

[Anonymous User]

Agree with all of the above. Funds, though, can get mind numbingly boring and repetitive.

[Anonymous User]

I am a senior in funds. My day to day is (in no order of priority): (i) fielding random questions from fund clients on whether their fund documents let them do something, (ii) drafting various portions of fund documents for new fund raise + managing juniors on basic stuff like entity formations, (iii) reviewing other fund documents for LP side clients and (iv) attending and/or drafting documents for various LP Committee meetings where certain items need to get approved.

I am not often given "surprise" projects. I do not get calls at Friday afternoon to turn something by Monday. I am still often overloaded with busy work. Unfortunately in my particular case I also work with some partners who have no home life and who regularly want to have hour+ long conference calls past 10pm on Sunday and throughout the week.

My exit options consist of private fund shops, pension plans, insurance companies (managing their investment programs) and to a lesser degree other new fin-techs focused on private investment space. Private Fund shops pay the most, with most of these being in NYC, and you can get comparable biglaw comp. In my experience, you still work a lot, you just handle more day to day operational matters vs. a new fund raise. Pension Plans pay the least, but you can get a pension and pretty light workload if working for government plan.

My opinion is that more private fund shops are going to start relying on in-house counsel because outside counsel rates are just ridiculous outside of a large, large fund-raise.