Nope, smaller firms are worse sometimes because they never have enough people, but always want every deal on the market, so you're paid less and working more than Tier 1 guys in M&A deals
The idea isn't to judge but to get a sense of how many matters is one expected to juggle at a time.. are you allowed to say no can't handle more than what I have on my plate. Wonder if smaller firms are better when it comes to being mindful of what one associate can handle instead of dumping them with so much that none of it gets done well and you end up with a disgruntled associate (most of us).
Judging someone by the number of live transactions is like judging someone by the number of hours he/she put in for the board exams. Each transaction is different. Sometimes one transaction (like the Jio Platforms deal) can consume your entire bandwidth.
For Banking and Finance, I'd say you're staffed on 4 - 8/10 live deals at a time (depending on the busy-ness levels) and how well your team is structured.
I'm on 3 matters that're closing before June 30, plus 3 other deals that're in progress but don't look like they'll get done in the next 12 days. Plus another 4-5 where we're either doing the diligence or which are in the CP/CS completion stage. This excludes the advisory work (Just sent a memo out to last week where we are expecting the foreign client to come back with a bunch of follow on queries).
I'm on 3 matters that're closing before June 30, plus 3 other deals that're in progress but don't look like they'll get done in the next 12 days. Plus another 4-5 where we're either doing the diligence or which are in the CP/CS completion stage. This excludes the advisory work (Just sent a memo out to last week where we are expecting the foreign client to come back with a bunch of follow on queries).