0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance? Forum

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by dingbat » Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:44 pm

Odd Future Wolf Gang wrote:Did any of you seriously consider careers outside law/finance/consulting/accounting? Just curious.
I once held the job title "Chief Ice Cream Maker"
DaftAndDirect wrote:Ok so Big Law is still just a stepping stone then. Any career Big Law hopefuls in the house?
Define "career".
I plan on riding the BigLaw gravy train for as long as I can, then switching back to finance. or ice cream making.

For me, the law field segues nicely with what I've been doing for the last few years and I specifically plan on doing transactional work in that particular niche. I don't ever want to see the inside of a courtroom.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by TLS_noobie » Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:51 pm

rayiner wrote:
DaftAndDirect wrote:
rayiner wrote:
DaftAndDirect wrote:TLS Noobie. Why do you want to be a lawyer. What kind of lawyer do you want to be that requires you to first get experience in Big Law?

In fact I think more people should answer this question:

"I want to be a lawyer because..."

I'm really only interested in hearing answers from those gunning for Big Law. Stay out if you want to save the planet.
You realize that the large majority of "big law" has nothing to do with how you seem to be defining "big law" (NYC corporate transactional practice). Most "big law" is litigation--good training for people who want to do everything from saving the planet to gunning for partner at a mid size commercial lit firm.
Is this really true?
The most corporate-heavy firms are New York firms like S&C, Cravath, etc. Even S&C and Skadden NY have only a narrow majority of associates in corporate (~55%). A corporate-heavy firm in Chicago is a place like Kirkland, which has about 40% of associates in corporate. A place like Winston & Strawn is more typical of Chicago big law, at 20% corporate. In DC, corporate practice is the minority. Hogan is the most corporate-heavy at about 30%. Skadden and Gibson are 15%. More typical is Kirkland or Arnold & Porter (~10%). In Atlanta King & Spalding is the most corporate-heavy at 30%. Alston & Bird, the other major firm, is at 20%. In San Fran, Wilson Sonsini is the only really corporate-heavy firm at about 50%. MoFo is about 25%.

It should also be noted that Chicago and New York are really the only places where "corporate practice" means working with big banks in M&A deals or capital markets deals. In the rest of the country, "corporate work" entails advising corporations. Even in a corporate-heavy west coast firm like Wilson Sonsini, where you'll be working on a lot of IPO's, you'll be representing the corporate issuer not the underwriting bank.
This is truth. OP should check out some of the BigLaw firms' websites and see their practice areas. Like rayiner said: corporate law does not necessarily mean you are working with the finance industry. It merely means advising corporations (as the simplest of definitions). Jackson Lewis for instance, specializes in labor & employment and represent/advise corporations with basically everything to do with labor/employment.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by dingbat » Thu Apr 19, 2012 7:07 pm

On a separate note, corporate/transactional is a bitch of a grind and quite far removed from what most people think of what lawyers do

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Borg » Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:50 am

I think people are overstating the public interest options for former biglaw lawyers. A lot of the most prestigious PI employers are going to want to see real commitment to the cause, and coming from biglaw isn't going to help when there are people who went straight into it after heading up the public interest organizations in their law schools etc. To get to good PI, most biglaw lawyers have to head first to much smaller, lower paying, less prestigious organizations. Cravath -> Amnesty International just rarely happens.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Joeshan520 » Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:47 am

I love the romanticized idea of BigLaw as painted within forums like this. The idea of "making a difference in the world" and having higher entry level salaries than IB is utterly ridiculous. I work for a large law firm in Chicago and can tell you that the lives of the associates are absolute hell involving no personal autonomy whatsoever. One associate's grandmother in China died over one weekend and the only thing the partner could say was that "if his topical outline wasn't on his desk by the Monday he would be fired" (mind you there were three other people on his review team). Great life with good people, huh? Furthermore, there is a diminishing rate of returns for most associates in the litigation department of this firm carrying tons of debt (often over 200k) and doing mindless doc review for 2000-3000 hours per year to make partner. At that point, it doesn't matter if you make 160k with a bonus, you end up billing out at around $50/hour, which is the equivalent of an unemployed contract attorney doing temp work.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by icedflames » Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:51 am

