Hi - I was hoping to get some advice; I am seeking to break into the buy side but my background is pretty unique so I am having a hard time going about it. I'm a lev fin lawyer by trade, but I work with an organization that works directly with many buy side shops, including some of the biggest. I have a lot of leveraged loan, HY bond, and distressed debt experience, and so I have been trying to parlay that into a role at a credit or distressed shop. I know that some funds hire attorneys for desk lawyer roles, but have only come across a few positions like that. Does anyone have any advice for someone like me? Also I am Ivy undergrad, top-40 law school graduated at the top of my class, and worked at a top-10 law firm prior to my current job. I've been trying to use alumni and professional networks and have had a few calls but nothing definite so far. Any thoughts are appreciated, thanks!
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How much legal exp do you have?
Over nine years, primarily with bank debt but also a fair amount of HY. I've been doing my current work with funds for the past four-plus years.
If you don't really have insolvency experience distressed firms will not care that you've copy/pasted/find/replace a bunch of indentures and credit agreements.
From my experience, most investment firms will focus on what they are good at -- the investment analysis -- and outsource the legal work. If you're not primarily an insolvency lawyer and don't have the finance/accounting skills, you're pretty much useless.
Curious - what has the feedback been reaching out to your network?
I think you're right to a degree. I know there are funds, typically bigger ones, who have a "desk lawyer" role whose job it is to assist the analysts in reading and understanding legal docs. I've only come across a few funds who have those roles though. If I could go back I'd have started in straight bankruptcy instead of finance, though what I do is less copy pasting and more walking through specific transactions with investors to analyze the company's ability to do whatever they're trying to do, for instance what can company X do with proceeds of the asset sale they recently announced, things like that. I cover a lot of distressed credits primarily before they hit bankruptcy so I do have exposure to that mindset, but yeah I'm not an analyst and don't have modeling skills. So I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do; thought about taking the CFA if that might help thought I don't think I can commit to the time required. Right now I guess I'm just holding out hope that there's a need, but I do hear what you're saying.
The other post was actually me, I accidentally posted from a separate account. Reposting:
I think you're right to a degree. I know there are funds, typically bigger ones, who have a "desk lawyer" role whose job it is to assist the analysts in reading and understanding legal docs. I've only come across a few funds who have those roles though. If I could go back I'd have started in straight bankruptcy instead of finance, though what I do is less copy pasting and more walking through specific transactions with investors to analyze the company's ability to do whatever they're trying to do, for instance what can company X do with proceeds of the asset sale they recently announced, things like that. I cover a lot of distressed credits primarily before they hit bankruptcy so I do have exposure to that mindset, but yeah I'm not an analyst and don't have modeling skills. So I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do; thought about taking the CFA if that might help thought I don't think I can commit to the time required. Right now I guess I'm just holding out hope that there's a need, but I do hear what you're saying.
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