Specialists, when I send a request for comments and give a reasonable deadline, and ask that you let me know if you anticipate an issue with meeting said timeline, why would you not respond and then not send comments on time?

Am I missing something? Do I need to be more clear? Follow up more? Call you? Carrier pigeon?

I don't get it.

Tact goes a long way…As a specialist, I’m often on 6-8 matters a day from anywhere from 1-5 shareholders/partners. If I received that email, I’d be less inclined to drop everything to meet perhaps an arbitrary deadline versus a simple ask of 1) Do you have capacity to help in this matter? 2) We need it by X, is that doable? We all have our obligations to other projects. If yours is more important, being rude to the specialist that you need is not the way to go about it.

The biggest issue that pisses off specialists to no end is fake internal deadlines. When you ask for something by a certain time, that should be as close to the moment the doc will go out to the client saving time only for adding the changes to the master — you shouldn’t be saving tons of time for a partner. This single failure causes more problems and inter group fighting than any other. When M&A attorneys regularly impose false deadlines on specialists the specialists don’t take future deadlines seriously. When there’s a lot going on, the first matter on the list to get less attention is the one with the regular fake deadlines.

Also, as others have noted, at any given time a specialist has huge amounts of deals on her plate, and any number of them can blow up at any moment. Those deals with actual deadlines and emergencies will take precedence.

It’s very easy to see how a specialist schedule can be overwhelmed very easily. You should work with more specialists and build your relationships with them. And be tactful and respectful about how you go about seeking their help. It’s very easy for specialists to get pulled in 20 directions at once and your deal is one of many the applicable M&A team believes to be the most important matter on the specialist’s plate.

M&A associates who don’t take these dynamics seriously are in for a rude awakening when it comes to scaling their own practice and making partner if that’s a goal. It’s absolutely critical specialists like you. If they don’t, you are going to have problems down the road. Specialists talk and your bad rep will make your life a lot harder than it needs to be.

I ignore juniors sometimes because of the way they ask. The truth is that I have very little actual power in the firm but I can ignore any junior associate with no consequence. I am an 11th year income partner that is extremely specialized. And thanks to the 2008 recession, I am in high demand because no one hired directly into my specialty for 7+ years. So I have job security but no help actually doing my work. So I ignore any associate who is rude or I just don't like. My partners have never caught on and they likely never will.

A lot of specialists are incredibly busy. It’s often no easier for them than it is for M&A and they are often paid less than M&A. M&A associates also sometimes act like little godlings. They are not…I have had to apologize for M&A associates a number of times over the course of my career. And you know why I do it? To maintain a good relationship with the specialists I think are the best and most responsive. When we’re in danger of getting in trouble and missing a deadline that will matter, I can *USUALLY* step in and leverage my good relationship in order to get the markup we need. So, rather than get worked up about it or frustrated by it, just let the partner know. The partner can usually get it done with a kind phone call.

Could be as simple as the junior sending comments up the chain and the partner sitting on it.

You also prob have no concept of how many different active deals/matters we (and especially the partners) are on, and how frequently unexpected issues crop up in middle of the day and demand your attention.

That being said, the junior should give you a status update once they realize it might be late. If no junior on the matter, you might be out of luck.

M&A associates should be called project assistants. Specialists should be called by what they do - lawyers.

Some ppl make us specialist sound like peasants. My firm pays us the same as all other associates… lol (market paying firm).

I’d say follow up / follow up more. When I mark things up it usually gets stuck in my supervisors inbox until they get pinged, and I’ve lost track of that particular deadline when I move to other matters so I don’t nag them about it. A follow up (or a couple at reasonable intervals) reminds me to put it at the top of their inbox, so they end up with multiple reminders about it.

I'm on 25-30 deals. I do my best and usually make the deadline. When I don't, it's usually because there's an emergency on 2-5 of the other deals that seemed to trump yours. I am constantly triaging.

I am a 4th year specialist that usually has 6+ matters a day (70 different ones in the past 4 months). I am organized and timely but the partner I work with is disorganized, prioritizes matters that he enjoys, and spends most of his time on calls or doing business development/traveling, and perpetually missed every deadline.

Most of the time, I have your work done immediately but in the background, I am pulling his teeth trying to get the partner to review and sign off before circulating. If you follow-up with me, it gives me more ammo to light a fire/“manage-up.” One on one is fine if you don’t want to risk the partner getting annoyed. I never get annoyed by internal requests, just over eager clients

I think we all can tell why OP is getting ignored based on their responses in this thread. Everyone who responded here tried to explain it to OP but OP can only see things from his/her limited point of view. The good news is that I don't think you will have to worry about this much longer OP. The coming recession will weed out those who work well with others and those who don't.

I’ve found it helpful to loop in the specialists directly where possible. Eliminates delays due to the deal team not passing along docs/info and it’s much harder to blow off a deadline coming directly from the client.

Not that I’m unsympathetic to specialist workloads, but I also typically work on/oversee 5+ matters a day on the deal side and am still expected to be responsive and meet deadlines. The only difference is that I’m the one taking the heat from the client when we send out incomplete drafts subject to further specialist review.

Did you ask or tell?

At the time you send a request, we often don’t anticipate an issue with meeting the deadline. But then by the time we are running up against the deadline, we have ten other matters that need our attention. At that point, the specialist should check in and kindly ask if there is any flexibility with the deadline, which there usually is. I agree we should be communicating as much as possible, but don’t be surprised if we don’t initially anticipate an issue with a deadline, only to run into one.

I’m shocked at the number of responses justifying a “no response” from specialists which we on the transactional side get way too often. I always try to be very polite and understanding of specialists being stretched thin but I’m just relaying what I’ve been told by the partner or client.

There is absolutely no reason not to provide any response. I’d even prefer a specialist respond with something along the lines of “fuck off” so at least I know not to expect their comments in time (or at all).

Specialist junior associate here. It’s true, we sometimes just don’t have the time in the day. Rarely things falls through the cracks also and one can miss an email altogether. Anyway, you’re right about communication - it’s ok to be too busy to meet deadlines, not as ok to not manage expectations.

The lying corporate generalists are at it again. Big lies, these corporate people, big lies. But it's ok folks because we know about their game don't we? Yeah we do. That's why -- that's why I love the specialists, you're the greatest people. And I know everyone says that but it's true, right? It's true. You're the greatest people and I love you so much.

But the corporate group --they're always complaining, oh why, why me, please turn our documents. And by the way did you see the deadlines they give? Nuh uh folks. We don't even respond to them because they're sick, nasty people. "Oh i gave you plenty of time" BZZT wrong. You want our comments (of course you do they're going to be beautiful, the most beautiful comments you've ever seen). Then you WAIT for them! No response for you, WAIT FOR THEM!

Folks we are going to take our law firm back and make it great again.

Try calling them Subject Matter Experts

I think all M&A associates should spend time doing specialist work. Then you’ll understand how even the requests you think are nice or reasonable come across.

I’ll reply all to your initial email with “we’ll do our best to review by [your deadline]” or if your deadline is particularly egregious, I’ll email/call you directly to see if there’s any flexibility/what’s driving the deadline. Then if you don’t hear from me by your deadline, I probably won’t be getting in touch soon to tell you we’ll be late. The reason is that the partner has been sitting on your stuff despite my reminders, and the M&A or whatever part of the team knows that already (not because they’ve heard from the partner but because the associate is almost never the bottleneck). And if you want your stuff, you need to keep replying all to ask about it, i.e., badger the partner relatively nicely. Or at least that’s how things work at my firm.