is LMM M&A worth it

Ironically some of those lmm shops build better bankers than the league table leaders. If you're working with private companies, the accounting and process is still all the same, but with those small businesses and lean teams you have to do way more granular, "building block" work.IMHO if you want a career in banking lmm is a decent place to start (with the intent of lateraling), but if you're trying to do your analyst stint and leave I wouldn't recommend.

DamieJimon

Is experience in M&A at firms that do really small deals still good experience? I was also wondering, how often do boutique IBers in Canada lateral to a Big5/6?

And when I say really small deals I mean some of them might be 5 to 10MM CAD or less. 

Some of the best juniors we hire come from LMM or MM deals.

It's actually easy to do big corporate or secondary / tertiary sellside work. You are dealing with professional mgmt teams with good data and kpis.

Working on primary sellsides and with private firms, you learn a lot about putting the building blocks together. You learn how to mentor mgmt and run a truly excellent process (your process has to he strong because your sellside won't just fly off the shelf).

My time doing MM M&A as an associate was where I truly honed my skills and took it to the next level.