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What do corporate lawyers do anyway?

|Written By Wela Quan
What do corporate lawyers do anyway?
Corporate lawyers essentially spend their time documenting the actions of their corporate clients. Photo: Shutterstock

If you were anything like me when I was a law student, you were easily drawn to corporate law firms during career day. Free dinners? My own assistant? Working in a shiny building? Why, yes please!

Yet for most students considering corporate law, during the recruitment process it is pretty opaque as to what corporate lawyers actually spend their time doing. So here’s a bit of insight into the life of a corporate lawyer.

Corporate v. litigation

Normally at a large corporate firm, there will be corporate practice and litigation. I won’t delve into what litigators do, but I will point out the two practices are very different and both should be explored if possible during articling. Litigation generally involves a lot more legal research and writing whereas most of the everyday work in a corporate practice does not involve arguing the law.

Corporate practice


General closing preparation



Due diligence


For corporate finance, diligence could involve work such as finding proof of certain statements made in a prospectus or researching past company filings and disclosure documents. Due diligence encompasses any work that can be considered “doing homework” on the companies involved in the deal. The goal of diligence is to help the client find out as much information as possible. The information found through diligence will help clients make decisions such as whether or not to buy a company.



Finally, juniors may be called on to do basic drafting of documents. Often juniors will be tasked with drafting documents such as officer’s certificates, director’s resolutions, or other deal documents such as receipts or consents. Juniors may also be asked to draft parts of disclosure documents including documents that will get filed publically such as a material change report, or used privately such as securities offering memorandums.


In short, corporate lawyers spend their time documenting an action their corporate client has taken, from as small as hiring an intern to as big as making an investment worth millions of dollars.

Wela Quan is a graduate of McGill University Faculty of Law and currently works in New York City as a corporate lawyer. She can be reached at

  • Law student

    chelsea Moropa
    So basically corporate law is all about paperwork?
  • RE: What do corporate lawyers do anyway?

    This is great. Thank you for this article. Many law students are attracted to the glamour that is Bay Street and the generous compensation attached to it. Very few actually have an understanding of what work as a junior lawyer might entail.
  • RE: What do corporate lawyers do anyway?

    John G
    I'm sorry that the article focused on what very junior corporate lawyers in big law firms may have to do. There is nothing about why any of this is done, or what the context is, or what the corporate lawyer at the top of the heap (or the sole practitioner or smaller firm lawyer of whatever seniority) is trying to accomplish.

    I would have preferred to see a description of what kind of activities corprations may get into, and how lawyers can help them - in negotiations, in legal ordering, in dealing with regulators - in short, the constructive side of the law, the creation of harmony and the avoidance of disputes, rather than the clean-up-the-mess work of litigators.

    Somwe of it may be boring, but some of almost any kind of work is boring. Ideally one gets to a firm where one is given a chance to do some of the non-boring stuff too.

    A more ambitious response would have been more useful and more appealing.
  • Attorney

    Joseph Mann
    While you make some great points about what both the general context of a deal is (which is incredibly important and what junior lawyers work toward building skills at) and also what more senior lawyers do holistically, I think that junior lawyers need to be prepared and know the minutiae and day-to-day - especially considering so few have corporate work experience, or firm experience, and burnout and unhappiness are so common before they get to see up close what their efforts lead to.
  • RE: What do corporate lawyers do anyway?

    Sounds horrendously boring and simple.