Switching from Economic Litigation Consulting to Investment Banking

I'm looking for some advice on lateraling into investment banking. My main concern was that I missed the boat by not entering out of undergrad, but after doing some research I feel like I'm not too far removed in that aspect.

Non-target undergrad, double major in finance and accountancy with a solid GPA, and have been working for an economic litigation consulting firm for the past year and a half. I've passed levels 1 & 2 of the CFA and am sitting for level 3 hopefully this year.

I have a couple of friends who went into IB, but outside of that no real connections whatsoever. What should be my plan of attack? The city where I live does not have a ton of networking opportunities as far as finance is concerned. Would it be effective to cold network with alumni in SF/NY? What would my odds be of landing a role with my background? Any help is really appreciated.

 

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.

 
Best Response

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.

 

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