My thoughts working 3-years at LEK Consulting - culture, hours, etc.
I have been at LEK for over 3 years. I have learned a great deal, and I have enjoyed the work. In light of active applications and interviews over the next few weeks, I would like to provide some thoughts. This is for US candidates only.
Hours: Monday to Wednesday we typically work from 9am to around 11pm or 12am. People sometimes mention 3am, 4am nights. These do happen, but I can tell you that in 3 years, I have worked later than 2am less than ~30 days. On the majority of Thursdays (perhaps 70% of the time), I would say we finish by 6:30pm. We call this our Out By Six day. Similar, we try to finish by around 5 or 6 on Fridays. Overall, I believe our 60-70 hour work week is similar to other consulting firms. It is true that our hours are relatively non-stop (with the exception of 1-hour lunch, 1-hour dinner), but we have protected weekends.
Culture: Culture is clearly subjective, but in my opinion, the culture at LEK is robust. My colleagues are friendly. One item I will call-out is that occasionally, I hear people joke we need "permission to log off" or "permission to step-away" at LEK. This criticism is somewhat overblown. It is true that on most case teams, you are expected to ask your Consultant if there is anywhere you can help before you can log off. It is common to continually get new tasks assigned late into the evening (8pm, 10pm, 12am). Therefore, it is etiquette to tell your team anytime you are away (like for lunch or dinner). I think there is some truth that at MBB and others firms, junior staff have more control over their evenings (e.g., being offline for 90 minutes to workout or eat dinner with your partner is not something that would be acceptable at LEK). I have seen some recent hires struggle with this feeling of being glued to their desks. At my tenure, I have learned to set boundaries. However, I recognize this is exceedingly difficult for a 1st or 2nd year Associate to do (pushing back may come with a price - read compensation section below). With all this being said, I think every firm has its own culture, etiquette, and norms. I encourage candidates to think about what works best for them.
Work: LEK specializes in commercial due diligences (CDDs). These cases entail market research to help private equity firms and corporate buyers understand the commercial / market aspects of potential acquisitions: how large is a market (TAM), how quickly growing is the market, what are the customer dynamics like, what is the competitive landscape like and is the Target's position defensible, what are the growth opportunities available for the Target? I find the work interesting, and I have learned a lot about niche spaces. As a first year associate, you will primarily be leading expert calls, taking verbatim notes, and helping out other team members (adding quotes to slides, adding logos). To be honest, my first year was stressful, and I had a difficult time adjustment. In your second year, you will be more involved in the quantitative workstreams: you will be working on Excel models to size models, conducting more thorough research, and owning a greater part of the pack. I have enjoyed this more.
Compensation: The compensation at LEK is robust. A few call-outs. First, the sign-on bonus comes with a 2-year clawback. You will need to pay the firm back if you leave within 2 years. The performance bonus is also structured such that in the 2nd year of any role, a 3/5 performance review grants you 10% of your eligible bonus, a 4/5 grants you 50%, and a 5/5 grants you 100%. For context, a 3/5 is considered "meets expectations," 4/5 is considered "exceeds," and a 5/5 is considered "far exceeds." I will also call-out that the year-end firm-wide profit share, although theoretically up to 20%, was 5% last year. Our promotion path from Associate to Consultant (3-4 years) is also longer than most other firms (2-3 years). In aggregate, this can lead to a significant compensation haircut, both relative to the number on your offer letter (this should be treated a "TAM" rather than what's realistic) and relative to MBB, especially in certain years of tenure. Candidates should be advised.
Overall: LEK is not for everybody, or even most people. If you receive an MBB offer, you should take it. If you receive an offer from another T2, you should strongly consider it, depending on your goals. However, I do think the work we do at LEK is interesting. I like the majority of my colleagues. And I think our culture is not as bad as some people make it seem, albeit there is certainly room for improvement.
I hope candidates find this helpful, and that my colleagues find it even handed. I will check for replies after work.
Appreciate the thorough write-up.
Re: The Compensation, you mentioned depending on your rating out of a scale of 5, you receive X% of your eligible bonus.
Can you clarify as to how that system works? I.e. at each level, is there a certain range of eligible bonus (% of base or otherwise) you would expect, and in the scenario that you get a 3/5 rating, you get 10% of such eligible bonus?
Thank you, good sir / ma'am.
Interesting - will PM. Thank you for sharing
Was LEK your first choice
I have not met a single person that would take LEK over MBB if they can get into one lol
While this is true, at the end of the day sometimes you just get unlucky with MBB interviews. LEK runs T2 healthcare and can lead to some pretty great outcomes.
