Legal career in IB
Hello,
I am freshman at a top public (one of UNC, UVA, UMich), and I'm interested in pursuing a legal career in either an IB or at a top law firm that works with IB, PE, HF, etc firms. I plan to double major in Finance and Public Policy and likely go to law school right after graduation. Especially since law school is getting easier to get into, I'm hoping to at least land a spot at one of the Ivies.
I'm wondering if anyone on here has any experience with going into the legal side of NYC finance.
I'm interested in pursuing internships and ultimately a full-time career in the field, and while I know how to research which are available, I'm interested in hearing about the hiring process, workload, comp, etc from people who have personally undergone it. I'm a URM as well if that can help with special programs or internships.
Overall, I'd just love to hear from anyone currently working in that field and their overall experience. Thank you so much.
bump
I hope someone else can chime in here, but I imagine that most will not know since the only time internal compliance would interact with us is if we violated some company policy, which we obviously do not want to happen. Most of the head guys in my firm's compliance department started off as lawyers in Big Law. I wish I could help, but good luck.
Thanks. I'm actually more interested in Big Law securities and finance law firms. If anyone knows about that, still very interested.
Here's the deal. Big law mainly does multijurisdictional work and you need to be a top ivy grad to get in. Everything else is soul-crushingly boring drudgery, especially in-house. I would advise trying to get a training contract in London, because the financial risks would be minimised. So either get into a top14 school in the US (preferably top5) or get a TC in London where they would pay your GDL + LPC fees. If none of this happens for you just abandon the whole legal idea, because your life will be miserable if you don't.
You'll probably get a better response and overall better information if you go to a law career focused website. I know there is one similar to WSO I just don't know what it is. Or maybe Vault but I have no idea what's on there. A lot of people here are either in or want to be in finance or consulting on the business and not legal side so you're not going to get much good advice on how to accomplish that other than to say that yes, there are tons of lawyers involved in all things finance, you'll need to get into a top law school, get the appropriate internships to get into law school and during summers at law school and aim for a top Wall St firm like Cravath, Skadden, Arps or S&C but you know that already and not too many folks on here, myself included, can give you much specific advice.
I work at a bank and know a lot of people that went to law school and work at law firms.
To go in-house at a bank, you almost certainly will have to work at a big law firm ("biglaw") for a couple of years. In order to work in biglaw in NY, you have to go to a top 14 law school or be in the top 5% (or better) at your non-top 14 law school. You may think that you'll definitely be in the top 5% at a worse school but the fact is that most people at those schools were excellent students and are competitive, so making that assumption is not necessarily wise or warranted.
The typical timeline is that you will go to law school, do a public interest internship after your first year (although about 25% of the class gets a biglaw internship the first year, and most of that 25% are URM), interview for internships right before your second year to be completed between your second and third year, and then do that internship between your second and third year which will in almost every case result in a full-time offer for after your graduate (literally, it's a 100% offer rate at most biglaw firms).
It's important to realize that working in biglaw is soul crushing, and the "better" the firm (meaning prestigious), the more soul crushing the hours. The work of a corporate attorney is not particularly interesting, especially at the junior level (any relatively interesting work starts at around year 5). 80% of a class at a typical biglaw firm will quit by year 3. Most of those who quit by then do so to go in house somewhere.
Once you are in house, the hours are better, the compensation goes down (relatively significantly since by the time you can actually get hired in house you're already making around $230 - $250K at the law firm), and the work is more repetitive.
I would recommend you work for a couple of years before going to law school if your end goal is corporate law, because the truth is most people have no idea what corporate law entails until they get into it, and you should get a sense of what being in the working world is like so that you can better appreciate what it means to work (on average) from 9:30 am until midnight every night, with stretched that are significantly worse than that...
Also, the law school forum equivalent to WSO is top-law-schools.com.
Being a corporate lawyer is unbelievably boring. If you work with deal makers and you're a lawyer, you will want to be a deal maker. You will work similar hours and will be reviewing docs....you will get paid by the hour (and frankly, a ridiculously high amount) but they will get paid more. You are probably smarter and that will piss you off. Just try to be a deal maker instead.
My two cents.
...and this from Dick and overandout.
Most lawyers I know, junior or senior level, would rather be their clients the deal makers than themselves. Years ago one of our lawyers was a newer partner and it was at the point in my career where I was always knee deep with lawyers in our deals (I spent so much time with him that we invited him to our wedding) and he basically said that he was a commodity. A commodity that could charge a lot by the hour, and a commodity that gets paid if the deal happens or not, or if the deal ends up being a good deal or not, but there was a point where he couldn't charge more than $x00/hour, he only had 168 hours/week that he could possibly bill and he still had to sleep and eat during some of those hours.
Business men on the deal side can make a lot more money and it's just more fun. Like others have said, law is really boring. It's absolutely nothing like popular media portrays. If finance isn't as sexy as you think it's going to be, law is swallow a shot gun boring. I've been in deals with hundreds of lawyers over the years and I can honestly say I've been impressed by a small handful.
Currently a JD/MBA at a T6 law school. I para'd at a large NYC law firm primarily in the acquisition finance and leveraged finance space, then summered in biglaw during school. I'm currently trying to make the jump to IB (happy to expand on my reasons for this if you're interested).
Ivy prestige doesn't mean shit as far as law school is concerned (i.e. don't go to Cornell). Schools you should think about if financial services is where you want to end up: Penn, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, Stanford/Yale (biglaw firms shit themselves to snatch up kids from these schools, but the people you go to school with won't really give a shit about finance or what you're passionate about).
Firms you should think about: Wachtell (you're not getting this, don't worry), Skadden, Cleary, Simpson Thacher, Cravath, SullCrom, Sidley, Milbank, Kirkland, Davis Polk, Weil, Latham, Fried Frank, Cahill, Willkie, CliffChance, Ropes, Debevoise.
Think hard about your reasons for wanting to work in this space as a lawyer rather than a dealmaker (i.e. banker). There are interesting aspects about both and I think it largely comes down to a personality thing--again, happy to expand on this.
I returned to the lev fin experience and liked it enough but I wanted to be on the other side because I wanted to run deals. What you realize when you get into a law firm is that often you can have a 3rd year analyst bossing around a junior partner or senior associate in a law firm who is running the deal for the "rainmaker" who sits above them. That's great and all but I don't want to bust my ass for 8 years just to be awarded the privilege of getting shit on by some fucking 23 year old. Bankers run deals and drive them and as you get more senior you still get to have a hand in the documentation while also worrying about the business issues on your side of the transaction. Overall I loved my experience in the law but it comes down to the people I worked with rather than the work I did. I worked at one of the firms named above and while I think any of them would be a great place to work for the next decade, the amount of bullshit you need to put up with to "make it" in the industry is just not worth it.
I don't understand how you could have such an interest in finance at such an early stage, but would still rather be a paperwork monkey for people doing finance rather than someone that does finance. As a lawyer (at a v5 firm) turned banker, in my view, your plan is misguided for the reasons several people noted above.
My advice: just do well in school and have a GREAT time. Don't waste another second panicking over this stuff.
join SEO. They're partners with tons of high profile companies. I believe even wachtell but that is still the most coveted of course.
Two things (a) make sure that you really, really, really want to be a lawyer (former top 10 AmLaw associate), and (b) go to either a top 14 school, especially one that places really well into corporate law (e.g. Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Northwestern, Chicago, etc.) or completely kill it at a top 50 school (and by that I mean, you'd better be #1 in your class). That being said, being a corporate lawyer was unbelievably boring, and it doesn't get better until maybe the partner level.
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