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Rising Star
How hard is the path from lit to GC?
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Totally depends on where they started from when drafting. What my client’s requirements are. How complicated the transaction is.
~90 page Purchase Agreement, not an overly cost sensitive client given purchase price amount and my rate as an associate, relatively straightforward transaction with mostly fair terms from the outset but the Purchase Agreement requires some thought and fine tuning. Would this info permit you to give a more precise ballpark estimate?
IDK, maybe like 4 hours, because I work inhouse, so behind that are 117 other things that need to get done
Really depends, but could be well over 12 hours. Depends on how well the draft was drafted, complexity of the deal, etc. Obviously assuming you only meant the body of the agreement and not the exhibits, schedules, etc.
Rising Star
It will take you at your level 5-7 hours to read 90 pages and create an issues list. Then it does depend on the starting place of the draft. If it was a balanced, well drafted form, maybe an additional 5-6 hours of revisions. If it was a more typical one-sided document, then 10-12 additional hours to revise. At my level and the length of the doc, I would expect 7-10 hours total double that for you.
Have you asked the assigning partner how long they estimate it should take? I would take that time and, depending on your experience level, expect to add 1-2 hrs to it.
The understanding is that I should spend as long as it takes to go over everything (the Transactional Documents, precedents in our system, Practical Law, etc.) and produce a quality work product that the seniors on the team can work with and if the lead on the deal and the other partners deem it appropriate to write any time off they will do so without penalty to me. I’m more looking for a general opinion from people outside of my scenario who won’t want to feel like they’re restricting me and who may be able to give an unbiased estimate.
If i had an associate charging me 12 hours for the first draft of a purchase agreement i would lose my s#$t with the law firm. It depends on the partner. Some shave off some time from the associate so its more palatable to the client and as such tell associate to take their time. This is a talk you should have with the senior associate and or partner. But more than 4-5 hours would be too much. Dont forget that you will be negotiating the purchase agreement after several drafts.
Then my response is very different. 12 hours or more wont matter. Then you should take as much time as needed. Just putting schedules together is already an unsourmountable task.
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I can’t really estimate what it might take as far as a first draft goes, but I essentially estimated 35 hours in my budgets for my institutional client to negotiate an entire purchase agreement.
There were a couple of assumptions:
- We’d start with our form.
- We’d have four substantive turns and several drafts that were mostly fine tuning.
My form contract was probably about 35 pages before signature pages and exhibits. Maybe 55-60 pages including exhibits (although in rare instances the exhibits might get voluminous).
Real estate deals with pet asset purchase prices probably averaging $35M, and usually within $10M of that either way. Multi-asset contracts where assets were in different states took more work, but that was usually accounted for in a different line item in the budget (engaging with local counsel).