Joeshan520 wrote:I love the romanticized idea of BigLaw as painted within forums like this. The idea of "making a difference in the world" and having higher entry level salaries than IB is utterly ridiculous. I work for a large law firm in Chicago and can tell you that the lives of the associates are absolute hell involving no personal autonomy whatsoever. One associate's grandmother in China died over one weekend and the only thing the partner could say was that "if his topical outline wasn't on his desk by the Monday he would be fired" (mind you there were three other people on his review team). Great life with good people, huh? Furthermore, there is a diminishing rate of returns for most associates in the litigation department of this firm carrying tons of debt (often over 200k) and doing mindless doc review for 2000-3000 hours per year to make partner. At that point, it doesn't matter if you make 160k with a bonus, you end up billing out at around $50/hour, which is the equivalent of an unemployed contract attorney doing temp work.
I haven't read this thread, but I have never seen this view of Big Law on this forum before except for the money part.

Well, I don't tend to go on this forum much.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by TLS_noobie » Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:56 am

Joeshan520 wrote:I love the romanticized idea of BigLaw as painted within forums like this. The idea of "making a difference in the world" and having higher entry level salaries than IB is utterly ridiculous. I work for a large law firm in Chicago and can tell you that the lives of the associates are absolute hell involving no personal autonomy whatsoever. One associate's grandmother in China died over one weekend and the only thing the partner could say was that "if his topical outline wasn't on his desk by the Monday he would be fired" (mind you there were three other people on his review team). Great life with good people, huh? Furthermore, there is a diminishing rate of returns for most associates in the litigation department of this firm carrying tons of debt (often over 200k) and doing mindless doc review for 2000-3000 hours per year to make partner. At that point, it doesn't matter if you make 160k with a bonus, you end up billing out at around $50/hour, which is the equivalent of an unemployed contract attorney doing temp work.
I am not sure who you are referring to that romanticized BigLaw. And secondly, IB is the exact same way but (arguably) worse hours (but that is all dependent on which firms we are talking about and what locations). IB will pay more, and I am not sure that was ever contested...in fact that was a premise in the original poster's argument for going the finance route instead of biglaw. But, a point that was made earlier was that BigLaw does not only include finance law and that some people have chosen law over finance because they actually like law more than finance. BigLaw and IB are both mind-numbing work (and can be two sides of the same coin) but the biggest difference are the exit ops. BigLaw exits to law-related opportunities whereas IB exits to finance-related typically. Do you want to open your own practice in 10 years? work GC for a company? work for a boutique doing similar work? or do you want to work for a hedge fund? PE firm? or corporate finance for a company? ...these sorts of exit ops are easiest to attain coming from BigLaw or IB, respectively.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by dingbat » Fri Apr 20, 2012 1:48 pm

TLS_noobie wrote:
Joeshan520 wrote:I love the romanticized idea of BigLaw as painted within forums like this. The idea of "making a difference in the world" and having higher entry level salaries than IB is utterly ridiculous. I work for a large law firm in Chicago and can tell you that the lives of the associates are absolute hell involving no personal autonomy whatsoever. One associate's grandmother in China died over one weekend and the only thing the partner could say was that "if his topical outline wasn't on his desk by the Monday he would be fired" (mind you there were three other people on his review team). Great life with good people, huh? Furthermore, there is a diminishing rate of returns for most associates in the litigation department of this firm carrying tons of debt (often over 200k) and doing mindless doc review for 2000-3000 hours per year to make partner. At that point, it doesn't matter if you make 160k with a bonus, you end up billing out at around $50/hour, which is the equivalent of an unemployed contract attorney doing temp work.
I am not sure who you are referring to that romanticized BigLaw. And secondly, IB is the exact same way but (arguably) worse hours (but that is all dependent on which firms we are talking about and what locations). IB will pay more, and I am not sure that was ever contested...in fact that was a premise in the original poster's argument for going the finance route instead of biglaw. But, a point that was made earlier was that BigLaw does not only include finance law and that some people have chosen law over finance because they actually like law more than finance. BigLaw and IB are both mind-numbing work (and can be two sides of the same coin) but the biggest difference are the exit ops. BigLaw exits to law-related opportunities whereas IB exits to finance-related typically. Do you want to open your own practice in 10 years? work GC for a company? work for a boutique doing similar work? or do you want to work for a hedge fund? PE firm? or corporate finance for a company? ...these sorts of exit ops are easiest to attain coming from BigLaw or IB, respectively.
I'm not sure the money is better in IB, for most people.
If you don't make VP, you'll never earn what a 5th year associate makes in lock-step.
VPs do very well, but the big money is when you make it to Director, or better, which is equivalent to making Partner at biglaw, which also pays big bucks.
Only a small handful of people make stupid money (being significantly more than equity partners).
Yes, IBs can go work for hedge funds, but lawyers can develop new structuring, which can also be bank. But, it's like saying actors make a lot of money. Sure, a handful do, but don't base your decision on being one of a handful of people on the planet to make that kind of money. 99.999% don't

