BigLaw Partner vs BB MD
Granted it's hard to make either of them, but...
1) assuming dealing with the same person in terms of smarts, ability, schools and they're guaranteed to get into good firms in both - what's more likely, to become an MD or a Partner?
2) top rainmakers in each can get 4,5,6,mm+ but for a middle of the pack partner at one of the top 30 firms with profits more than 3mm per partner, or an MD at a BB in IBD, which has better pay?
3) which has better hours, lifestyle, and job stability?
I know the two spaces are very different, that bankers think lawyers are boring and the work isn't exciting, and that it's not easy to become an MD or a Partner, but I'm curious on the above and am sort of weighing career options because I think there are aspects of both IB and BigLaw that I would like. Thanks in advance
Thanks. Have heard #3 before as well, makes sense too.
In terms of comp, for sure the top IB MD's are making more than top lawyers (who also can pull in 6,7,8, have heard of top M&A lawyers getting snatched for this amount at Paul Weiss, Kirkland, others of the like). My questions was more in terms of the solid MD at CS, JPM, or even Goldman vs the average Partner at Davis Polk, Weil, Cravath, S&C, Sidley and others.
I don't know if partners actually take home these numbers, but some of these firms sound wild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_United_States-based_law_f…
Edit: also in terms of getting foot in the door, doesn't appear to be only top top schools, NYU, Mich, Duke and the rest of top 15/20 schools seem decently represented at all of these big firms. Once you have your foot in the door, isn't it meritocracy?
Your first sentence is not correct.
I'll do ya one better -- how about some data?
Class of 2019 entering 'national firms'
CLS - 77.5%
NYU - 67.8%
Penn - 67.2%
Cornell - 64.4%
Northwestern - 62.5%
Duke - 62%
UVA - 61.2%
Michigan - 56%
Cal - 55.5%
Harvard - 54.4%
Chicago - 54%
Anecdote vs. data.
You got me there. And I think you comment was directionally correct, just wanted to point out that part of it was inaccurate
No hard feelings here either, thanks for the civil convo and congrats to your cousin. I agree on the need to be skeptical on the numbers sometimes
Love the story arc here - brings a tear to my eye to see such a wholesome resolution.
Dude..
Fordham law places like 45% of its class into biglaw.. FORDHAM lol. You'd have to have your head UP YOUR ASS to think that all biglaw associates come from HYS. Wtf.
Have a look at this before spouting utter bullshit again: https://preview.redd.it/1tryhk9ncsl51.png?width=1189&format=png&auto=we…
And, if that's not enough.. only ~40-50% of biglaw associates come from T13 schools. The next chunk are from the T25 and there's a long tail down from there. Even schools that are TTTs have 5-10% of their class in BigLaw.
Re: numbers - Federal Clerkships are a big fucking deal. Some folks get offered $200-400k bonuses by BigLaw firms after their clerkships so don't discount those numbers either. Yale (and to some extent the other HYS/T6/T13 schools) numbers are lower because a ton of people choose to do public interest - basically anyone at Yale could go biglaw if they wanted to.
my 2 brothers are both biglaw and went to T14 schools - neither were HYS and neither finished near top of their class
any hardworking person at a T14 school can swing interviews in biglaw dude
To your first point, pretty much all big law firms (250+ employees) pay the standard 190k base rate. Looking at employement reports of t14 schools, not just HYS, at least 60%+ of the class goes into these types of firms so idk about the whole you have to be at the top of your class at hys thing
1) This is incorrect. Almost all of the T14 can send nearly everyone (75%+) to Cravath scale pay biglaw if they wanted to. The reason why biglaw percentages are a little lower for higher ranked schools (YHS) is because a lot of those kids want sexier placements like ACLU or SDNY or Fed clerkships. Granted, it can be hard to get DC or SF, but NYC is a lock for the T14 and even outside of the T14 places like WashU or UCLA or UT Austin sent a large percentage to Cravath scale biglaw.
1 continued) M&A firms definitely don't have worse hours than BB IB aside form Wachtell. Even PE monsters like Kirkland or Goldman's baby Sullivan & Cromwell dont have worse hours than IB. Wachtell is the only one lol.
1 continued) Agree that top of food chain lawyers are smarter.
