Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits Attorney Associate

You are one of the most technically specialized associates at your firm, and almost nobody outside your group understands what you do.

Every major M&A deal that closes needs you. Every PE sponsor that rolls management equity needs you. Every public company proxy statement that goes out the door needs you. You structure the incentive plans, draft the 280G analyses, negotiate the employment agreements, and make sure the golden parachute disclosures don't blow up the merger agreement. Without your work, deals don't close.

But here's what happens: the M&A partner gets the client credit, the tax partner gets the relationship, and you get a redline of a management equity term sheet at 11pm on a Friday with a Monday deadline. You're indispensable to every transaction but invisible in all of them. Your practice touches M&A, securities, tax, and corporate governance simultaneously — and yet your firm treats exec comp as a service line, not a practice. You don't have your own clients. You don't have your own matters. You have other people's deals that need your sign-off.

That's not a career trajectory. That's a permanent support role with a specialty tax label.

An AmLaw 50 firm is building out its executive compensation and employee benefits practice in New York. They don't treat this as a back-office function that gets staffed onto other people's deals. They want associates who will develop direct relationships with compensation committees, PE sponsors, and management teams — not just parachute in for the benefits workstream and disappear.

The work includes:

• Structuring executive compensation arrangements in M&A and PE transactions — management equity plans, rollover equity, carried interest, incentive compensation
• Advising public company boards and compensation committees on proxy disclosure, say-on-pay, and Section 16 compliance
• Designing and implementing equity incentive plans, deferred compensation arrangements, and change-in-control protections
• Counseling on ERISA, tax-qualified retirement plans, and health and welfare benefit programs

What you bring:

• 2+ years of experience in executive compensation and employee benefits at a major law firm
• Exposure to comp and benefits issues in the context of M&A transactions, particularly PE-backed deals
• Familiarity with Sections 409A, 280G, 162(m), and related tax code provisions
• New York bar admission (or eligibility)

What you get:

• A practice that treats exec comp as the business, not a support function
• Direct client relationships with compensation committees and PE sponsors, not just redlines from the deal team
• Cravath scale ($260K-$390K depending on class year)

Apply here directly or send your resume confidentially to srushing@laterallink.com