Flagging, I made minor edits to commentary in the post to avoid too rosy of a depiction. I'll reply to all the comments after I finish up work.
I appreciate this a lot. Just received an LEK full-time offer today and would like to chat sometime soon if you have capacity.
Sorry for the delay. On a burner case right now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but LEK recruitment should have paired you with a designated associate to have a casual, unmoderated conversation. Have we stopped with that?
I only got the offer Friday afternoon and have heard nothing since
Correct me if I'm wrong, but seems like the longer hours compared to other consulting is likely due to having more CDDs than at other firms. The hours you mentioned seem similar to MBB PE group hours. And while the the asking before log off is definitely not as explicit at my firm, at MBB if someone pings you before ~11 pm and you don't respond until the morning, it's a bad look.
A few follow up questions, because I'm curious (and this might help others making a decision):
- Do you think that doing mostly due diligence cases limited your learning compared to other firms? A lot of the learning in consulting comes from dealing with clients and seeing the inner workings of companies (by traveling to the client). Especially since doing the same type of cases can get repetitive.
- How did LEK fare during the 2022/2023 downturn? MBB and most other big firms cut a lot of people. I see that you mentioned profit sharing was lower (likely a result of the bad market). Did LEK 'counsel out' more people than usual?
- Do most people end up exiting into PE given the nature of the work?
Seems like LEK is a great firm overall.
Apologies for the delay. Yes, the hours are in part because we do so many CDDs. On an hours basis, I believe our hours are similar to McKinsey and BCG's PEPI groups. Our hours are higher than that of Bain, which, to my understanding, has really mastered the art of the CDD. Frankly, CDDs so repetitive, if your firm has enough supporting resources (e.g., survey center to help cut surveys, data analytics team, competent offshore team, prior IP), the hours don't necessarily need to be terrible. I do think our hours are more non-stop / no-break compared to other firms.
Answering your follow up questions:
- Limited learning: it's difficult for me to answer this question, as this is all I have seen. The work does get repetitive: regardless of whether it's a CDD or "strategy case," the modules tend to be very similar. Market sizing and growth, customer dynamics (e.g., key purchase criteria), competitive landscape, and growth opportunities (e.g., growth adjacencies). If you choose to do so, I think you can get a glimpse into an investor's mindset: the drivers for creating value, the merits and risks of a deal. I find this interesting. You are right in that we don't see the inner workings of companies. Whereas McKinsey and BCG graduate a lot of one-day F500 executives, you don't see that at LEK. For a 22 year old coming straight out of college (even one who thinks they want to do PE), the lack of broad exposure is a legitimate criticism.
- 2022 / 23 downturn: We did counsel more people out. Later, we also had US layoffs. And we laid off 20% of our London global HQ. We are now short staffed, with no bench in certain sectors. I have not had more than 3 continuous days of being un-staffed in the past 6 months. The "bench" / "beach" can also end up being pretty busy nowadays, since it's so small and we rely on the bench to work on new pitches / proposals. With that being said, I'm not sure how our financial performance is or what it implies for year-end profit share, given we've been discounting cases as much as 50%.
- We have a good number of people exit into PE every year. Mostly MM and LMM PE. Corporate strategy is also a common exit. Also not uncommon for people to lateral / quit within 1 year, for those who find LEK is not for them.
Thanks for such thoughtful responses. Wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on the limited learning... though LEK does a lot of work within the CDD space, are there strategy projects as well? McK/BCG might have a lot of exposure to F500 strategy type projects that breed future executives, but wondering if LEK has that work available as well. Thanks again
Do you have any insights on the culture/WLB at LEK London? Are the hours similar to US? Is the culture of being kinda glued to your desk similar too?
My impression working with the London office a couple times and hearing through the grapevine globally, London and the Australia work the least of all global offices. U.S. is 3rd best - sweaty but has protectons on Thursdays and Fridays and no weekend workk, and then continental Europe and APAC (especially India) are quite bad with none of the WLB protections we have in the U.S.
You start the compensation section saying comp is robust. You then spend the entire section talking about how it’s not robust, unless you get a perfect 5/5 rating lol. And of course, you provide zero numbers or data points.
Thanks for flagging. The below information is for undergrad hires. We have a 4-year program to get to post-MBA level, 3.5 years for very high performers, 3 years for exceptional performers. Hard to gauge % split, given limited N.
