Nope unless there is a chunk of securities regulatory work done on your part; which now again boils down to whether they were contentious or non contentious in nature. Further, fitting under the "Capital Markets" or the "Financial Regulatory/Securities Regulatory" practice area(s) are two completely different ballgames - both of which are incredibly niche and difficult to survive owing to a myriad of reasons. Better to stick to disputes and specialize in arbitrations (sector specific ~ the most lucrative being oil & gas, real estate and allied actionable claims involving valued property).

Good luck and I wish the best for you!

Oh man, my bad and my sincere apologies. Again to that question - ofcourse, it is very possible considering the fact that you will not have lost touch with pulling out cases (due to the hang of the "litigation searches" and allied sections of the offer doc); I think it should be possible because of how overworked law firms in general are as far as disputes teams are concerned. Now, venturing into such a direction is a personal choice but capital markets lawyers always try to switch to M&A, which in most instances, is never possible thereof. Given how saturated the market is today, B&F is the way to go I guess. Avoid M&A, Tax, Anti-trust and TMT for heavens sake (and this hellhole too).

I think everyone should switch from Cap Marks to other areas. I did that midway and It has been the best decision of my career. Now I am a Partner at a T1 not having to deal with the monotonous, mechanical work that Cap Marks involves. Too many students these days want to do Cap Marks for god knows what reason

The common perception to a fresher in this practice area is that clocking 3 years at an Indian law firm (usually the tier 1s since capital markets work is concentrated to the big law firms barring quality mid sized boutiques like S&R, TT&A, SNG, Rajani, CrawfordB. & Kanga) will open doors to the capital markets teams of quality law firms based out of Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and UK without having to do an LLM. What they don't understand is that although these foreign law firms do not require you to do an LLM to get an opening, they underpay you when compared to their existing retainers - expecting you to do the same kind of work with the same nature of deadlines and pressures involved.

Now, although this practice area is monotonous, laborious, clerical and mundane - the client facing exposure is immense and having blue chip investment bankers as your go-to client/buddy helps a lot when getting referrals/ entry into conferences, 5 stars and what not.

Further, rising the ranks is comparitively easier since this practice is not so crowded because of a myriad of reasons:

1) Having juniors going abroad for LLMs and lateral hirings.

2) Having juniors switching teams because of inability to cope with this practice area (yes burnouts are very very very common in this space).

3) Having principals and partners joining the IB teams as compliance/ legal heads - that are the law firm's go-to clients (this is quite rare but observed in some instances).

While the money is kind of lesser at the partner levels as compared to tier 1 M&A and International Arbitration teams, please rethink your choice before jazzing with ECM & DCM offer documents - 18 hours a day, your entire life.

Tread with caution and care, see you'll soon. Cheers!

Because it's a niche area and easy to get in. Most firms dont hire freshers in disputes and even if they do, there are very less vacancies. The attrition rate in Cap marks is so high that there are always vacancies and cap marks teams hire on a rolling basis. And i understand it is not necessary to start with T1 from start but because of financial restraints, have to.

No "Partner" - I think every kid from every god damn college (be it the top NLUs or top private colleges like SLSP/JGLS) is running behind General Corporate/M&A teams for god knows why, barring the money it brings; which again is very team/firm/location specific and boils down to the whims and fancies of the client at hand.