Litigation Consulting?
IA
Tags:
(Senior Monkey, 91
Points)
on 1/20/09 at 10:21pm
What does an litigation consultant do in big firms like Cornerstone. What skills can you acquire from the job. Can it be a good jumping pad for future I-banking job?
Thank you





I interned at a large
I interned at a large econ/lit shop (NERA/AG/CRA). Its a great job, as long as you have good quantitative skills and like research. In my opinion, you will develop some skills that are easily transferable to banking, such as conducting company comps research and doing some serious cash flow modeling and computer programming (again, group/project dependent). Some people here would like you to believe that the only way you can ever work in banking is if you are an analyst, but most of them are likely still in high school. If you work at a major firm like Cornerstone, youll have a great shot at a top grad school and from there you can pursue whatever you want.
I work in one of the DC
I work in one of the DC offices of one of the big litigation consulting firms (started in the summer). You'll do a lot of excel and some combination of SAS/SPSS/SQL/VBA programming (depending on your specific office/cases).
Lit consulting doesn't really have clear exit opps like IB. Most people go on to Law/Business school, a PhD, or something else. It is possible to make the jump to asset management, banking, energy trading and other finance jobs, but you'll likely lateral into a position rather than moving up (i.e. taking an analyst-like job in a different field...not the same as IB where you can easily make your way into PE/HF). But again, this is very dependent on the cases you work on and the experiences that you develop.
There is very much an internal labor market at most of these places, so the more skills you cultivate, the more your work options will be.
Frankly I don't like the job as much as I originally thought I would, though that may be because it is very slow now and has been for about 2 months.
Let me know if you have any more Q's.
hayek does it bother you
hayek does it bother you when people call it litigation consulting? clearly it is economic consulting!
I personally don't care too
I personally don't care too much either way. It seems like "litigation consulting" is probably a more apt name (the job seems to revolve around court/regulatory deadlines etc. more than I thought originally, though perhaps my expectations weren't accurate).
I do prefer to call it "economic consulting" though since "litigation consulting" makes it sound more like paralegal work or something.