2) Look at rev per partner. Kirkland pays partners an enormous amount bc they have been poaching. Same as Wachtell (paid as % of deal). Other firms like Debevoise are lockstep, definitely less per partner than a place like Kirkland which is going balls to the walls rn. A lot of this stuff you can look up. EB MD definitely much higher for above median MD. BB MD probably depends on firm and bank, cant say anything definitive.
3) Law is easy to move up but harder to make partner. Lots of lockstep firms literally wont fire you, they will just not make you an equity partner and then place with a client.
Many will fire you and the hours have gotten far worse over time. A big law associate works less than a BB associate. Thing with law is that the workload does not decrease or get more interesting as you progress, whereas with finance it can become more manageable. You have partners working around the clock, more than during their junior years sometimes.
1. You do not need to be at the top of your class at HYS for big law. At a T14 top three quarters is often fine and at a decent T50 regional top half can be okay. No guarantees at either. Your class rank matters more than personality and networking, law interviews have no technicals and are very easy to prep for.
2. Law does not have that variability, correct. When looking at partner profits on Vault, it is for equity partners. It is harder and harder to become an equity partner, and more and more senior associates are becoming service or non-equity partners (some equity partners are deequitized)
3. yes, those days are long gone. Most associates are forced out between years 2-6, and you will have to go in-house due to a lack of other exit ops where you will take a 50+% pay cut. GCs are usually partners at a firm so your mobility is limited and if there is a takeover you will get the axe.
At the end of the day, law is billable hours (for the most part) so it kind of creates a general ceiling on your comp.
You should go look up how much the top lawyers can make.
who cares about the top lawyer...? average v. average is much better metric
I know a middle of the pack partner at Simpson Thatcher and can confirm he gets paid $3M per year, 100% cash, and also has a pension that pays him out for years at his current rate when he retires. That is a way better gig than being some capital markets MD who works at DB and gets paid $1.5M deferred over 3 years with shitty DB stock ... oh and you're an actual moron who has zero hard skills, just your "relationships" with Apollo/KKR (who don't respect you), to pivot when you get sacked when you're 45 to make room for some hungry target school hardo who ended up at DB (I literally just saw this happen). Being an MD at a BB is such shitty gig IMO, aside from MS/GS/JPM etc.
What people don't appreciate on this forum is how badly deferred compensation fucks you. Using DB as an example (used to work there), when the stock halves you're $1.5M is no longer $1.5M, plus time value of money. Deferred compensation changes everything.
The guys receiving deferred stock comp at DB are actually making a killing now with the increase in its share price
The stock has done nothing but go down since 2009??? MDs with deferred compensation have lost millions and millions due to their stock. Also, read up on their deferred stock - only worth something if the stock hovers above a certain price. They are being paid in out of the money options.
Relative
Lol this is so far outside the norm and no one entering HYS should expect this. More of them ten years out will make sub 200k than over 400k. The culling process is taking dozens of new associates and having them enter an eighth grade spelling contest. They can all do the work (which is not too difficult) and some are genuinely talented, except there isn’t nearly enough money and legal demand to offer partnerships like they used to.
Can confirm a relative pulling 2mm+ at a firm lower on the list (still big law, PPP of 3mm, think Wilkie, Cleary, Gibson Dunn)
Yeah, those initial years at each new promo level are rough.
Deferral on a VP1's / D1's / new MD's bonus can cut it down by like ~40%+. You only make up for it, slightly, in your latter years where you've got a few overlapping deferred tranches of bonuses vesting
If you do the math, you almost never receive 100% of your comp in any given year even with the vesting tranches of your prior deferred bonus chunks. So you're perpetually only ever receiving like ~15-20% less of the comp you are given. And god forbid you have a monster year as an MD, you get to experience the whole initial "chop" years all over again. Except this time that chop could end up being 60%+ of your bonus.
Only good thing about deferred comp at an i-bank is it can act as a forced savings plan which can add up when you ultimately choose to leave the career path. That is, if your firm even allows "good leavers" to vest their deferred comp.
OP, I commented on factual details elsewhere but think this demands a more thorough response since you are weighing entering law. I am someone who graduated from law school and spent some time in the profession.
