Ropes & Gray: What do Private Equity Lawyers Actually Do? — Wed 14 Jan 2026, 5–6pm (UK), Zoom
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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LuLa" data-source="post: 16270" data-attributes="member: 3952">Hi! I'm really sorry to hear this and to be honest this is the kind of question that caused me a lot of mental pain and overthinking in the past. I also used to "rank them together" based on whether they were MCs, SCs or US but also had to realize (the hard way) that this doesn't really work out.So this cycle, whenever they asked me I adopted a different strategy and said: "depends how we look at it. if we take the kind of work that the firm does, considering im interested in x department I think the firm's most prominent competitors are y and z. so for example: "slaughter and may is particularly strong in public M&A. when it comes to that its main competitor I would say is Freshfields." however when we look at banking then A&O would be the biggest one.potentially then also go into other practice areas that interest you (eg in private equity if we stick with the slaughter and may example, the biggest competitors then become the US powerhouses like Kirkland or Latham or Weil".then you could state "in terms of international reach, considering the firm wants to grow/is growing/ is established in x y z markets its biggest competitors are..."i also think a really good one to add would be tech and the firm's general strategy for the future. that is one i brought up in all my interviews this year when they asked me about competitors/why i wanted to work at a specific firm. i think especially now where the legal profession is changing quite a lot it is very important to work at firms that are revolutionizing their model with a look to the future (eg Ashurst's ADV and "digital" practice area/ A&O's "Fuse" and legal service centers/ Dentons' NextLawLabs/ Slaughter and May's "Luminance") etc... I find that if you make the interviewer understand that you made an educated decision about applying to the law firm because you think it will genuinely help you become a lawyer who can still be competitive in the workplace of the future they will rate you highly .</blockquote>

Verification: Our company is called, "The Corporate ___ Academy". What is the missing word here?

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