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Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed May 15, 2024 3:24 pm

How does partner comp compare to other more traditional corp groups? Thinking capital markets, m&a, etc

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Mon May 13, 2024 2:47 pm

Are there any options to go business side down the road from project dev? Potentially with carry at a PE shop or anything like that and do those roles exist outside of TX?

Yardbird wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 17, 2024 4:59 am

For energy development companies, you’re looking at entry level corporate counsel (usually $150-180K w 20-25% bonus), senior counsel ($200-240K w 20-25%), AGC ($200-300K w 20-50%), and GC ($250-400K w 50-100%) as exit options. I haven’t included fringe benefits or equity in the above, just straight cash comp. These aren’t hard numbers, it really depends on the candidate and the company, and where the comp lands in the range also depends on size of the company, if it’s PE backed (usually lower end base with higher bonus) or strategic (higher end base with lower bonus), and how many lawyers are in the group.

There are a lot of development jobs in the energy space at developers - renewables is the hot thing right now, so experience with solar, wind and BESS development is a huge plus right now, and there are plenty of jobs hiring. Hydrogen too though it’s newer. But natural gas and carbon capture development is also up there. LNG is very niche and not as many opportunities. Oilfield development is probably not what you want to aim for. M&A folks with energy experience can get these jobs too, but development experience is going to be more attractive.

Depends on the firm and city. If you’re in Houston (and to a lesser extent Dallas), the development groups at law firms can be fairly big. Outside of those two cities, I’d expect the groups to be much smaller within the non-Texas office but you’d probably be interacting with the Texas offices (or main energy office) a bit.

Most should assume they won’t get partnership anywhere, since statically that will be the case for 99.99% of people. A lot of folks don’t truly understand how much of your life you need to give up to make partner, and now most firms won’t even make you equity, they all do non equity now so you’re still grinding at basically the same rate.

You should pick a group because (1) the people are easy to work with, support you in your efforts and appreciate your hard work and understand the need for a work/life balance, (2) the group has a good steady flow of work (not up and down ideally), (3) the potential exit options from the group to in house, (4) the potential exit options from the group to less busy law firms, and (5) the potential for partnership. Note what is first and last in this list.

If you’re truly gunning for partnership, take a good hard look at your firm, its size, the size of the group, the number of *equity* partners in the group, the number of *non equity* partners in the group, the ages of those partners, the number of associates more senior than you, the attrition rate, and try and think whether the firm really needs more equity partners than they currently have in the group. The answer for most groups is a resounding no, which means even if you stuck it out and were good partner material, you likely wouldn’t get equity unless an equity partner retires or leaves.

Also, not many realize this but the partner title can actually make an in house search harder (unless you’ve been a partner for many years) because you’re greatly limited in what positions you can apply for and you’re up against folks who typically have law firm and in house experience while all you have is firm experience.