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Check out my portfolio and let me know if we’re a good profit match.
https://www.clippings.me/contentetc
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Kleinberg Kaplan thoughts anyone?
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Stealth layoffs at CWT confirmed.
Thoughts on Everlaw vs DISCO?
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I’m not a corporate lawyer, but running a deal is like running a trial team, so I have some thoughts.
It’s scary to do things you haven’t done before. Moving from a third chair to a second chair is a leap. Moving from the second chair to the first chair is Evel Knievel jumping the snake river Canyon in 1974. (I know that it’s an obscure reference, but I was 10 at the time and it was a big deal).
It is genuinely scary to be the person at the top of the food chain. Who has to make sure that no balls are dropped, and who doesn’t generally have a net underneath you. The only way to get comfortable with that is to work up to it, with Annette that is further and further below you and smaller and smaller, but still present. It can take years to get to that point, which is fine. The more complex the problem, the more experience, judgment, and moxie it takes to run it successfully. If you are feeling over your head, the best thing to do is reach out to somebody who is slightly above you on the food chain and ask for help. You can also reach out to a junior partner and say I know this isn’t your deal, but I would appreciate it if you could help provide feedback from time to time, just so I’m not missing something. Do you have relationships within your firm that would allow you to get help and gut checks when you need them, without needing a full net or training wheels?
I think answer this really depends on how your firm is staffing deals. If you are generally working with very lean teams, then you will probably get more comfortable more quickly. Larger teams I think are very helpful for big deals where there is a lot to do, but unfortunately, end up siloing associates in work right after their level such that they don’t have to stretch up to learn.
Ideally, you will get in a good mix of big and small teams, and somewhere around fifth or sixth year will start to take primary deal responsibility with minimal oversight (but still having a partner available to you to answer questions and help with major client contact points). You can work up to this by being the person with ownership over checklist and coordinating deal work as a third and fourth year.