The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
Amy Dreisiger is a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s financial services and investment management groups. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2016, joined the firm as an associate in 2016, and became a partner in 2025.
Her practice focuses on advising asset managers, family offices and founders, and banks and other regulated financial institutions on a range of regulatory, governance, and compliance matters, including matters at the intersection of various regulatory regimes. She provides advice to open-end funds, closed-end funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, and other investment management clients regarding regulation under the Investment Company Act and Investment Advisers Act. She also regularly represents financial services clients on various governance, strategic, and transactional matters.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
My practice centers on providing sophisticated strategic, regulatory, and compliance counsel to a broad spectrum of financial institutions, including some of the largest banks, investment management firms, industry groups, and other entities subject to financial regulation. I advise clients on navigating complex regulatory frameworks, including issues under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and on structuring their operations and governance in alignment with regulatory expectations.
In addition to my regulatory expertise, I regularly represent financial services firms in strategic transactions and gover-nance matters. My transactional experience spans M&A, strategic investments, joint ventures, and other initiatives. I also regularly counsel clients on governance matters, including conflict oversight, partner separations and negotiations, and succession planning. My practice is distinguished by a deep understanding of the regulatory landscape and a pragmatic approach to helping clients achieve their business objectives within a complex legal environment.
What types of clients do you represent?
I represent a diverse array of clients, including asset managers, family offices, banks, industry groups, open- and closed-end funds and their directors, management teams and boards, founders, and investment professionals.
What types of cases/deals do you work on?
A selection of my recent representations include the following:
- Regulatory, compliance, and strategic advice to numerous investment management firms, including Apollo, J.P. Mor-gan Asset Management, and Lord Abbett.
- The registered funds of a major fund complex, including advising the independent directors on myriad governance, conflicts oversight, and regulatory matters.
- Apollo in its exclusive agreement with Citi to form a $25 billion private credit, direct lending program.
- Several asset managers advocating with respect to SEC proposals for private fund advisers.
- Numerous family offices and founders with respect to partnership economics, governance, and succession planning.
- Asset managers in several complex and high-value partner separations and renegotiations.
- Goldman Sachs Asset Management in connection with its $3.5 billion real estate equity fund and $13.5 billion mezzanine debt fund.
- Governance and strategic advice to numerous banking organizations.
- Bank Policy Institute on numerous matters related to laws, regulations, and legislation relevant to the banking industry and interactions with federal agencies.
- SVB Financial in its acquisition of Leerink Partners.
- Byline Bancorp in its initial public offering and NYSE listing.
How did you choose this practice area?
As a 1L, I took a class called Legislation & Regulation, which is essentially Administrative Law for 1Ls, and I loved it. During this course and my 1L internship, I realized that I was interested in the financial services space as a potential practice area but that I lacked the practice experience to know for sure. As a result, I wanted to go to a firm that had not only deep expertise in financial services but was also strong in other corporate areas—which is how I found myself at S&C.
As a summer associate, my partner advisor was, at the time, the head of our investment management practice. Working with her, I knew I had found the right area of practice, including the intersection of investment management with other parts of the financial services markets. I found the group as a summer associate and have not looked back.
What is a “typical” day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
There is a lot of variability in terms of what a typical day looks like because it is, of course, driven by what our clients need. I might attend a board meeting if we are advising a board on a governance matter, conflicts matter, a matter of strategic importance, etc. I also spend a lot of time working with clients when they are trying to negotiate terms with a principal on compensation or governance matters. These are some examples of the places where we can advise on matters of strategic importance and bring our expertise and market perspective to bear.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?
I am a firm believer that genuine enthusiasm and interest in the area are the most important things. We all do our best work when we are engaged and our intellectual curiosity is genuinely piqued. There will be a tremendous amount of opportunity for on-the-job training, both technically and with respect to how to think commercially. The most important thing is finding a practice area where you have genuine interest, and the training to develop the necessary skills will come.
What do you like best about your practice area?
Often in a corporate practice, you see the names of these big, prominent firms. In practice, you get to see that despite the big company names, it is really a deeply personal business. For example, for a founder, their asset management business is not just a job; it is likely the most valuable thing that they have built outside of their family, and it is incredibly personal. Similarly, when you are advising the board of directors of a financial institution, at the end of the day, you are advising individuals who are stewards of these institutions and the money they manage, and they take this responsibility very seriously. There are people behind those prominent names, and providing advice in this context is deeply personal, which is the thing I like most about it.
What misconceptions exist about your practice area?
I think the biggest one is that you have to be an investment banker before law school to work in the financial services area, whether it is banking or asset management. I was not. I went straight through from college to law school to S&C, and many people practicing in this area did not work in finance in advance of going to law school. Like I mentioned, there is plenty of opportunity for on-the-job training and to learn the business and the industry if you are interested in it.
What is unique about your practice area at your firm?
I would say it is the interdisciplinary way in which we practice. Our deep financial services expertise means that we can leverage that expertise when advising clients. We avoid over-siloing regulatory work from transactional work, from governance work, and from exam and enforcement work. For example, if there is an asset manager who is a part of a larger diversified financial services organization that also includes a bank or a significant insurance platform, we can bring a broader experience and expertise to bear in advising the client holistically and not just on one particular issue or initiative.
How do you see this practice area evolving in the future?
We are in a time of a rapidly evolving regulatory environment that is going to change, and is currently changing, the way we all consume financial services. This includes things like increasing retail investors’ access to private investments and is combined with an age of rapid technological advancement, all coinciding with a generational transfer of wealth and a new generation of investors who have different views about portfolio construction, how they invest, and how they consume financial services. All of this is colliding in a way that makes it a very exciting time to be engaged in these issues and focused on how this moment in time can be leveraged to improve outcomes for Main Street investors without sacrificing the critical protections that are embedded in our financial services system.