Related Posts
Community Builder
So courageous to post this
Visual Storyteller
💵 💵 💵
Rising Star
Additional Posts in Corporate Transactional Law
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
It greatly depends on your involvement. Two can be plenty if you are heavily involved. 10 may not be enough if you are just sending calendar invites and managing disclosure schedules.
Just wait until you are a mid level. Most of those juniors you are comparing yourself will burn out. This job is a marathon more than a sprint. Take on ad many deals as you can handle effectively but don’t overstretch yourself in a way that risks your health or the quality of your work.
I think the higher up you go the more you can handle it at once because you’re just reviewing other peoples work more and more instead of drafting yourself.
Caveat to above is that as you get more senior you’ll have more repeat client deals and also work spring up from inactive matters out of the blue. But generally speaking it would be much easier to churn out DD as a junior on 4-5 active deals than it would be to have 4-5 active deals as a senior. The former would just mean you don’t sleep for the very busy periods, the latter would be almost impossible even if you didn’t sleep.
Second year Corp & CRE associate at a mid-law firm. At any given time I’m tasked as the sole associate on approx. 1-3 mid-market M&A deals (same $ range as you), managing 10-15 CRE transactions, and general corp practice.
Second year running transactions, and that many at a time? Must be just cut and paste
Similar to you but second year midlaw, mainly healthcare (regulatory and transactional) but I also handle non-healthcare corporate/transactional work. Right now I’m on 3 active acquisitions as well as a roll up of certain integrated healthcare groups. Also working on regular corporate work such as preparing operating agreements and working with doctors/investors to form/structure companies.
2021 M&A PE here. I'm on two deals at the most but I assume since our stub year is over that I will eventually be juggling 3 maybe 4 at a time.
It will really depend on your firms staffing preferences. Smaller biglaw tend to have only 1 or 2 associates on a deal, so u get fully involved in all pieces and spend tons of time on 1-2 deals until u move to midlevel etc. honestly i find that the best way to learn.
I’m a 3rd year taking lead on most junior tasks on deals and would feel comfortable with no more than 3 active deals at once + some longer time general corp projects
4th year in M&A/PE here. If I am the “main” associate (coordinating with the corporate team & specialists, reviewing/ drafting main agreements, responding to most requests from the client/sellers counsel/ partners), I can’t do more than 2 active deals at the same time. If I am in the back seat and deals are going at different paces, 3-4 is manageable.
I think the size of the deal is misleading when it comes to workload. I had $1G+ deals that went much more smoothly than $50M deals. I actually think very often smaller deals are more demanding if you are acting for the purchaser because opposite counsel isn’t always sophisticated and that creates more work.