Weighing MD v. BigLaw Partner is not the best lens to view this. Both are unlikely options that are well outside of your control, as you are aware of. The question is where you want to be in 5, 10, and 15 years, how likely those outcomes are, and what happens if you fail. If you attend the best law school possible, odds are you will be fired 2-6 years after graduation and enter a monotonous in-house position making 100k with some change. The work will be rote and you will not have many opportunities to move up in a large organization.
Most law students at HYS (the top of the legal academy) never came close to becoming an incoming IB analyst like yourself. Most, even at these schools, went to what are called semi-targets here or lower on the totem pole. Most studied useless subject matter in college and refused to study economics, business, or anything quantitative. Because they did not attend Harvard or a target school, studying the humanities made them difficult to employ in any position that can be construed as upwardly mobile. At HYS and the T14, many of your classmates will be former waiters, baristas, and other jobs called "menial" here. They went to a test center one morning, struck a high LSAT, and the admissions committees care about little else. I do not say this to be derisive, but to give context. For them, law school will be a significant step up in the world and we should be happy for them. For you, it will not be.
I had a poorly paid job before law school that was considered highly prestigious. If I had stayed another year or two, I would have been a strong candidate for the M7. Not doing this is a tremendous regret because a Yale Law degree (I went to a worse law school; attending Yale would not have helped me) will be unlikely to provide the opportunities your analyst stint will provide you, let along Tuck.
I often post this link to let you know how most former analysts and lawyers who had good non-legal positions before grad school feel about their decision (it may take 30 minutes to read through by skimming, it is worth it to avoid three years of opportunity cost): https://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=261392. I recommend you post on TLS or law school Reddit to observe the difference. On WSO, people will candidly discuss the downsides of IB, asset management, whether tech is better, and generally offer perceptive career advice. With lawyers, they become unhealthily defensive with any criticism of the profession and whether other options are superior. This stems from (1) a lack of context and experience in other white collars fields and (2) internal doubts because the work they perform is so utterly brutal that to consciously acknowledge it would harm their health and sense of self.
If you have any questions please feel free to PM me.
in-house pays way more than that lol...
https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/209075/MLA_2020InHouseCounselCompensatio…
Numbers are especially juicy in tech, buyside institutions, energy companies or i-banks.
There are severe methodological issues with the survey. 3,900 attorneys domestic and international [desirable foreign postings dried up 15 years ago, older partners when they are drunk talk about how much of a racket it was])? That is nothing. There are several million in the US. Talk to a V50 attorney four years in, they’ll take a 50% pay cut with the right hours in a heart beat and it has become harder and harder to find good in house roles. That aside, most big law alums will not get much further ahead than senior counsel as defined in this document.
what is especially misleading in conversations about in-house is the claim the hours are better. They usually are somewhat, but those 40-50 hour a week roles clearing 150k are on the way out. The hours can often be as bad as a firm.
The issue with biglaw is that its exit options are so narrow for the average corporate associate compared to say someone who spent four years in IBD or four years in consulting. Sure there are aberrations (everyone can pull the one or two people who are somehow doing business side PE or successful startup founder) but largely biglaw sets you up to be in-house counsel at a large conglomerate and there just aren't that many seats open. Whereas the IBD or consulting person can go into FP&A, marketing, strategy, etc. at the same company. Just a larger menu of options (and being a revenue generator rather than a cost center).
That being said I slightly disagree with your comp range for people with legitimate biglaw experience - its closer to 200k, but still under 200k. Not a huge difference but does matter for that comp level.
Thinking through my law school class (would be a 4th year), I am 1/2 of the 100 or so people who went into biglaw that has popped out so far doing non-legal stuff. Everyone is either at firms, clerking, or has moved in-house. The other guy is in politics.
Lol, I know two people that went to HLS, YLS. One worked RX at a top EB, the other at McKinsey.. Both graduated from a top target. You are straight up wrong.
With that being said a much smaller % of top talent is going to law school now vs. 30 years ago. But don't misguide yourself with such false claims
Thanks for the out of the norm anecdotes, although as I have said repeatedly elsewhere Rx can be an exception (still way better off at an M7). You can be top quarter at YLS or HLS and your odds of getting a BB associate offer or MBB are still highly unlikely even with full time job search beginning 2L. Please don’t get into a snide counter example pissing fight, it is highly unhelpful when someone is on the fence with law school and making six figure debt decisions.
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