Hi guys. I'm a recent law school graduate who has two job offers in a low cost of living city.
1. Corporate development for a PE backed corporation, apparently decently acquisitive
2. Biglaw in the M&A group of a large law firm.
I'm looking for some input between the two options. Both jobs aren't name brand nationwide, but regionally have strong reputations.
On just a compensation basis, big law is roughly $160k and the corporate development job is roughly $90k. The corporate development job will also most likely increase my living costs by $10k or so and subjectively will be a worse quality of life (much longer commute, suburbia) however much more interesting work for me.
I'm looking for some input on whether taking this corporate development job will improve my hopeful exit to other corporate development/other finance exit options down the road /MBA, to where I should give up the big law money. Long term, I like the idea of working in corporate development for a few years and trying to move into either an operating role or continuing in the finance based M&A space.
Did you graduate from law school? How is Big Law an option?
People with a legal background never get any love around here.
PM me. My professional background makes me well suited to give you an unvarnished opinion/answer questions on one of your above options.
I would never want to do big law(ironic given the username), but in your case it seems silly not to do it. You already spent 3 years and a bunch of money on law school and you've succeeded in getting a big law job. Not to mention in a low COL city, which will let you pay down debt quickly(and if no debt, bank a bunch of money quickly)
If you didn't want to do law in the first place you could have come right out of school, done banking anywhere for a year and then lateraled to Corp Dev.
Plus the Corp Dev job will pay you 1/2 as much, with a worse quality of life, and honestly probably won't be as interesting as you think.
Big Law will suck, but I'd do that for a few years and if you're really interested in making the switch to finance, try and get in at a higher level farther down the road.
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