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Originally Posted by Unregistered
I agree with you. But please address what happens for BOTH the bankers and the lawyers AT the senior level.
Are you tell me that the process is wildly different at the senior? Is it any much different from the roles where the senior banker constructs, analyzes and executes a deal in his domain and THEN senior lawyer drafts the contracts.
I think most of us are arguing that the majority of law work, at the junior or senior level, follows what their client does.
Someone, institutional or retail buys a property, the lawyer drafts the contract.
A banker finalizes a M&A deal, the lawyer drafts the contract.
A broker intends to push out a business insurance product to the market, the lawyer drafts the contract.
You get the point? Someone thinks of X, the lawyer drafts the contract of X.
I'm only speaking from what I hear. There could very well be lawyers that do creative work. But I only envision those to be criminal lawyers as I only have what I see on TV to go by, which numerous blogs themselves say it's still the exception.
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Even just talking about purely transactional lawyers, as opposed to disputes lawyers e.g. civil and criminal litigators, you have a very narrow view of what it is lawyers do.
The contract is just the reduction of how a deal is structured into the written form. There are a lot of other things that go on between "Someone thinks of X" and "lawyer drafts the contract of X".
There's due diligence (boring as hell), regulatory compliance (think Securities and Futures Act, is
SGX or
MAS going to chew your client's ass off?), legal issues that pop up (hmmm this seems legal on paper, but does it comply with the spirit of the rules?), timelines, clients' commercial concerns in terms of time and costs, anti-trust issues (is the Competition Commission going to object?), jurisdictional issues (Cayman Islands SPVs), trusts and equitable issues, potential dispute resolution mechanisms (if the deal collapses).
Who structures the deal? Of course the bankers. But the lawyers' input is there to ensure that the legal position is solid, not only from a contractual and corporate law perspective, but a regulatory perspective as well.
Of course for the vast majority of transactions, lawyers rely on past precedents and standard forms. But every deal is different. There is room for creative dealmaking as well.
Who invented the famous poison pill defense for hostile takeovers? Martin Lipton, one of the most famous M&A lawyers in America.
Think of it another way. Aren't bankers no different from real estate agents? Except that they buy and sell companies instead of houses.