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Could anyone kindly tell me about the Investment Management and Private Equity Audit Group at Deloitte? 1. Work Life Balance (Is it worst than the ordinary Big 4 WLB?) 2. Is it an entirely different audit from commercial/retail audits (think account balances etc.) 3. Difficult to learn how to audit clients in this industry without prior experience in the industry?(been doing commercial audits for 3 years) 4. Are there relatively good exit opportunities for this audit group? Deloitte PwC EY
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Any advice on moving from L4 to L5 in Amazon?
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Pro forma or proforma?
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Still like RE 15+ years later. Ultimately all parties can walk away happy in a deal, and I like that about this area. RE covers a lot of space - dirt deals, leasing, financing, renewables, title insurance, etc. I also enjoy some of the old school laws that have developed around real estate. Usufruct anyone?
I went to law school wanting to do m&a. I was assigned to the m&a group at my 1st firm, but they were slow when I started. CRE was busy at the time, so I landed on that team temporarily. I was given the option to go back to m&a ~6 months later and said no. I loved the CRE team at my firm & thought real estate was interesting. I really like that my clients are experts in this area & are really knowledgeable - it makes closing deals feel like more of a team sport.
What do you do for the CRE team?
I wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. Worked at a record company in college. Seemed cool.
Ended up in a firm with a good CRE practice and I liked it and the people. A few twists in the road but I like the fact that there are real properties behind the deals we do.
Too old... You can't teach an old dog new trick besides I still think those old bands at the little record company in 1990 are cool (only one really is).
I got into it because that’s what the firm that hired me needed me to do when I started.
Closing in on my 25th year of practice, I can tell you that if I could go back and select a practice area based on what I know now, I’d be hard pressed to find a practice I’d prefer.
It was hard at times though. Having to deal with unreasonable client demands, insanely short due diligence periods, the fact that the really important clients can end up having tremendous power of you since so much of your comp is tied up in servicing their deals, it was a lot at times.
Falling into the right in-house job refreshed things for me a lot. But the reality is that those challenging things weren’t private practice real estate specific - they were just part of private practice. If I’d been a better rainmaker maybe I’d have relieved some of those stresses.
No matter in what context I’ve practiced, I’ve loved structuring and negotiating deals, loved resolving thorny deal issues, and loved the act of knocking issues out on the fly while in the throes of closing. And I loved the camaraderie of the pre-closing stretch of late nights with your team when you have a series of deals closing together (which I don’t get nearly as much in house).
Mentor
I got into this field because I cofounded a real estate private equity/investment fund. By trade, I was a bankruptcy/corporate restructuring lawyer. But representing landlords in large retail bankruptcy cases is what turned me on to the field. It is interesting now being on both the business and legal sides. But back in my summer associate big law days, I may have picked the real estate department over the restructuring one, but for whatever reason restructuring appealed to me more back then.
Mentor
Represent landlords. I used to, anyway. Not anymore. Then, of course, there is acquiring distressed debt and property out of a bankruptcy or workout. Not quite sure of the question here.
This is disgusting, but…my favorite class in law school was Property.
Real property as a practice area is great - you can structure your practice so that it has the upside of a booming economy (acquisitions / title / closing) and the stability desired in a downside economy (bankruptcy / workouts / evictions / foreclosures / collections and judgment related to RE liens). I graduated in the “largest class” of law school graduates in 2013 and immediately got into foreclosure work, and grew from there.
There are a lot of niches you can get into in RE, as well as a few that can make you personally wealthy down the line even if you always remain employed and non-solo (tax liens/tax deeds/foreclosures)
I’ve also loved how I’m not tied into a nebulous deal - it all relates back to something tangible that I can pull up on Google Maps or drive by.
How does tax lien, tax deeds, and foreclosures work make you wealthy? You can charge more per hour because it's a specialty ?
Mentor
Excellent point.