What Junior Associates Do

Our Banking and Credit Practice is unsurpassed in its depth and volume of work, advising clients on a wide range of sophisticated loan transactions, including funds finance deals. The Firm’s Capital Structure Solutions Practice provides strategic guidance on clients’ most complex capital structure challenges, bringing together market-leading Restructuring and Liability Management and Special Situations teams with financing-focused lawyers across Banking and Credit, Capital Markets and related practices. Our Alternative Capital and Private Credit Practice is also highly regarded, with significant experience across the growing Hybrid Capital market. Together, these practices give junior associates exposure to sophisticated financing transactions and capital structure matters across the full range of corporate finance work.

From the beginning, junior associates in these groups work directly with partners and clients on an array of financial instruments at all levels of the corporate capital structure. Junior team members draft key documents—such as security agreements, guarantee agreements, pledge agreements and board resolutions—and play an important role in reviewing and negotiating commitment papers and credit agreements.

In addition, junior associates regularly take the lead in coordinating the execution and delivery of closing documents—roles that offer substantial responsibility and direct client contact. As part of the closing process, junior associates often lead conference calls and review documentation with opposing counsel. Given our broad client base, junior associates work on many types of transactions, including leveraged finance, acquisition finance, investment-grade finance, project and energy finance and asset-based lending.

Our Capital Markets Practice covers the full spectrum of securities offerings, including headline-making IPOs and other high-profile equity and debt transactions for leading companies, financial sponsors and investment banks. Simpson Thacher stands out for the depth and balance of its issuer-side and underwriter-side practices—a distinctive combination that gives junior associates a 360-degree view of securities offerings and insight into how transactions are approached from both sides of the deal. That breadth of experience helps junior associates build core transactional skills in drafting, due diligence, process management and client communication.

First-year associates play an integral role across these matters, with responsibilities that include preparing and reviewing registration statements, offering memoranda and other disclosure documents; coordinating due diligence; drafting legal opinions, comfort letter back-up and closing deliverables; and managing key aspects of the closing process. They work closely with partners and senior associates, interact directly with clients and deal teams early in their careers and gain practical experience helping execute complex capital markets transactions from launch through closing.

Junior associates in our Mergers and Acquisitions Practice are involved in a broad range of transformative public and private transactions for leading public companies, private equity sponsors and other strategic clients. The practice is known for advising on complex, high-profile matters, including public company mergers, private acquisitions, carve-outs, spin-offs, tender offers, joint ventures and strategic investments.

The Firm’s M&A platform encompasses sophisticated transactional capabilities in Financial Institutions, Sports Media & Entertainment, Insurance Transactional & Regulatory and Asset Management, among other areas.

Junior team members in these groups begin drafting and negotiating a variety of agreements early on—including confidentiality agreements, stock-purchase agreements, board and shareholder consents and more. They are primarily responsible for coordinating the due diligence and closing processes, which provides early and substantial client contact, and regularly confer with lawyers in specialty groups.

One of the Firm’s key strengths is our ability to harness talent from across the Firm to execute transactions that make the front page of The Wall Street Journal—and junior associates play a central role on our teams.

Our Private Funds Practice is a leader in this space, having played a prominent role in the development of the industry. Private funds lawyers work closely with lawyers in the Firm’s other practice areas, providing comprehensive advice to many of the world’s best-known institutional alternative asset managers, as well as smaller first-time funds and independent boutiques. Our Private Funds platform also includes Funds Transactions capabilities, spanning secondary transactions, co-investments, liquidity solutions, subscription facilities and other financing arrangements for fund sponsors and investors.

As a member of the Private Funds group, junior associates interact from the start with a varied roster of sponsors and sophisticated investors, including private equity funds, hedge funds, real estate funds and specialty funds. Junior associates have meaningful roles across a broad array of matters, including fund formation, corporate financing and mergers and acquisitions, as well as myriad day-to-day matters. Due to the ongoing nature of the work, junior associates have the unique opportunity to build client relationships that will grow with their legal careers.

Our Registered Funds Practice has been central to the evolution of the retail investment management sector, helping clients create market-changing retail products while advising on all aspects of the business. Lawyers in the group advise leading asset managers and fund complexes on the development, launch and operation of registered funds, exchange-traded funds and other retail investment vehicles, as well as related governance, regulatory, transactional and disclosure matters.

Junior associates support key workstreams across this practice, including product launches, regulatory filings, mergers and acquisitions, board materials and ongoing fund disclosure. Because registered funds operate in a highly regulated environment, junior associates gain early exposure to a broad range of governance, compliance, transactional and day-to-day operational issues, while working closely with partners and clients on matters that shape the retail funds market.

