If you talk to a businessman, he will invariably say that the most stressful period of his professional life was a merger. And that`s what transactional lawyers do every day. It`s a terribly stressful process where you skip how much you work and what strange moments there are. Idk, as people do. Thank you! I have a friend who only makes wills and trusts. I`ll have to see if she can give me some advice. I went to my local society`s office to litigate in court in 1983, so I`ve been in a courtroom once a week or every two weeks since I started working 😂. Gov didn`t have the resources to slowly get me into a practice Many companies will want you to get an LLM in Taxes (really the only LLM worth a lot) from one of the best programs. Surprisingly, they are not that hard to reach (probably because they need money). In the meantime, take all the tax and estate planning courses your school has to offer. Take other courses such as securities regulation, commercial paper/negotiable instruments, trade associations, secured transactions, etc. Telling companies in your BECs that you like transactional work is somewhat rare and can make you more desirable as a candidate.
I`d say the majority of large jobs are transactional in some way, so that`s kind of a default option. They usually understand that you don`t really know yet, so be as broad as possible and talk about how you want to do business work. Aside from the above tips when attending transaction classes, the best way to learn is to work in the practice of Biglaw transaction. Trusts and estates. If you avoid disputes, they can be purely transactional. “I`m interested in transactional work because I got in touch with it during X, Y, Z, and I think that would be a good fit for me and my skills.” This also applies, OP. I think legal disputes are more of a drafting and research task than a transaction. You also don`t have to talk long in a courtroom to turn on the lights, and most people don`t.
OP just needs to talk to lawyers to get a better idea of what they`re doing. Did you “study” outside the general field to which you were transferred? Family law is a small niche and I don`t know if, with so little business experience, I should move laterally to a transactional role in 2nd/3rd year. I am the opposite. My uncle was a litigator and hated his job every day for 35 years. He told me to go to law school, to do only transactional because it was better. I`m in 2nd grade now and I don`t think it`s that different in terms of stress/demands. At the end of the day, you will be compensated for the business that owns your life. At the end of the day, I still don`t really know what kind of law I want to do or imagine when I graduate. I really want to hear some advice on transaction law and see if I can open that door as a possible way. Transaction law doesn`t care as much about the specific courses you`ve taken as if you had internships in transactional work.
Creating resumes for transactions is very different from litigation. Honestly, transactional is really hot right now. You may think that means that I am proposing to do so, quite the contrary. A mentor at my firm told me that if I wanted to have litigation – I should explain it at the end of my summer (not during the interview – be honestly open about the fact that you`re still making a decision) because it`s much easier to get out of litigation than litigation once you`re actually in the firm. They need bodies in transactions – so if you leave after a minute and tell them – hey, this is not for me – at least in my business, they have never denied this exchange to anyone. While they say — hey, I want to be a litigator — they`re like, well, we need transactions and that`s why we hired you — they`re going to discourage him. With all this setup, I`m working on cover letters for OCI and I`m having a hard time explaining why I`m interested in transactional roles. I can`t really say, “I`ve heard that work-life balance is good and you pay a lot at xyz.” I`ve worked for a real estate developer in a very generic office role, so I think I could turn the situation around somehow.
Anyway, I feel like I`m not the only one fighting this. So, if you can identify yourself, do you have any advice? The variety of possible exit options was the reason I decided to trade as well. Some of the advice I received that helped me make the transition was to market myself properly. Litigation and transactional work involve very complex, difficult and challenging work in a short or short time. Litigators are excellent in-house and transactional lawyers. That firm merged with a securities law firm in my fifth year, which allowed me to gain even more experience in real estate, but the firm was a nightmare. I started applying for real estate transaction positions and eventually accepted an offer at a biglaw firm (about 300 lawyers) as a commercial real estate lawyer. “I`m interested in transactional work because it`s similar to the X, Y, Z work I`ve done in the past, which I`ve really enjoyed. Does anyone have experience in transitioning from litigation to transactional law? I have been pleading for about 5 years and I am exhausted. I feel like more and more litigation is colliding with my introverted nature, and I`m a little bit above it. But I have no idea how to approach transaction law or what specific areas of law to consider. Anyway, a few big law firms come to my school for OCI.
I`m not in the paper and honestly, I`m not interested in it. I hope my GPA and work history can help me get an interview. I want to do transactional work and I would like to make great laws. Of course, the odds are against me based on my grade ranking, but I pray for luck at OCI. I earned a bachelor`s degree in California and recently moved to Texas. I will be admitted to the Texas bar in July 2022. I`m applying for transaction positions, but I don`t have any answers. TL/RD – I`m rethinking my career goals and struggling to explain why I`m interested in transactional roles in my cover letters to the OCI. As someone who has done both litigation and transactional work, my advice is to start by doing some soul-searching and thinking about the sectors and industries that interest you, because there are tons of areas in which you can succeed. For example, I deal with several transaction areas. My industrial focus is mainly entertainment, but the legal fields are basically the same.
I`ve organized small LLC businesses for filmmakers, but what I`ve learned has given me the confidence to also take restaurants and real estate developers as clients to structure and organize their businesses. I negotiated rights agreements, which helped me structure purchase agreements and real estate leases. I do simple estate planning for many of my entertainment clients. I did some charity work that came out of it. It mainly boils down to this: In legal disputes, your boss is the judge. It sets the schedule, and you know when the deadlines are due. Emergency movements do occur, but in most cases, you can expect a nightmarish week to happen a few weeks in advance.