Private Equity to Law?
Been in private equity ~4 years. Havent thought about going back to school seriously but toying with the idea, exploring options. Not sure if MBA would be of benefit (no b-school mandate at my firm). Wonder if law school or a masters could be interesting. I strangely enjoy working through NDAs but know there's way more to law than that...
anyone ever go from PE to law or pivot elsewhere? The job is interesting but honestly gets tedious at times and honestly just dont see myself sitting in excel for the next 10 years.
honestly, not sure if i want to do law or just dont want to do PE for the rest of my life lol. how do people find out what else is out there and how the skills in this job translate? i dont really want to do corp dev (more of the same).
thanks!
please no rude comments :)
Bumping as someone who has done the law to cd path
Have you not seen the amount of b*tch work lawyers have to do during your PE stint? Honestly think they are the one that has it worse than us
I have and that’s why I’m not thinking about corporate law. I’m interested in other areas. Not necessarily corporate (although most start there bc pays most)
What stuff interests you the most atm / what seems the most worthwhile, and why
Clerking for the SC, doing unicorn PI, in-house counsel are all viable alternatives to BigLaw.
Life is short. If you like finance, do finance. If you like Law, do law. If you like cooking, go to culinary school
you right. but also im way too risk averse to venture out fully so guess stuck in a desk job
Try to Network to people who are in the position you want and ask them what are the main requirements to secure the position, but you're likely to start in a lower position and grow from there, it only comes down to what you see working the best
I’m a PE lawyer and work with a bunch of MF, UMM and MM. Go be a lawyer only if you want to do trials in a courtroom, and you have both the grades and LSAT score to ensure you can attend one of the top 6 schools.
I like what I do, but I’d prefer to be the guy at my client rather than be the guy advising my client.
that's fair.
everyone serves someone, PE guys wish they'd be the LPs, LPs in order to get where they're at also served someone unless they come from generational wealth. GPs are trusted with the LPs money in the same way as you're trusted by GPs for the legal side. Everyone serves someone, but they're also trusted, that's why they serve.
I doubt many PE professionals want to be LPs. They're just the people you have to suck up to to get their money
Law seems like the worst job ever in the world
yea it def doesnt seem easy. honestly idk if i want to go to law school or just dont like PE lol
To me the legal profession seems like if you took a fascinating book and decided to count the letters to see how many there are of each letter. Law seems interesting but practicing it does not
when I was a law student and I said I wanted to do corporate law they said "enjoy looking at 100 employment contracts to find which contract ends in which date", snd I said that's an exaggerated take and he may be depressed
when I did a summer internship in a top transactional law firm guess what I did for almost all of time: Looking at 100 employment contracts and find in which dates those end so we can present the legal DD on an M&A deal.
Learning law is interesting, unferstanding the law is also interesting, but practicing it, especially transactional work is really dry and boring. There's almost no law there but only secretary work.
Reading final products prepared by lawyers is also interesting because you understand how things work, that's why the NDAs sparked your interest. But after you've been working on more than 10 NDAs in your legal career you'll die of boredom.
that makes total sense. doing that a few times vs. doing solely NDAs is way different.
so did you pivot to the finance side or are you stuck in law
How are employment contracts relevant to legal DD on an m&a deal?
when you buy a company you look at all the potential legal risks thay may arise and employment topics may also be relevant. If you take for example a Share Purchase Agreement and check the Reps & Warranties section you'll see that there's almost always a section for employment stating things such as salary was paid on time, there are no past employees who may have any right to claim more money from the company, etc.
On the "checking 100 contracts and seeing on which date ends which one" wasn't really accurate from my side but wanted to keep it simple. In reality you check all those contracts and look which ones have a termination clause for things like extraordinary transactions including merges, which allows the employee to leave the company and be compensated for it (clearly it's for people on mid/senior level).
the value of this work is just so the buyer can be informed (thus you hand him a Legal DD) and if employment was an extremely important aspect for the buyer (maybe he really wanted to have access to the know-how/people of the company) and many experienced employees have such termination clause then he may leverage it and ask for the price to be a reduced
Law does seem ass but profit per partner of the top firms clears banking comfortably
honestly the salary in PE is plenty for me lol i just want to do something that i find more interesting / dont dread (although law probably not the right avenue for that).
Let me get this straight, PE is boring and tedious to you, so you want to become a lawyer?
Are there no openings highway line painters?
huh what does highway painters have to do with it? i want to study law not necessarily become a corporate partner track type lawyer
Ok, so I wanted to become a qualified lawyer, actually spent most time of my degree trying to do so, but when I eventually had a chance I decided to go into finance instead law, and still figuring out my career path, but it won't be related to law. The reason why I didn't eventually go into training was I found law very boring and too repetitive. I find it cool at times, and for a short period of time, but as a lawyer you live and breathe law. And especially now, as you already have some sort of established career, you need to be really certain you wanna do law. Otherwise I don't see any sense of going into Law school. And you really don't sound like a person who wants to become a full-time lawyer.
Yea this is easily one of the craziest threads I've come across. Buddy, the torrent of people trying to escape law for finance (let alone PE) is already bursting at the seams. There is little to no flow going the other way. People, generally speaking, are not stupid. Don't be the stupid guy.
craziest? really? must have not gone outside much :)
youre assuming i want to practice corporate law (as i think most ppl here assume). there's way more applicability to law than just doing m&a and legal doc reviews
If you’re into it and have gathered enough information to know you won’t have a rude awakening on the job, go for it.
I went to law school and hated the actual work afterwards, so I left. It’s such absurdly nitty gritty work.
But then I also found it’s one of the few fields where you’ll get a fair amount of practitioners that are truly passionate about what they’re doing (altho those don’t tend to be corp lawyers), sort of like Doctors. So if you’re one of those who thinks they’re doing God’s work by practicing law, then follow that dream
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