At Harvard Law and interested in working in distressed debt, possibly activist investing -- best route? (cross post from job forum)
I'm a student at Harvard Law interested in pursuing an investment role at the HF in distressed debt or maybe shareholder activism. What's the best route to get there? I know several law students and practicing lawyers have entered the space.
I have never been a lawyer, but from the ex-lawyers I know these are the most common routes:
Lawyer > Banker > HF financial analyst
Lawyer > HF lawyer > HF fin an
Less common but still know ppl that did this:
Law school > Banker > HF fin an
Lawyer > sell side desk analyst > HF fin an
Lawyer > legal only fund like Aurelius
To be clear, the ex-lawyers I know in the industry represent a very small subset of the population. The flip side is that junior restructuring lawyers are a strangely self-defeating group that seem to exit law only when they're sick of it, as opposed to exiting on their front foot with a plan like most bankers do. I'm sure you'll have an easier time if you start prepping early for the possibility of going to the business side.
-
That's not what I'm talking about when I say HF lawyer. I mean the guys who spread docs, analyze potential transactions from the legal side, and sit in BK processes offering their analyses on potential paths forward. They did this analysis at Paul Weiss / Akin / DPW, and were then brought in-house.
If a bunch of distressed funds and activist funds are actively recruiting HLS to be business analysts, then all the options I mentioned should be backup plans for you. The point of doing banking is to show funds that you can be a numbers guy (however dumb that is, given that we're not exactly working with Markov chains here). Out of the ex-lawyers I know / have worked with, I don't think a single one directly became a business analyst at a fund without some stuff in between.
Your friends are also very wrong, restructuring banking does very different work from FTI / A&M. Plenty of associates have moved into distressed land from IB, especially guys who started their careers elsewhere (consulting, the HL valuations group, etc.).
Does HLS teach you to intentionally turn a 200-page document into 400 pages?
-
Gotta get those billable hours up
What are your LSAT scores?
I dated someone from HLS. They don’t answer the question.
-
As a lawyer who has worked in this space (credit, lev fin, restructuring) for years, I'd recommend either getting an analyst position at a bank, which is doable, or trying to go straight to a fund in an investing role. Honestly you won't learn much at law school on the legal side that is relevant to HF work, but coming from HLS is a plus so I'd try and leverage your connections to get something on the sell side to begin your career. Teaching yourself / learning 3 statement modeling in excel couldn't hurt either. Another possible path is to join a firm that has a public company advisory group advising boards and shareholders in activist matters. If you can get a job at Wachtell, I'd say do that. Otherwise, I think banks / direct to HF is your best bet.
I’m a lawyer in an investment seat at a 5bn+ distressed hedge fund.
You want to take the following path:
1L Summer - Restructuring IB summer associate.
2L Summer - Summer associate at Apollo or another PE style Credit seat, lean into diversity programs since you are SEO eligible. In-school try to do as much HF internships as you can. I’d lean doing PE style over HF for the summer as training will be better and you will need it.
I would strongly consider doing a Harvard MBA. You can still apply as a 1L and the exits improve with the extra summer.
Additionally I would start emailing as many HLS or lawyer alums at distressed funds as you can, especially once you get a restructuring summer associate seat at a bank. I have lifetime been cold emailed by 3 total law students so always willing to take those calls. A ton of distressed / event type AuM is run by ex-lawyers or senior lawyers working in investment seats so firms institutionally are open to that background you just need to be generating experience and at bats for interviews.
Also reach out to the older people at HLS who have done distressed internships, I know of a few.
For avoidance of doubt - this is focus on directly to buyside is applicable to Yale, Harvard, Stanford, maybe Chicago / Columbia / UPenn (JD / MBA preferable for the back end). If you are taking this approach from a worse ranked school, you are going to add a ton of risk to your law school job outcome and should be targeting sell-side rather than buyside. NYU is an odd one because its law school is better than its undergrad / MBA by a decent margin so slightly harder for finance recruiting.
There are probably a few outlier schools that may yield buyside options (UCLA / Minnesota) due to regional market having a ton of decent credit / distressed seats with a lack of competitive regional MBA programs but focusing on making it to banking / biglaw should be the focus first there.
-
You’ll be fine - as you know already, K&E is literally the best / most aggressive law firm in RX - make sure you work on these projects. Annoyingly though K&E does more company side than creditor side so you won’t get contacts but that’s as good as it gets
Is that normal? Seem so low given how much WSO harps on about the benefits of networking
I get the occasional non law reach out but less than 5 a year and only when my old fund was recruiting aggressively.
To be fair I didn’t do IBD so I’d assume that’s where a lot of people would reach out trying to break in.
I spent 3 years in the distressed group of a top tier megafund and I could count on one hand the total cold emails I’ve received…
Excellent advice. Second doing the MBA, that will help a lot.
Also, do I know you? DM me, we may know a lot of the same people.
.
Dolorum praesentium odit doloremque adipisci atque. Maxime a esse quibusdam ipsa ut. Fugit eum est sit. Totam et autem quaerat praesentium voluptas magni. Velit ut libero voluptate porro rem occaecati.
Quibusdam minima quod ut impedit dolores aliquid blanditiis. Voluptatem perspiciatis debitis natus. Voluptatibus provident quos quasi culpa eligendi non itaque.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Saepe voluptatem ab modi suscipit consequatur sint. Voluptate ut dolor fuga illum ratione repellendus aut. Est soluta dicta natus mollitia illum.
Velit minus occaecati dolorem odio nam dolorem necessitatibus. Tenetur explicabo tempore quasi numquam labore id. Voluptas ea commodi voluptas aliquam inventore.