G.J. Ligelis Jr.'s Rotation History

“I decided to start in an M&A rotation, which allowed me to build my skills as a lawyer against a backdrop of the same deals I had been reading about in The Wall Street Journal just years earlier. I spent much of my first rotation working on a hostile takeover defense for a large Midwestern convenience store chain. When we finally won the proxy fight after many months, it felt just like winning a political campaign. By the end, I was the only associate who had worked on it from start to finish and took on a significant amount of responsibility as a result.

From there, I rotated into a capital markets group where my first deal was as the senior associate on an IPO. With some fantastic hands-on support from the partner, I was able to quickly pick up the nuances of a new practice area. From that deal on, I was the senior associate on a number of different debt and equity offerings for the rest of my rotation.

For my third rotation, I wanted to go to banking because I was a true believer in the rotation system and figured I should do the three main corporate groups in a row. But I instead wound up in a different M&A group, which ended up serving me well in the long run as I grew into being the lead associate on my M&A transactions as well by the end of that rotation.

It was around that time that I became interested in going to our London office, which has a good mix of work between capital markets and M&A. As a fourth rotation, it was a bit later than when most corporate associates typically go to London. But it allowed me to dive right into helping the partners on their most challenging transactions. I built incredible, impactful relationships with the partners in London during that time, and being in a smaller office gave me an amazing perspective on how we practice as a Firm.

To me, the biggest benefit of the rotation system is actually an indirect one. While it of course trains you to be a well-rounded and therefore more effective lawyer from a substantive perspective, it also naturally introduces you to the highly collaborative manner in which we operate at all levels of the Firm. By meeting so many of your peers as you rotate through different groups, you develop this incredible network of people to call on when you arrive in a new rotation or face a new type of transaction for the first time. Even as a partner today, I still interact with my fellow partners every day of the week to share knowledge and experience, bat around challenging judgment calls and provide seamless advice to our clients.”