Our Energy and Infrastructure Practice is a headline making leader in this space, offering lawyers the opportunity to work throughout all stages of the deal life cycle across disciplines on mergers and acquisitions, and other complex, and high-profile matters central to the energy and infrastructure sector for leading public companies, private equity sponsors and other strategic clients. We support clients in a broad range of work, from complex domestic and cross border large and mid-cap acquisitions and exits, initial structuring and formation to project and asset development, joint ventures and consortium transactions and restructurings, as well as playing a leading role in the buildout of infrastructure necessary to support the future of AI, including data centers.

Junior associates take on meaningful roles from the start on energy and traditional and digital infrastructure assets. Junior team members have the opportunity to conduct diligence, review project and financing materials, track regulatory and commercial issues and help coordinate workstreams through signing and closing across a range of industries and with a variety of lawyers in specialty groups, including by preparing first drafts of acquisition agreements, shareholder agreements and corporate consents, among other responsibilities. They also work directly with clients from an early stage of their career to prepare status updates, organize key deliverables and coordinate comments on transaction documents.

The Firm's Litigation Practice is on the front lines of high-stakes litigation and cross-border disputes, as well as government and internal investigations across the globe. Our versatility in commercial litigation is a defining strength, matched by the depth of talent across our offices, allowing us to field formidable litigation teams wherever clients need us.

A major, full-service litigation shop nationally recognized for excellence and sophistication, we offer associates the opportunity to work on litigations spanning multiple subpractices, including securities, mergers and acquisitions, antitrust, false advertising, insurance and reinsurance, complex commercial disputes, bankruptcy, international disputes and arbitration, and much more. Junior associates assume consequential roles throughout our 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 supporting deposition and trial preparation. Associates on pro bono matters are often primarily responsible for running their litigations from start to end, including serving as first-chair at trial.

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. Junior associates regularly work with other groups within the Firm and are principally responsible for assisting with all compensation and benefits aspects of M&A deals and other corporate transactions. They handle day-to-day ECEB issues, negotiating and drafting employment and severance agreements, management equity arrangements, transaction documents and deferred compensation arrangements. Our junior associates have extensive client and partner contact.

Our Tax Practice provides counsel to a wide range of clients and works closely with all corporate groups to structure, analyze and negotiate complicated corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, cross-border transactions, the formation of private investment funds, real-estate investments and offerings of financial instruments. We promote a collaborative working environment focused on client service, and junior associates are an integral part of our team. As they continue to develop, junior associates gain a broad understanding of the technical aspects of tax law and develop key practice skills, interacting regularly with clients and opposing counsel.

Our Real Estate Practice has played a central role in many of the most high-profile transactions in the industry over the past 20 years. The group handles a broad range 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 and debt restructuring; and joint venture agreements.

Junior associates play an important role in every deal, with responsibilities including reviewing existing real estate and loan documents, drafting operative assignment agreements, ancillary loan documents, closing certificates and other closing deliverables and coordinating diligence. They work closely with partners and senior members of the team, gaining substantial responsibility, client contact and exposure to complex real estate transactions early in their careers.

The Firm’s Personal Planning Practice advises on sophisticated tax planning, estate and trust administration, and business succession matters. We work closely with fiduciaries and beneficiaries of significant estates and trusts, including family-controlled businesses and other substantial private assets.

Junior associates are essential to every project, benefiting from early and frequent interaction with lawyers in our group as well as our clients, their families, family office professionals and other advisors. Junior lawyers have primary responsibility for drafting a wide range of documents, including wills, trusts, sale documents for intrafamily transfers, LLC agreements for family entities and court petitions relating to estates and trusts. The junior members of our group monitor and report on statutory changes, keeping the entire team up-to-date on the latest developments.

Simpson Thacher’s leading Exempt Organizations Practice advises tax-exempt organizations—including private foundations, public charities and social welfare organizations—as well as their governing boards and donors, on a broad range of legal matters. Junior associates work closely with senior lawyers in the practice and across the Firm, developing meaningful client relationships while gaining exposure to sophisticated tax, governance, investment and philanthropic issues.

The team advises on complex alternative investments, including “program-related” and “mission-related” investments; not-for-profit/for-profit joint ventures and similar relationships; corporate philanthropy programs for businesses; and international philanthropic matters involving U.S. organizations operating abroad, foreign charities with U.S. operations, and “American Friends of” organizations making grants outside the United States.