Biglaw PE to Bschool to PE
28 year old current second year associate at a vault 5 biglaw firm where 100% of my work is M&A for marquee name PE sponsors. 3.7 UGPA in finance from mediocre state U (but summa cum laude because of odd transfer circumstance and 3.98 at school I transferred to), top 5% at top 20 law school (summa, order of the coif, high ranking law review editor).
I want to transition to the business side of PE. I make $220k with bonus. Is it crazy to consider this given the expected value? Is this story going to be compelling to adcoms?
Surely from a V5 you could network your way into a spot with one of your clients?
The legal to business jump seems to be a rare one to make—not a lot or modeling skill or ability, though obviously lots of familiarity with process and execution. The network part is less difficult than the structural divide.
Stratus Admissions Counseling offers support and guidance for applicants navigating the MBA and Law School admissions process. Reach out to consult at stratusadmissions dot com for more information. One of our counselors who has a JD/MBA from Columbia works in exactly this space and would be a great person to have a conversation with.
what do you mean the expected value? imo if you are going to do PE, money will never be a concern in your life so I don't really understand the question lol
Unless you play in the distressed space, it's an extremely tough move to make. My best advice would be to build relationships with your clients and see if you can convince one of them to give you a seat. Regardless of the quality of your law credentials, it will be really hard to measure up to the typical PE candidate on modeling, valuation, etc.
Yes, this is my calculus as well. Law is a totally different skill set than what a typical PE associate has/does. MBA maybe gets me over the hump.
To be fair, I don't think just an MBA would make that much of a difference as you don't really learn that much. However, the advantage of the MBA experience is that it would allow you to gain some actual experience by working part-time with a small fund which is 10x more valuable that the MBA coursework. Pretty much every single one of my classmate that ended up in PE and didn't have previous PE experience worked really hard throughout their program (some at 2 funds at the same time) and the experience that they gained was crucial in being able to compete against the more typical candidate that already have 4-5 years of transaction experience.
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