Hi, I have an offer from both. I have about 4 PQE. I'm hearing from peers that both teams have incredible mandates. Trilegal will pay more but I'm happy to give up on a few extra lakhs for better culture.
On HM team - I see that the work hours are long and the atmosphere is sombre. I'm okay with long working hours and sombre colleagues as long they don't actively go out of the way to make your life difficult. I hear there is more scope for professional growth and a steeper learning curve as a lawyer given HM's team is not as top heavy as RM's and deals with some level of understaffing.
On RM's team - Have not heard anything negative about culture for a long time until recently. An insider told me that the team has grown too large (doesn't have Ashwath style verticals) to manage and no longer cares about whether their associates are growing at a PQE-appropriate pace and if tested, they would significantly lag behind their peers in the market and a large number of mid level hires are sub-par at best, this is in addition to rapidly declining bonuses (unless that's just SAM and not a team specific problem? Perspective appreciated.). Is all this a common occurrence for teams of rainmaker partners?
Given this, should I stick to my current T2 or go to HM's team at Tri over RM's team? On the other I have heard that Raghubir is an excellent boss to have and culturally the team is incredible and fosters respect for personal boundaries. I would value all of this over money.
Please advice on what you would do in these circumstances? Please note that I have incredible respect for both teams and recognise that they are stars in the profession. The intent of this post is not to sling mud at anyone, I just want to know what the better fit is. Thank you.
RM has a star team. He is by far one of the best Corp lawyers in the country and has a clientele no other first gen Corp lawyer (other than Ashwath has). He is a workhorse and services all the bulge bracket PEs. So don’t expect easy hours.
While Maggon is also a good lawyer, there are lawyers in Trilegal itself who are better than him. He is quite junior compared to RM.
Agreed. These are not comparable teams. Plus tri general culture is aggressive and it's more difficult to become a counsel at tri so so think after SA what will be your curve at tri, plus you never know you might anytime get stuck with a bad PA/counsel, good and bad people come and go all the time. I feel generally RM will be more sustainable team to work for from long term perspective.
I am confused. On the one hand, you seem to think having "sombre" colleagues is a downside, but on the other hand, you want a "culturally incredible" team with colleagues that respect your personal boundaries.
Bro, make up your mind. If you don't want to live at work, this will involve actively limiting your involvement at work / with work colleagues, to what is necessary for work. If you want colleagues you can have fun with and share your life story with, you are probably going to waste a lot of time at work and end up there for long hours.
Other advice - write down a list of criteria you care about, i.e work life balance, professional growth, etc. Write down a relevance score for each (i.e - a relevance score of 5 out 5 means this criteria is a non negotiable and a relevance score of 1 or 2 out of 5 means you can live without it). Now, in the third column, write down the score that each team would get on that criteria, standalone - i.e - from your description it looks it RMs team would score low on career growth. Now multiply the relevance score with the team score for that criteria to arrive an overall score for that team / per criteria. Add up the score of each team under all the criteria and viola - you have a mathematical answer.
As a mid level I'd argue that you need to balance the learning curve with career prospects. Honestly, as someone who's not at Trilegal, the partnership appears to be very tough and up in the air. unless you're confident about your bookbuilding skills (which is great if you are) or if you're willing to work with the prospect of being a counsel for an extended period of time (i know of many who joined trilegal as counsel, stayed for years and left as counsel to become partner at lower tier firms since t1s fill up at that level by that point) - it would be a difficult or long time to become partner.
That said if you're willing to move say 2-3 years down the line to a place that has a less stressful partnership process, no harm in building up savings with the Trilegal moolah and the learning curve that HM's team would offer - came across a junior partner of his (someone with the same surname as the Delhi CM) and he was pleasant enough, but this was a brief interaction. Raghubir's team on the other hand was very easy to work across - reasonable and smart folks and very (painfully) thorough - worked across them extensively on a fairly tedious transaction.
On HM team - I see that the work hours are long and the atmosphere is sombre. I'm okay with long working hours and sombre colleagues as long they don't actively go out of the way to make your life difficult. I hear there is more scope for professional growth and a steeper learning curve as a lawyer given HM's team is not as top heavy as RM's and deals with some level of understaffing.
On RM's team - Have not heard anything negative about culture for a long time until recently. An insider told me that the team has grown too large (doesn't have Ashwath style verticals) to manage and no longer cares about whether their associates are growing at a PQE-appropriate pace and if tested, they would significantly lag behind their peers in the market and a large number of mid level hires are sub-par at best, this is in addition to rapidly declining bonuses (unless that's just SAM and not a team specific problem? Perspective appreciated.). Is all this a common occurrence for teams of rainmaker partners?
Given this, should I stick to my current T2 or go to HM's team at Tri over RM's team? On the other I have heard that Raghubir is an excellent boss to have and culturally the team is incredible and fosters respect for personal boundaries. I would value all of this over money.
Please advice on what you would do in these circumstances? Please note that I have incredible respect for both teams and recognise that they are stars in the profession. The intent of this post is not to sling mud at anyone, I just want to know what the better fit is. Thank you.
RM has a star team. He is by far one of the best Corp lawyers in the country and has a clientele no other first gen Corp lawyer (other than Ashwath has). He is a workhorse and services all the bulge bracket PEs. So don’t expect easy hours.
While Maggon is also a good lawyer, there are lawyers in Trilegal itself who are better than him. He is quite junior compared to RM.
Bro, make up your mind. If you don't want to live at work, this will involve actively limiting your involvement at work / with work colleagues, to what is necessary for work. If you want colleagues you can have fun with and share your life story with, you are probably going to waste a lot of time at work and end up there for long hours.
Other advice - write down a list of criteria you care about, i.e work life balance, professional growth, etc. Write down a relevance score for each (i.e - a relevance score of 5 out 5 means this criteria is a non negotiable and a relevance score of 1 or 2 out of 5 means you can live without it). Now, in the third column, write down the score that each team would get on that criteria, standalone - i.e - from your description it looks it RMs team would score low on career growth. Now multiply the relevance score with the team score for that criteria to arrive an overall score for that team / per criteria. Add up the score of each team under all the criteria and viola - you have a mathematical answer.
Or fuck it and decide on vibes.
That said if you're willing to move say 2-3 years down the line to a place that has a less stressful partnership process, no harm in building up savings with the Trilegal moolah and the learning curve that HM's team would offer - came across a junior partner of his (someone with the same surname as the Delhi CM) and he was pleasant enough, but this was a brief interaction. Raghubir's team on the other hand was very easy to work across - reasonable and smart folks and very (painfully) thorough - worked across them extensively on a fairly tedious transaction.