2-year associate program
1st year $95k base, $10k performance bonus (I believe 3/5 "meets expectations" will get you 50%), $10k sign-on with 2-year clawback, 2nd year: $110k base, $10k performance bonus (3/5 gets you 10%, 4/5 gets you 50%, 5/5 gets you 100%)
2-year AC program
Associate Consultant: $135k base, $30k performance bonus (3/5 gets you 10%, 4/5 gets you 50%, 5/5 gets you 100%)
[Promotion to MBA-hire equivalent level]
Consultant: $185k base, $25k performance bonus, $30k sign-on with 2-year clawback.
There may have been minor revisions, but these are directionally correct. Finally, there is the year-end, firm-wide profit share. The one thing I will flag is that the first 5% of profit share goes to 401k contribution. Therefore, even in an excellent year of 15% profit share, expect only 10% to impact your bank account. Overall, the takeaway should be that compensation is robust, albeit, certain features should be flagged.
Overall: I though about including this in the original post, but I didn't want a broad over-simplification to deter potential candidates: however, I do think a 20% haircut to the number you see on your offer letter is a reasonable "base" or "downside" case to hedge against performance review scores, variation in profit share, and potentially leaving the firm in 2 years. If I'm doing my math correctly (including sign-on), an offer letter might read $138k, whereas applying a 20% haircut brings it down to $110k. I want to flag that this is an imperfect heuristic, especially since the firm has a vocal group of proponents and, indeed, leadership has condemned online forum bullying in our all-hands. In an up-side scenario, it's worth flagging compensation could indeed be quite robust.
Thanks for this response, interesting to see how LEK compares to MBB / T2 numbers I hear from friends. The "Meeting Expectations" bonus for an AC is crazy... $3k for all that stress and hours seems pretty crazy to me.
Hi LEK AC,
Thanks very much for the in-depth post! It answered a lot of my questions as an incoming FT Associate, but I was curious about 1) how feasible it is to lateral to an MBB firm, when is the soonest one can make the jump, and how one should go about doing so, and 2) what do private equity/hedge fund/IB/ER exits from LEK look like?
Really appreciate your help!
Following
Bump
Sorry, on a burner case and have not had time. 1) Some people made the jump in 2022 when the market was hot. Harder now given market conditions, but you should ask MBB. 2) PE is common, but mainly LMM and MM. UMM is rare. MF non-existent. HF - no exits I'm aware of directly out of LEK. IB - makes no sense. Why would you do that? If you want to do IB, recruit out of college. The lateral market for IB is non-existent right now, not that it would be possible for a consultant anyway, you'd be starting as analyst. Not feasible, and also not desirable. ER - not sure.
Are you sure about the 10% of the bonus target for "Meeting"? In Europe it's 45-50% for "Meeting", 65% for "Exceeding" and 100% for "Outstanding". Very interesting take regarding hours, in Europe they tend to be more spread out across the week (12-13 M-Th, 10 F).
Yes, I'm very sure about the bonus. Imagine my reaction when, thanks to 1 disastrous case dragging down my otherwise 4/5 consensus review score, I got a $500 bonus as a second year associate. That's $3XX post-tax for 6 months of abysmal hours. In terms of the spread of hours, I believe the Thursday "Out by Six" (we call it OBS) perk is US only. There are pros and cons. Pro is that you have 1 day of the week where, with ~70% certainty, you will log off by 6:30 or 7pm. The downside is if you're working until 1am Monday to Wednesday, you may be too burnt out to do much even if your team hits OBS. Hours may be better in some other sectors, although my sector is not considered the worst.
An additional point I will add, since I realized I have not included it elsewhere. LEK will nickel and dime you in every possible way.
At one point, LEK capped late night Ubers at $50. For context, most consulting firms offer late night Ubers after 9pm, so you can get home safely. Despite the fact that we pass on these expenses to clients, this did not stop LEK from going on an austerity drive. Luckily, this was overturned after the NYC office complained they could not make it home. Now, you can expense more than $50, as long as you put a note in your expense report justifying the reason the price exceeded $50. What else? Oh, expect your new hire orientation to take place at a 5-star hotel. However, at every subsequent annual training, you will be posted at a 3-star hotel, often in an acceptable but not particularly desirable part of town.
Although perhaps seemingly random (or even trivial) examples, I think the above examples capture the attitudes of LEK leadership well. When we laid off 20% of our London HQ last year, I think the severance was something like 4 weeks. Whereas at a lot of other consulting and IB firms, there's an unspoken contract that the firm will pamper you and pay you well in exchange for very long hours in a stressful work environment, LEK goes for more of an austerity drive approach. I have sometimes wondered if this is the best approach. Surely, having MDs fly economy class, hunched over trying to work on their laptop, before UberX'ing to a 3-star hotel to prep for a client pitch the next morning is a recipe for disaster. Nevertheless, it is the approach the LEK takes, and it flows through to all aspects of our work. Does it make sense to have a 1st year associate spend hours of their day on LinkedIn cold outreach because we undersold a case and cannot afford to overuse Exert Networks? Questionable.
