I am a 34 y.o. mid to senior level in-house derivatives lawyer at a French investment bank. My main career goal is to become a general counsel - the main issue I see is the fact that I am specialist and general counsels are usually generalist corporate lawyers coming out of private practice.
I have taken into consideration an executive MBA to improve my management skills and increase visibility (and also because I love the business side of things and wouldn't mind a commercial role). However, this isn't a viable option: my employer wouldn't sponsor me financially and wouldn't give me the time for an MBA. The only viable options are courses like Stanford LEAD or online MBAs from Warwick etc which I am not sure would add much to my opportunities.
I have started to consider as an alternative the CFA® which would be quite different in terms of skill-sets but would force me to at least improve my financial skills and understand better the requests from the business on a financial level. It would also give me an option to move to a legal/structuring role should there be opportunities.
What are your thoughts? Any suggestion/tip would be helpful.
Cheers
If your goal is GC, is the obvious suggestion not to just switch to private practice and work in big law? Like you said, you've got a highly specialized skill set, and GCs tend to be more corporate generalists. Just not sure how the CFA brings you closer to that generalist skillset.
In terms of derivatives CFA is actually pretty weak. In my opinion, it's the one of the only parts of the curriculum where I think they could beef it up. So from a derivatives perspective, I don't think you would learn anything from a CFA. General finance definitely yes.
How is the CFA's curriculum on repack and structured notes? What would you suggest as an alternative?
CFA practically has nothing on structured notes. It's really weak on derivatives. You'll learn what's a bull spread, bear spread, straddle. What are VIX options. How does the BSM model work for option pricing....like really basic stuff...
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