How does M&A coursework translate into the day-to-day practice of M&A law? What does an M&A lawyer spend most of their day doing?  And can you actually specialize in international M&A or tech M&A?

 

More on Germaine Gurr and Neeta Sahadev!

 

SPEAKERS

Germaine Gurr, Neeta Sahadev, Wayne Stacy

 

Wayne Stacy  00:00

Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's Career in Technology podcast. I'm your host Wayne Stacey. And we're here today to talk about mergers and acquisitions. Every law school has an M&A class. But the question arises, what is M&A in practice? What is the first year, second year, third year lawyer end up doing with all of the the book learning that comes in that second or third year? So we're here today with two partners from the international law firm of White and Case. We have Germaine Gurr and Neeta Sahadev. So thank you both for joining us.  Law School teaches all about the concepts of M&A. But what is the actual practice look like for junior and mid-level attorneys?

 

Neeta Sahadev  00:49

From my experience, and I went to law school many, many years ago, truthfully, law schools didn't quite prepare me for actual practice of law. Most of the courses I took including the business courses I took and M&A related courses, very much focused on theoretical concepts, which is very different from when you're actually a practicing lawyer including as a junior and a mid-level attorney. Law school doesn't teach you what the deal is going to be like. An M&A transaction doesn't give you the insight into due diligence and transactional documents, how signing happens, closing occurs. And so I think the real experience that you get initial look into what M&A transactions are like is during your summer, when you're summering at a law firm, or in your first year, that's when you get to be on a transaction, actually see what documents means when someone says, Oh, do you know what a merger is? Or share purchase or an asset deal? You actually get to see what that all means. Like, what is that transaction? What does the resolution mean? What is a bring down certificate? What does due diligence even mean? A lot of people don't know that coming out of law school, right? Like what does due diligence actually mean? So I think the expectations that when you're coming out of law school, or whether you're a 2L or a 3L, we don't really expect you to know much about M&A in any sense, other than maybe what you read about maybe knowing what the difference between a corporation or a partnership is. Other than that, we're not expecting you to know anything, we just expect you to be eager to learn, have a genuine interest in M&A. And then the teaching will begin.

 

Germaine Gurr  02:19

On my end, I would add that because law school teaches through the Socratic method and the case study method, it is quite challenging for someone going into a transactional practice to understand how to translate those critical thinking and analytical skills from a case study Socratic method to the application of transactional work. And oftentimes, what we see is that Junior associates will start working, will hit the ground running, of course, and work on diligence and ancillary documentations on transactions. And they'll get comfortable with looking at precedents and kind of following forms. And will forget those key skills and how to apply them, the critical thinking and analytical skills, which are really important for transactional practice just as they are for litigation, bankruptcy or any other specific practice. And I