What Junior Associates Do

Junior associates work on cutting-edge deals and high-profile disputes from day one. It’s part of what the Firm believes training is all about—and helps define why Simpson Thacher is different.

Junior litigators help develop our cases by conducting discovery and drafting motions and briefs. In pro bono and smaller matters, they first-chair trials and hearings. Junior corporate lawyers draft and negotiate corporate agreements, as well as play critical roles in due diligence and closings of prominent transactions. From the outset, young lawyers throughout the Firm have direct, frequent contact with clients.

Our goal is to steadily increase the challenge of assignments to enable each attorney to expand his or her skill set.

To help guide associates, the firm has a series of benchmarks by practice group that generally describe what types of assignments associates may work on throughout their careers at the firm. The benchmarks are meant to serve as an illustrative, rather than definitive, guide for associate to think about their own professional development. Indeed, the type of work assigned to associates is limited only by their desire and capabilities. Mid-level and senior associates commonly handle a level of responsibility of a magnitude equal to that of partners in many other firms.

We want to encourage transparency about the skill and experience that successful associates should gain during their careers as associates in each practice group and to provide a tool for enhanced communication among associates, mentors and staffing partners. The Firm does not use benchmarks as an evaluative tool, as we recognize all associates may hit the benchmarks at different stages of their careers.

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Banking and Credit

Our Banking and Credit Practice is unsurpassed, and junior associates in our practice work directly with partners and clients from the beginning to meet our clients' needs. Junior members of a deal team not only draft operative documents, such as security agreements, but also play an important role in negotiating commitment papers and credit agreements. In addition, junior associates usually take the lead in coordinating the execution and delivery of closing documents, which means they assume substantial responsibility as well as direct client contact. As part of the closing process, it’s common for junior associates to lead conference calls and to review documentation with opposing counsel. And due to the scope of our client base, junior associates typically receive experience in a range of transactions, including leveraged finance, project finance and asset-based lending.
Capital Markets

Our Capital Markets Practice covers the full spectrum of offerings. The breadth of our practice—combined with the unusual opportunity to serve as both as issuer's counsel and underwriters' counsel early in an associate's career—creates an exceptional learning environment. Junior associates play an integral role in every securities offering we work on, with responsibilities that include preparing and reviewing offering documents, leading due diligence reviews of issuers, drafting legal opinions and managing closings. Junior associates work closely with partners and have early client contact, which is especially rewarding.
Mergers and Acquisitions

Junior associates in our Mergers and Acquisitions Practice are involved in a broad variety of public and private merger and acquisition transactions, including spin-offs, tender offers and cash-for-stock mergers. Junior team members are actively involved in all aspects of their deals and have the opportunity to start drafting and negotiating early on—from confidentiality agreements to stock purchase agreements. They are also primarily responsible for coordinating the due diligence and closing process, which means they have early contact with clients, as well as other lawyers in our specialty groups. Junior associates find it particularly rewarding to see how all our corporate groups work as "one firm" to close a deal that will likely make it into the pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Private and Registered Funds

Junior associates in our preeminent Private and Registered Funds Group work closely with lawyers across the Firm’s other practice areas to help the Group’s partners and senior associates provide comprehensive advice to many of the world’s best-known institutional alternative asset managers, as well as smaller funds and independent boutiques. Junior associates will work with a diverse group of clients on a broad array of matters, from helping their deal teams on fund formation to providing ongoing advice for both registered and unregistered advisors to counseling in corporate financing and mergers and acquisitions. As a member of the Private Funds Group, junior associates will have the opportunity to interact from the start with a varied roster of sponsors and other sophisticated investors, such as private equity funds, hedge funds, real estate funds and specialty funds. Due to the ongoing nature of the work in the Private Funds Group, junior associates have the unique opportunity to begin longstanding client relationships that will continue to grow along with their legal careers.
Litigation

The Firm's Litigation Practice is on the frontlines on a dazzling array of high-stakes lawsuits and government investigations. We believe our versatility in commercial litigation is matchless. The talent pool across our offices—from Manhattan to Silicon Valley, from Washington to Los Angeles—allows us to field a deep team of litigators anywhere.

