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I'm a 3L and signed onto a Private Equity practice group next year. I have next to no idea what my day to day work will be like though, and have been told I'll learn everything on the job. Nevertheless, I would like to spend the next year becoming familiar with the work and would like to know what resources will help me hit the ground running next year.

Thanks in advance!

also very interested in an answer to this question! any books or written works by practitioners that can give a good idea??

I can't imagine you'll find anything worth your time.

What do you mean by private equity practice?

negativefeedback wrote:I'm a 3L and signed onto a Private Equity practice group next year. I have next to no idea what my day to day work will be like though, and have been told I'll learn everything on the job. Nevertheless, I would like to spend the next year becoming familiar with the work and would like to know what resources will help me hit the ground running next year.

Thanks in advance!

It'd be helpful to understand if you're doing (i) fund formation work for PE clients; (ii) PE M&A or (iii) helping with the [debt] finance for PE transactions. At any rate, I'd read up on the basics of corporate finance (what is debt, what is equity, what is leverage, etc.), M&A, contract drafting, commercial loans/leveraged lending, and take a basic class on investment management (hedge funds or VC funds would work too).

For the basics of finance, I recommend any book by Domodoran or Brealy-Myers (these are classic college textbooks). You might also try the Khan Academy for a short video on capital structure. There is a Vault guide to private equity. You should read the Vault Guide to Investment Banking too, just to understand how deals work. You might want to spend some time on Wall Street Oasis. You can poke around on different business schools' website and there's probably a HBS Guide to Private Equity under their cases studies (it'll be under $30). Separately, you should start reading DealBook's PE section (Dealbook is a blog that NYT bought), BloombergBusinessweek (there's a great free daily newsletter called MoneyStuff by Matt Levine that is absolutely finance dorky but hilariously insightful on the world of finance).

This should be plenty to get you going down the finance and PE rabbit hole. As I mentioned above, there are different types of PE groups, so try to figure out from the bios of the folks above whether your group does (i), (ii) or (iii).

Good luck.

RedGiant wrote:

negativefeedback wrote:I'm a 3L and signed onto a Private Equity practice group next year. I have next to no idea what my day to day work will be like though, and have been told I'll learn everything on the job. Nevertheless, I would like to spend the next year becoming familiar with the work and would like to know what resources will help me hit the ground running next year.

Thanks in advance!

It'd be helpful to understand if you're doing (i) fund formation work for PE clients; (ii) PE M&A or (iii) helping with the [debt] finance for PE transactions. At any rate, I'd read up on the basics of corporate finance (what is debt, what is equity, what is leverage, etc.), M&A, contract drafting, commercial loans/leveraged lending, and take a basic class on investment management (hedge funds or VC funds would work too).

For the basics of finance, I recommend any book by Domodoran or Brealy-Myers (these are classic college textbooks). You might also try the Khan Academy for a short video on capital structure. There is a Vault guide to private equity. You should read the Vault Guide to Investment Banking too, just to understand how deals work. You might want to spend some time on Wall Street Oasis. You can poke around on different business schools' website and there's probably a HBS Guide to Private Equity under their cases studies (it'll be under $30). Separately, you should start reading DealBook's PE section (Dealbook is a blog that NYT bought), BloombergBusinessweek (there's a great free daily newsletter called MoneyStuff by Matt Levine that is absolutely finance dorky but hilariously insightful on the world of finance).

This should be plenty to get you going down the finance and PE rabbit hole. As I mentioned above, there are different types of PE groups, so try to figure out from the bios of the folks above whether your group does (i), (ii) or (iii).

Good luck.

Thanks for the detailed advice. My group does all three, and I'm expected to work on all of them during my first year. I'm gonna start with the Vault Guide and Wall Street Oasis, and then get those text books. Much appreciated!