Nowhere is the LEK's austerity approach more clear than in supporting functions. Across the entire firm, we have something like 2 data scientists to support all data analytics requests (hint: the pay is extremely uncompetitive). If you call the IT help line, sometimes nobody will pick up for hours. Quite often, when somebody in a supporting function quits, it is quickly followed by a company wide email "The Chicago office no longer has X coverage. Case teams will need to fully manage X by themselves." To save costs, we also limit the number of licenses we have for third-party software vendors. By default, you are not able to Pitchbook, even if you mainly work on CDDs or with PE clients. Even if you are granted accounts, access is often temporary to reuse licenses.
...LEK doesn't use expert networks? THey make associates do it!?
Depends on how broke the client is and how much budget has been worked into the agreed fees for primary research. It's typical on most cases for associates to use 2-4 expert networks simultaneously as well as self-source candidates through LinkedIn / internal database of expert emails. Self-sourced experts are cheaper because the EN isn't taking a fee and this can be necessary for some clients, especially poorly performing mid-market portcos where they barely had money to hire the team in the first place
Ex-LEK here
I would add 3 critical points:
1. Exits to PE are quite great, at least in the mid-market / upper mid-market segment. This is the road I took, and I am extremely grateful for it
2. If you are good, they will fast-track you easily, allowing you to lead projects and teams quite fast, and stronly improving your comp vs. other consulting firms (even MBB)
3. Of course, if you have an MBB offer, take it, but honestly if had to redo it all over again, I would. I had a couple of great years and made a lot of friends and great memories. You will work hard, obviously, a lot of DDs, but "play hard" as well, at least in my office and with my cohort
I agree with 1 and largely agree with 3. For 2, yes and no. You’re right about early responsibility. I’m shocked that even as an AC, I have led projects without Cs. I don’t think I would have that level of responsibility at any other firm. With that being said, I don’t think our compensation beats MBB at any level. That’s just not correct, even for the highest performers. Apparently they just revised M compensation too, which drastically brings down the bonus. Can’t comment on that.
When did you start recruiting for your PE exit? Did you go through certain headhunters? I’m an incoming associate looking to follow a path similar to yours. Also, did you focus on getting as much DD exposure as possible? Appreciate the insights
When did I begin the recruiting process?
After about 1.5 to 2 years in the role, I started reaching out to headhunters and preparing myself (learning how to do LBOs, brushing up on financial technicals, etc.). Before that point, I believe it's a bit premature, and you should concentrate on mastering your role at LEK. It’s important to truly understand what you’re doing—not just executing tasks or pushing slides at 2 a.m. You should strive not only to do the work correctly but to grasp the bigger picture. For instance, you should be able to confidently answer questions like:
- Is this a good investment? Would I personally pursue it?
- Will the market grow as anticipated? What risks should an investor be wary of?
- Are the target’s competitive advantages solid and sustainable?
Ultimately, my goal was to transition to PE after roughly 3 years.
Did I target specific headhunters?
In truth, I had a clear vision of what I wanted (mid to upper-mid traditional buy-out - not growth, strong deal flow, good operational involvement, opportunities for learning and growth, with a well-balanced senior/junior ratio for career progression). However, I reached out to most of the headhunters in my geographical region to explore my options.
Should you prioritize gaining as much due diligence (DD) exposure as possible?
Not necessarily. You’ll get DD exposure regardless, and you have limited control over your staffing. The key is to focus on doing your job to the best of your ability, aim for "fast promotion" (which helped me slightly in interviews, though it's by no means essential), and try to enjoy the journey. The hours can be grueling, so it’s crucial to avoid burnout. Take time to relax, have fun, and create memories with your cohort or friends outside of work. You’re in your 20s—make sure to enjoy those years.
As a banker, LEK sounds like paradise compared to the sweatshop I'm at right now.
Good writeup overall. Also a 3rd year at LEK, and criticisms are fair but want to point out a couple things:
So that all is to say, if I had an MBB offer would i have taken it? Yes. But if I knew what I know now and had LEK vs. any other consulting firm or F500 strategy I would take LEK again every single time
Former LEK here - this comment is absolutely spot on
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