What is more intellectually stimulating and pays more and what is a better school businesses or law. I know that most of corporate laws not what you see in suits. But most of investment banking is just sitting at a cubicle working on live deals so I wanna know what is the differences and similarities in which one I should go as an analytical thinker
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Jobs aren’t comparable besides the hours you’ll work and the hierarchy you’ll exist in
Are you in high school?
Ye why
Drop the”ye”
both jobs at the junior and mid level are rough and not sexy. I would start in banking and you'll get exposed to lawyers frequently. If that job looks appealing then leave and go to law school. There are lawyers who switch to banking but the path seems more straight forward the other way.
There are too many ways of slicing this to provide one general guideline. However, here are a few thoughts.
(1) There are far more ways to be involved in the practice of law than there is being a banker. And I am not just talking about litigation v. transactional, corporate v. constitutional law, etc. There are entirely different ways one can be a corporate lawyer. You can work on M&A deals in Big Law, you can work on M&A deals at a non-profit organization, you can work on M&A deals at a small little generalist firm. Each of those environments are massively different.
(2) At Big Law firms that have established, standalone M&A practices, there are a lot of benefits that you won't necessarily get by going the banking route. Both have up and out type cultures. In banking, you have two major off ramps. One after your analyst stint (common for getting into other fields such as PE/VC/ETC) and one after your associate stint. If you make it to VP, you will likely stay in the business long-term. In Big Law, you have two similar off ramps before becoming a partner.
Big Law has one structural advantage over IB and IB has one structural advantage over Big Law. Big Law is a bunch of partnerships. This means when you make partner (and I use partner to literally mean partner, not this non-equity junior partner dishonesty that many firms do), you own a piece of the business. Ownership in companies is where reliable wealth often comes from. The median (not average) Big Law partner makes more than the median IB MD. Also, when you own a piece of a private business, it is much harder to fire you. You get better job security. Big Law partnerships are far more stable
However, a rainmaker in IB can make more money than in Big Law. IB has a much more rightward skew to compensation than Big Law does.
(3) Also, there is a difference in job functions. At senior levels in Big Law, partners have to do the underlying work much more often. In IB, being an MD is much more of a sales job. An IB analyst/associate will touch on much more of a process than a Big Law associate will. In other words, grunts in IB get more breadth of experience than a typical Big Law associate will.
(4) Cost. You literally need to go to law school. That's expensive. While MBAs for IB aren't necessary the way law school is for Big Law, you will see the typical person at VP-plus levels with an MBA. So, while being a lawyer does have more of a "startup cost", that gets defrayed by the practical experience of the typical person who "makes it" in IB.
Okbru
you have the chance to do a Finance undergrad -> try to recruit for IB, try it for 2 years/fail to recruit -> go for law school (JD).
If both degrees were at equal levels then yes, worth discussing it, but if you have the chance to take it step by step and do both to convince yourself which you prefer, not worth overthinking it/intellectualizing it
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