Sixth year M&A associate and hate doing diligence to the extent that I’m considering quitting. Do sixth years due diligence at all firms? If I go to a small shop, will that help cut out some of the diligence? I can’t be doing this for the rest of my life…

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You’re still doing diligence as a 6th year?

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Yes! Thank you for confirming that’s not how it should be.

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Smaller shop means fewer associates to do diligence means you do more diligence.

likesmart

Not usually the case. But you’re really almost past the diligence stage, and maybe you just need to be staffing better midlevels so that by the time you see a diligence memo it’s in good shape. As a 9th year I’m digging in on the memo output but I’m not reading every contract by any means, just material ones where I have questions and even then the team sends me snips and summaries

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I’d think it’s the opposite. Something seems off if you’re still doing DD as a sixth year at a big firm, but normal to be reviewing DD summaries or spot checking.

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Without juniors, seniors do the work! One of the negatives of moving from BigLaw to Midlaw was the junior level work that even partners do bc they don’t staff deals with as much leverage. The concept of “no client wants to pay your rate for that” doesn’t exist with lower rates.

Just use AI as the junior

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You should managing teams doing the regular diligence and be involved with the more strategic agreements and issues or helping your managed teams determine whether anything should be escalated promptly. Not in the trenches all the time.

However, expect that reviewing their charts and working on diligence matrices and schedules will involve looking at the documents with the people who reviewed them.

I feel your pain though. Hated deal work at my last firm. Typical team for M&A on our tech trans team was partner, counsel / senior associate, and a midlevel. At my new firm, typical deal team is partner, counsel / senior associate, sometimes another senior associate, midlevel, 2-5 juniors, and dedicated group paralegal.

It’s amazing and surprise surprise I don’t hate deal work anymore.

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Appreciate it A1. Without giving the name of the firm, what type of firm were you at and what type of firm did you change to? In other words, how do I find a group with larger deal teams as you indicated

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Are you at DLA by any chance? You should at least be getting main doc drafting experience.

I’m getting plenty of main doc drafting experience. But I want to only be doing that lol

I still complain about doing diligence as an almost-fifth year... literally the worse part of the job. I'm surprised you're not just responsible for reviewing diligence work product at this stage.

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