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Jk, i always get my time entered. 😅
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“M&A = exit opportunities” has always been a narrative that law school students keep repeating and that big firms keep boosting. Most M&A associates cycle through firms and eventually drop into less prestigious (sometimes less demanding) roles when they inevitably burn out. Sorry!
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In a similar vein, biglaw isn't strictly necessary or even relevant for most in house jobs. The real issue is that most in house roles just don't hire anyone with less than 3 YOE. That being said, I'd agree that if you stick it out in M&A and actually manage to land one of the few M&A roles in house, you'll probably be higher up in the corporate food chain (if that's something you're optimizing for, regardless of the cons that come with it).
After 5 years of PE M&A, I landed a sweet in-house gig where I don’t actually do any M&A, but the skills translate pretty well to being in-house counsel. And FWIW, the new employer used a recruiter and all the competition was biglaw M&A associates.
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What do you do now?
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How many in house M&a lawyers do you think a company needs? How many companies are doing enough acquisitions?
If simply going in house is your goal, the Biglaw practice with the easiest path to exit is actually IP or tech transactions because it is more similar to the types of commercial arrangements that a large company enters into on a regular basis. The number of pure M&A in-house roles is rare because not many companies regularly do M&A; it will have to be a large or well-funded company. That said, M&A is still a useful practice for moving in-house because you interact with a lot of practice areas (and so can claim some
knowledge) and you often get to interact with senior people within your clients (and so it’s a pathway in-house).
Notwithstanding, to be clear, being an in-house counsel requires some different skills compared to being in a law firm - you don’t necessarily need deep legal expertise, you need to be able to issue spot and develop a sixth sense for potential risk and liability, you need to be able to work productively with non-legal people (who know much, much less than you about any legal topic) and you need to understand the company that you work with to know and calibrate its risk appetite.
There are some people who could succeed in-house and at a law firm and there are those who are better at one or the other. There are others who are either suck at both or maybe just realize that they don’t like being a lawyer, as it’s a downer always thinking about what might go wrong.
It’s tough getting the first in-house job. Once you get one though, the later in-house jobs can be easier. But in-house jobs are never like law firm recruiting and that’s usually because in-house jobs are understood to be for the long term, in contrast to a law firm, which understands that it a short-term proposition for most folks.
If your goal is maximizing your chances of going in house, L&E, privacy, IP, various regulatory specialties, etc are all ultimately more helpful than M&A. M&A is significant for short periods of time but outside a very small group of companies it’s just not routine enough to be a driving factor.
I feel like people are missing the point here somewhat. M&A isn’t the most versatile for in-house because a bunch of companies out there are constantly doing M&A (sure that exists, but it’s less common and typically just very large F500s).
M&A is versatile for in-house because of the understanding of contract law and particular indemnities and the like, negotiating, and the ability to touch all the specialist areas. A good M&A mid/senior associate should have some general understanding of IP issues, trade issues, exec comp, litigation, etc., which makes you a good generalist for an in-house corporate counsel role where you might be asked all of these different questions in the same week.
As someone who went in-house recently from biglaw M&A, agree with A2’s take.
What year are you?
Well it is the most general practice..