That experience and breadth provides opportunities for our associates to work with colleagues around the Firm on litigations in a vast variety of practice areas. Junior associates play a consequential role in all stages of litigations and investigations, with responsibilities that include preparing research memoranda; drafting discovery documents, pleadings, correspondence and motions; assisting with and attending witness interviews, client meetings, court hearings and meetings with government officials; and assisting with deposition and trial preparation.
Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits

Our Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits Practice (ECEB) represents public and private companies, as well as their executives, in all matters relating to compensation and benefits. The scope of our practice—covering tax, securities, corporate and employment law—enables junior associates to develop a concentration in more than one area of the law. Plus, they have the regular opportunity to work closely with other groups within the Firm. Being principally responsible for assisting on all compensation and benefits aspects of M&A transactions, as well as dealing with day-to-day ECEB issues, junior associates early on get to negotiate and draft employment and severance agreements, management equity arrangements, transaction documents and deferred compensation arrangements. In so doing, our junior associates get extensive client and partner contact.
Tax

Our Tax Practice provides assistance to a wide mix of clients, working closely with all of our Firm's corporate groups in structuring, analyzing and negotiating complicated corporate transactions that include mergers and acquisitions, cross-border transactions, the formation of private investment funds, real-estate investments and offerings of financial instruments. Our Tax Practice fosters a collaborative working environment dedicated to client assistance, and junior associates are an integral part of the team. Over time, junior associates develop a broad understanding of the technical aspects of tax law and develop key practice skills, such as managing the tax aspects of transactional matters, as well as interacting with clients and adversaries.
Real Estate

Our Real Estate Practice has been involved in many of the most high-profile transactions in the industry over the past 20 years. The group handles a diverse collection of transactions, including the acquisition and disposition of single assets, portfolios of assets and real estate companies; distressed real estate and workouts; mortgage and mezzanine financing, debt restructuring; and joint venture agreements. Junior associates play a crucial role in every deal, with such responsibilities as reviewing existing real estate and loan documents, drafting operative assignment agreements and ancillary loan documents, and coordinating the execution and delivery of all closing materials. Junior associates work closely with partners and senior members of the deal team, thereby gaining substantial responsibility and client contact early in their careers.
Personal Planning

Our Personal Planning Practice represents some of the most affluent families in the United States and internationally. Representing fiduciaries and beneficiaries of large and well-known estates and trusts, we create and administer sophisticated tax planning and business succession strategies.

Our Personal Planning department is a close-knit team. The junior associates are essential to every project and they benefit from early and frequent interaction with our clients, their family, office professionals and other advisors. Even the most junior associate takes primary responsibility for drafting such documents as wills, trusts, sale documents for intrafamily transfers, LLC agreements for family entities and court petitions relating to estates and trusts. Junior associates report to the department on ever-evolving statutory changes, which keeps us current in our industry—and makes them among the most knowledgeable in our practice area.
Exempt Organizations

As a distinct group within a large law firm, our Exempt Organizations Practice is unique. We offer our clients—tax-exempt organizations (private foundations, public charities, social welfare organizations), as well as the governing boards of, and donors to, these organizations—advice from a dedicated team that also successfully collaborates with lawyers in other practice areas at the Firm.

Our endowment advisory practice is an important part of our Exempt Organizations Practice. Junior associates help to advise clients with respect to their complex alternative investments, as well as their “program-related” and “mission-related” investments. They work with senior associates to regularly advise clients with respect to not-for-profit/for-profit joint ventures and similar relationships. Junior associates also work on international philanthropic matters involving U.S. organizations operating abroad, the U.S. operations of foreign charities, and “American Friends of” organizations making grants outside the United States. In addition, businesses turn to our Exempt Organizations group for assistance with structuring and implementing corporate philanthropy programs.

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