BB IBD and top tier Lawfirm Comparison
Hi. I am soliciting valuable advice as I have to make my life's toughest decision. To give you guys a little bit of a background of mine, I graduated IVY league school undergrad, worked in a mid-size investment company, and am now in school doing my JD-MBA dual degree. I basically have two offers right now - NY BB IBD summer associate and NY V5 (i.e. band 1) law firm associate. My questions are as below:
1. Which one would be better in terms of prestige, job stability, exit option, and hours (heard IB is more brutal but also law firm is miserable).
2. Which one is more plausible? Lawyer at 3rd~5th year moving to become an i-banker, or the other way around?
I am not sure what to choose as I sort of want to do a little bit of both, and at the same time don't know well enough about them to make a swift decision. It's my first time posting in WSO, so apologize if I am not using any of the jargon here. Any advice and comments would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
1. Asking about what is more prestigious is just stupid. Banking will have better exit-ops and optionality. No idea about the hours - other users may have more info on this.
2. Lawyer to I-banker is easier. You see a lot of former lawyers move to the restructuring arms of independent advisory firms (Lazard, Moelis, PJT, CVP like doing this) but not the other way around.
Yeah sorry for the confusion. By "a lot", I meant yeah, it's basically the only pipeline for former corporate lawyers to work in IB. A few might go into M&A or other products, but it's much rarer than rx.
Transactional lawyer's hours are not better than IB. I'm in M&A at an EB and my gf is a lawyer for a top US law firm. On average she works 10-15 hours more a week than me
Word. This.
I also know someone who picked Cravath over Credit Suisse (having summered there) but that was purely because the person does not want to be in either banking or law in the long term, and is going for prestige alumni status in their post-whatever career. Happy to chat if you want (Similar degree/background as you).
If they had said it was Wachtell how would your response have changed?
You’re seriously outsourcing this decision to anonymous teenagers on WSO? Dude, the only person who can answer this is you. How have you made it this far and still don’t know what you want to do? Eventually, you have to pick something and commit to it. Can’t keep picking optionality forever.
Just Google Cravath pay scale
Are these median numbers, or do law firms not pay out performance bonuses.
IB and associated careers especially pay much, much more than big law.
equivalent in IB would be regional/global group head I assume. Or S&T global head of FICC etc.
I mean, it's a finance forum, so I don't what answer you expect to get other than going the BB Associate route. Some more food for thought for you though:
Which one would be better in terms of prestige, job stability, exit option, and hours (heard IB is more brutal but also law firm is miserable).
You'll have better job stability as a lawyer. You can cruise along at 1800 hours, be simply acceptable at your job and make it to 5th year Associate ($345 base salary) barring some catastrophic failure. Your exit opps will be law related but you might be able to spin your MBA into a business role. Law firm hours are rough, especially if you're at some V5 NY M&A or cap markets practice spinning some bullshit docs upon demand with a bunch of PE/finance clients. Expect to be available at weekends and at an hours notice.
Which one is more plausible? Lawyer at 3rd~5th year moving to become an i-banker, or the other way around?
You'll likely never swing back to law after being a banker. You won't know anything, and will be too time consuming to train up and too expensive to bill out.
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