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by TLS_noobie » Fri Apr 20, 2012 1:57 pm

dingbat wrote:
TLS_noobie wrote:
Joeshan520 wrote:I love the romanticized idea of BigLaw as painted within forums like this. The idea of "making a difference in the world" and having higher entry level salaries than IB is utterly ridiculous. I work for a large law firm in Chicago and can tell you that the lives of the associates are absolute hell involving no personal autonomy whatsoever. One associate's grandmother in China died over one weekend and the only thing the partner could say was that "if his topical outline wasn't on his desk by the Monday he would be fired" (mind you there were three other people on his review team). Great life with good people, huh? Furthermore, there is a diminishing rate of returns for most associates in the litigation department of this firm carrying tons of debt (often over 200k) and doing mindless doc review for 2000-3000 hours per year to make partner. At that point, it doesn't matter if you make 160k with a bonus, you end up billing out at around $50/hour, which is the equivalent of an unemployed contract attorney doing temp work.
I am not sure who you are referring to that romanticized BigLaw. And secondly, IB is the exact same way but (arguably) worse hours (but that is all dependent on which firms we are talking about and what locations). IB will pay more, and I am not sure that was ever contested...in fact that was a premise in the original poster's argument for going the finance route instead of biglaw. But, a point that was made earlier was that BigLaw does not only include finance law and that some people have chosen law over finance because they actually like law more than finance. BigLaw and IB are both mind-numbing work (and can be two sides of the same coin) but the biggest difference are the exit ops. BigLaw exits to law-related opportunities whereas IB exits to finance-related typically. Do you want to open your own practice in 10 years? work GC for a company? work for a boutique doing similar work? or do you want to work for a hedge fund? PE firm? or corporate finance for a company? ...these sorts of exit ops are easiest to attain coming from BigLaw or IB, respectively.
I'm not sure the money is better in IB, for most people.
If you don't make VP, you'll never earn what a 5th year associate makes in lock-step.
VPs do very well, but the big money is when you make it to Director, or better, which is equivalent to making Partner at biglaw, which also pays big bucks.
Only a small handful of people make stupid money (being significantly more than equity partners).
Yes, IBs can go work for hedge funds, but lawyers can develop new structuring, which can also be bank. But, it's like saying actors make a lot of money. Sure, a handful do, but don't base your decision on being one of a handful of people on the planet to make that kind of money. 99.999% don't
This is credited, especially in this economy.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Tadatsune » Fri Apr 20, 2012 3:03 pm

Bildungsroman wrote:I want to be a lawyer.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by rayiner » Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:15 pm

