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Fresh graduate taking a bar in September. Could you recommend any good books for PE and M&A practices? I'm joining a different firm/practice from my 2L SA so hope to have some basic knowledge before my start.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Thu May 14, 2020 2:00 am

Fresh graduate taking a bar in September. Could you recommend any good books for PE and M&A practices? I'm joining a different firm/practice from my 2L SA so hope to have some basic knowledge before my start.

More Money than God, King of Capital, Barbarians at the Gates were among my favorites.

Hotshot Legal has some videos on M&A/PE concepts and deal timelines that are short and really helpful. I believe they have a free student membership you may still be able to use.

If you want to go overboard, there's also a lot of resources on Westlaw's Practical Law system. You can download their annotated pro-Buyer and pro-Seller form Purchase Agreements and skim through some of the drafter annotations to understand what the provisions are, why a particular provision is pro-Buyer or pro-Seller, figure out if there are any frequently used terms or phrases you don't understand and look them up on Investopedia, etc. It will probably be many many years before you actually work on a purchase agreement, but understanding what a restrictive covenant is or how indemnification mechanics work (caps, baskets, etc) will help make standard first-year tasks like due diligence easier and will give you much better work product. Might also be helpful to read some articles on due diligence and what a junior associate should look for (and then google different variations of those things, for example know the different forms that a "most favored nations" clause can look like).

Most importantly, remember that most M&A first-years are not going to know any of this stuff so don't put too much pressure on yourself. You could walk in as-is and I'm sure you'd still be just fine.