Lateralling as a Capital Markets Associate (from a former Capital Markets Associate)
If you're a capital markets associate at a BigLaw firm, you're probably used to the "boom" and the "bust." Your practice depends on a individualized pricing environments that make sense for your clients to raise capital from investors. This may mean you work hard to meet an anticipated offering date, only to see it fall apart just hours beforehand. But one of the many odd trends in 2020 is a very active Initial Public Offering (IPO) market. This means that lots of capital markets associates at big firms are busy. Very busy.
As a former capital markets associate at a firm in New York and London, I am very familiar with the trajectory and lifestyle. You start out doing some research projects here and there, often involving SEC regulations (or, in my case, exclusions to SEC regulations). As individual deals ramp up, you start diving into the due diligence projects, searching through pages and pages of virtual documents for issues and red flags. When a deal gets closer to the signing, and then closing, you are in "deal management" mode - making sure documents are put together and signatories are lined up. As you get more senior, you start to get more involved in the key documents for which lawyers are responsible - prospectuses, underwriting agreements, opinion letters, etc. Soon, you become more of the "point person" for the firm when it comes to different deals. Maybe you start with a small follow-on offering deal and then work up from there.
But your successful advancement as a BigLaw capital markets associate depends on a lot of different factors, some of which are beyond your control. Such factors include:
The interpersonal dynamics of your working group. The personal relationships between you, your colleagues and your supervisors at the firm is crucial to both professional success and job satisfaction. Does everyone get along? Is communication consistent and understandable? Is the delegation line clear?
The structure of the group in terms of juniors, midlevels, senior associates and partners. If there are too many or too few associates at or around your seniority level, this can cause an imbalance in your cap markets group. If you're always the junior in a busy group, even if you're a 3rd or 4th year associate, you'll stay doing the junior work. Similarly, if you are an experienced 5th or 6th year midlevel associate with a lot of other midlevel associates, you might end up competing for work and hours. Or, you might be a midlevel associate with no senior associates above you to mentor and train you, but you are still expected to take on senior level work. Structural deficiencies like this make it difficult to progress in a cap markets group in a predictable manner.
The use of "fire drills" vs. real deadlines. As discussed, the ebb and flow of capital markets work can be quiet unpredictable. There can be unexpected starts and quick stops. On top of this, you might have partners or clients that frequently put out "fire drills," meaning they create extremely tight deadlines that turn out not to be that urgent. To be fair, it often takes hindsight to identify a "fire drill" in terms of a deadline. But if there isn't clear communication about a tight deadline and "fire drills" are put out over and over again, this can result in demoralized associates.
The location (i.e., maybe you don't want to work and live in NYC anymore). The center for all types of capital markets legal work is New York City. It's the financial capital of the world so it makes complete sense for this type of work. But there are capital markets associates in all of the big legal markets in the country, especially Washington DC, the Bay Area, Chicago and Boston. Since the pandemic means the vast majority of associates are working from home (and may have even relocated geographically already as a result), perhaps a new location for your cap markets practice makes sense.
The types of clients / platform for moving in-house. Obviously, the most common client for a cap markets attorney is a financial services company. But what if you aren't interested in working for and/or eventually moving in-house to an investment bank? If you're in a cap markets practice that focuses on the "bank side" versus the "company side," then your client focus may be limited. Additionally, you may work in a "company side" practice, but it's in a very specific and focused industry like tech, life sciences or insurance. This also presents limitations that may not match your career goals.
If any of the factors above present a challenge for you as a capital markets associate, then it may be time to consider a lateral move. Because of the activity in IPOs and other types of cap markets deals, there are firms across the country that need additional associate support. Even during strong economic times, the demand for lateral talent in cap markets may not be as high as it is right now. (For example, before the start of the pandemic, corporate hiring at big law firms was much more focused on private equity M&A and finance needs).