3rd year associate in NYC biglaw. Mostly in lev fin. Have the opportunity to move to a PE client’s debt capital market team as an associate in a purely business role. Am I killing my legal career?

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It depends on what you want to do. If you enjoy law, stay. You’re too junior to lateral back to anything other than a 3-5th year.

If you want to do business, take it and don’t look back. Opportunities to cross over are very hard to come by so consider yourself lucky.

Other than whether you want to do law or business long term, consider the proposed compensation and also the perceived status of the firm vs. the PE fund. The perceived status will determine your exit opportunities.

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Thanks, this opportunity sort of came as a shock. I wasn’t in the market but found out about an opening in a team I work with pretty regularly. I haven’t really had a chance to figure out where this leads to long term. The law firm trajectory is pretty transparent (even if it’s harder to achieve). I don’t know what switching over to a biz role full time entails. It also doesn’t sound like an often trodden path so I don’t know where to go for insight.

How’d you get so lucky?

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Lol I don’t know about luck - at the moment it’s just inducing anxiety. This is a client I work with fairly regularly and from everyone I’ve spoken to, that’s the only way this happens. Convincing someone of skill transferability isn’t easy. They have to have seen your work and built enough of a rapport for them to see you as a value add on the business side.

I understand the role is mostly process work in coordinating with financing sources that’ll fund acquisition financings. Anyone have any experience in this? Is this a massive risk? The associates I can see at the fund are all super young (undergrad -> IB analysts -> PE associates). Are there good exits from this role?

Big law M&A / Capital Markets. I would kill for this opportunity lol

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