Lisa Collier

Partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP

Lisa Collier is a partner in Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP’s corporate practice group.  Lisa’s practice focuses primarily on advising commercial and investment banks in leveraged finance and asset-based lending transactions, including acquisition financings, leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, bridge lending and loan commitments, and other secured lending transactions. She has represented the financing sources on a number of prominent acquisitions, including the acquisition of Multi-Color Corporation by LABL, Inc., an affiliate of Platinum Equity, the acquisition of SanDisk by Western Digital Corporation, the acquisition of RCN and Grande Communications by affiliates of TPG Capital, and the acquisition of EMC Corporation by Dell Inc. 

Lisa has a broad range of financing experience in both domestic and cross-border transactions and has practiced in a variety of industries, including financial services, healthcare, media and communications, food services, retail, manufacturing, and technology.

What advice would you offer to women just starting out in the industry? 

Treat every professional experience as a training opportunity. While there is a lot to gain from formal training opportunities like continuing legal education sessions and similar programs, I’ve found that I’ve learned the most about my practice from my colleagues – and more importantly my clients – in the course of my day-to-day work.  The best way to gain perspective on the legal and credit issues that are critical to our clients is from the feedback that we get in our daily interactions. These information-rich moments might include an issues list call with a client on a set of commitment papers or soliciting feedback from a lender group on a syndicated credit agreement.  Every client is going to have a different history and different set of professional experiences that they bring to those discussions. Paying attention to their individual perspectives and approaches is a great way to become a well-rounded and thoughtful practitioner. 

What role has mentoring played in your career?

My advice is to collect as many mentors as you can!  Mentoring has played a huge role in my professional development.  I consider a number of partners at my firm to be my mentors and seeing the unique ways that each of them approaches issues and practices has helped me develop my own professional style.  

What do you enjoy most about your role? Least?

I thrive on the process of collaboration with clients, borrowers and other counsel, working together to find the right balance that will have everybody involved in a transaction walking away satisfied with the outcome.  Finding such solutions for clients is always the most rewarding aspect of my practice. Those victories come in a variety of forms: negotiating a compromise when borrower’s counsel is pushing for too aggressive terms in a document, meeting a tight timing deadline in connection with a leveraged buyout or helping a client pitch a creative structuring solution in the context of a refinancing.  The biggest challenge is navigating the time pressures that often accompany high-profile transactions. But I think we all constantly surprise ourselves with what can be accomplished in even the most impossible sounding timeline – particularly when we approach the process with a flexible attitude and the ability to prioritize the aspects of a transaction that can take the most time.  

How do you balance work/personal time? 

I’ve found the key is recognizing that there is never going to be a perfect balance. We work in an industry that is driven by market cycles, so you have to recognize that there will be ups and downs from day to day and week to week and accept that for what it is. It is essential to take full advantage of the free time you have when it comes but, even during the busiest periods, I strongly recommend trying to find an hour or two for yourself every day to focus on the things that are important to you. And hopefully that change of perspective helps to reduce stress and restore equilibrium.