5th year M&A associate who just received an offer for a commercial counsel role in bigtech with pretty good pay ($275K TC). The wlb and team seem great. However, I'm hesitating whether to accept or try to hold out for an M&A role in house. Churning out contracts sounds so boring, and based on my interactions with the deal teams at our clients, it seems commercial counsel are sometimes looked down upon for being unsophisticated. Are these concerns warranted?

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Yeah they are warranted but that’s still a pretty good offer. If you have the right big law experience you could probably still pivot to M&A later — though you’re right you run the risk of getting labeled as a commercial attorney.

FWIW — commercial attorneys are closest to the revenue source at most companies and there is some security in that. I’ve never really understood why “product counsel” was more prestigious than “commercial” — always seemed to me like commercial was doing the work and product was just “adding value.” All might be moot though with AI.

(Coming from M&A in-house counsel that has also done my fair share of commercial work as well).

For sophistication, I was thinking of deal structure and greater number of issues, but I guess that's fair. The fewer number of M&A roles and job security is certainly something to think about - I sort of assumed M&A wouldn't get impacted much given how small the in house teams already are.

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