What Matters On Big M&A Deals

Working on a complex, multibillion-dollar M&A deal is the ultimate team sport. It brings together not just the M&A lawyers, but specialists across intellectual property, tax and employment, along with investment bankers, tax advisors and, most importantly, your client. Everyone has a position, and success depends on how well you all play together.

To perform at that level, it’s not enough to just know the rules of the game. You need to understand the playbook—what each party is trying to achieve—anticipate how the deal might evolve and adjust your strategy when things change mid-play. Collaboration, adaptability and situational awareness are just as critical as legal skill.

At Paul, Weiss, junior M&A associates get to step onto the field from day one. We advise the biggest public companies and most sophisticated private equity firms on their most important transactions, giving junior lawyers real responsibility and the chance to learn by doing.

See the whole picture, starting day one

At the core of an M&A attorney’s role is deeply understanding your client’s goals. What do they actually want to achieve, both in this deal and beyond? That insight shapes strategy, timing and structure—and it’s what separates good lawyers from great ones.

At Paul, Weiss, we run lean deal teams, and that’s not just about efficiency. It means junior lawyers get real exposure from the start. You’re not stuck doing diligence in isolation; you’re on the calls, in the meetings and seeing the full picture of how a deal comes together. You don’t just learn the legal steps, you learn to think like a trusted advisor.

Often, our clients are large public companies or private equity firms with complex governance structures and multiple stakeholders—boards, founders, co-investors, activist investors or long-term institutional holders—who don’t always have aligned priorities. A deal might need to deliver short-term market credibility, but also address long-term strategic repositioning, risk mitigation or even personal legacy concerns.

Those aren’t goals you’ll find in a checklist. You’ll only uncover them by listening carefully, asking smart questions and thinking beyond the term sheet. That’s exactly the kind of insight junior lawyers at Paul, Weiss are trained to spot—because they’re in the room to hear it.

Be ready to improvise

Being an M&A lawyer at Paul, Weiss is fast-paced, collaborative and never repetitive. You get world-class training and support as a junior and constantly encounter new challenges, no matter how many deals you’ve worked on. A novel issue crops up, a regulation changes, or the market moves, and suddenly you’re solving problems no one’s quite seen before.

That’s where the job gets fun.

Creative problem-solving is central to what we do. Sometimes the answer comes from precedent. Other times it’s a structure borrowed from another sector, a workaround based on evolving case law, or a client insight that unlocks the commercial angle. Great M&A lawyers stay curious—revisiting past deals, watching the market, and always looking for new ways to get the job done.

And you’re never doing it alone. At Paul, Weiss, we work with top-tier colleagues across every practice area, and they’re always willing to collaborate, troubleshoot and lend their expertise. Collaboration here isn’t a buzzword—it’s how we operate. Because at the end of the day, our job isn’t to show how much we know. It’s to get our clients the best result.

Bring more than legal skills

All the technical knowledge in the world will only take you so far as an M&A lawyer, because our job isn’t to be a walking law textbook. Our job is to help clients understand the legal landscape and work with them to negotiate the best possible outcome with their counterparty.

The most effective lawyers do that by combining legal expertise with emotional intelligence. That means listening carefully, understanding both your client’s and the counterparty’s point of view, and leaving your ego at the door. When you do that, you’re able to identify solutions that reflect not just what’s legally possible, but what actually works for the people at the table.

And emotional intelligence matters just as much internally. Whether you’re collaborating within the M&A team or working with specialists across the firm, taking the time to understand others’ perspectives makes you more effective—and makes the work a lot more enjoyable, too.

Enjoy the pace

There are times when things move quickly, especially in the final stretch of signing or closing. But far from being stressful, those moments can be some of the most energizing. When you trust your team and understand the deal dynamics, that push to the finish line becomes shared momentum. It’s when everything clicks.

Of course, not every week is like that. One of the great things about M&A is that the pace naturally ebbs and flows. When things are quieter, it’s the perfect time to zoom out, think more critically about how deals actually fit together and build deeper relationships with your colleagues.

Some of the best learning happens when you’re not in a rush. I still remember going to grab a coffee with a tax partner and ending up in a deep dive on how tax basis really works (I promise that can be interesting). I hadn’t gone in expecting a masterclass, but I got one. Those kinds of conversations make the job more interesting and keep you growing even when you’re not in deal mode.

***

To learn more about Paul, Weiss, please visit their Vault profile here.