It never hurts to ask, right?

In 2003, David Clifton was an associate at McKenna Long & Aldridge when he started working on deals for Intercontinental Exchange, then an upstart, Atlanta-based owner of marketplaces and commodity exchanges. He continued to serve ICE when he moved to Paul Hastings in 2006.

Clifton said he knew ICE was an innovative and growing company—one with only two attorneys in Atlanta. So one day, when Clifton was talking with ICE's then-associate general counsel, Andrew Surdykowski, “I let him know that, if ICE ever needed more in-house expertise, I'd welcome the opportunity to be considered.”