Borg wrote:I think people are overstating the public interest options for former biglaw lawyers. A lot of the most prestigious PI employers are going to want to see real commitment to the cause, and coming from biglaw isn't going to help when there are people who went straight into it after heading up the public interest organizations in their law schools etc. To get to good PI, most biglaw lawyers have to head first to much smaller, lower paying, less prestigious organizations. Cravath -> Amnesty International just rarely happens.
Public interest and government organizations, even good ones, run on limited budgets. It's expensive to train a lawyer fresh out of school, even a good one. Hiring people with a few years of litigation experience under their belt at a big firm is often much more attractive. I did NU's Environmental Advocacy clinic this year, and had a lot of Chicago PI environmental lawyers come speak to us. A big chunk of them had big firm experience before they went into the public sector.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Borg » Fri Apr 20, 2012 6:32 pm

rayiner wrote:
Borg wrote:I think people are overstating the public interest options for former biglaw lawyers. A lot of the most prestigious PI employers are going to want to see real commitment to the cause, and coming from biglaw isn't going to help when there are people who went straight into it after heading up the public interest organizations in their law schools etc. To get to good PI, most biglaw lawyers have to head first to much smaller, lower paying, less prestigious organizations. Cravath -> Amnesty International just rarely happens.
Public interest and government organizations, even good ones, run on limited budgets. It's expensive to train a lawyer fresh out of school, even a good one. Hiring people with a few years of litigation experience under their belt at a big firm is often much more attractive. I did NU's Environmental Advocacy clinic this year, and had a lot of Chicago PI environmental lawyers come speak to us. A big chunk of them had big firm experience before they went into the public sector.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but there are plenty of people who jump straight into public interest jobs straight out of law school. Some nonprofits are pretty prejudiced against biglaw people and will scoop up people who worked as public defenders or state level environmental lawyers before taking someone who went for the money. It depends on where you are trying to go, but of the lawyers I know at the ACLU, Amnesty etc. almost all of them have been in public interest since graduation.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by integralx2 » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:00 pm

Odd Future Wolf Gang wrote:
TLS_noobie wrote:
Odd Future Wolf Gang wrote:Did any of you seriously consider careers outside law/finance/consulting/accounting? Just curious.
Yes. Some of us are coming from other careers and are going to law school because (strangely enough) we actually want to be a lawyer. I am coming from engineering.
One of my greatest regrets is that I did not study something like engineering in UG. If you don't mind my asking, why did you make the career change? What about the law seems more appealing to you than engineering?

Patent law, cause it won't matter the law school he attended.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by integralx2 » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:06 pm

Honestly the safest field i would have to say engineering. Easy out of school 55k-65k salary (region dependent obviously), and hours are not bad. Thats with an undergrad, and no law degree, or masters in finance. I have seen people doing finance work for $30-40k a year , and working horrible hours. I mean it is what it is. Who can you blame, but yourself.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by dingbat » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:23 pm

integralx2 wrote:Honestly the safest field i would have to say engineering. Easy out of school 55k-65k salary (region dependent obviously), and hours are not bad. Thats with an undergrad, and no law degree, or masters in finance. I have seen people doing finance work for $30-40k a year , and working horrible hours. I mean it is what it is. Who can you blame, but yourself.
I think the safest fields are electrician or plumber. I don't know about the rest of the country, but in the northeast, those fields can net six figures and don't require so much as an undergraduate degree

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by 09042014 » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:24 pm

integralx2 wrote:
Odd Future Wolf Gang wrote:
TLS_noobie wrote:
Odd Future Wolf Gang wrote:Did any of you seriously consider careers outside law/finance/consulting/accounting? Just curious.
Yes. Some of us are coming from other careers and are going to law school because (strangely enough) we actually want to be a lawyer. I am coming from engineering.
One of my greatest regrets is that I did not study something like engineering in UG. If you don't mind my asking, why did you make the career change? What about the law seems more appealing to you than engineering?

Patent law, cause it won't matter the law school he attended.
LOL that's not true.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by integralx2 » Sat Apr 21, 2012 10:01 pm

LOL that's not true
Well from the four attorneys (that I know) that are in patent field , each started with $120k/yr salary out of TTTT school. Ohh and something funny. All graduated with almost no debt hahaha.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Odd Future Wolf Gang » Sat Apr 21, 2012 10:11 pm

.
Last edited by Odd Future Wolf Gang on Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Geon » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:16 am

DaftAndDirect wrote:Serious question.

Why isn't everyone here who is gunning for Big Law trying to break in to finance instead? If you have an arts and letters background, you could get an MSF and jump into an entry gig at 60-70k and work your way into IB after a couple of years.

Also, corporate attorneys at the end of the day are little more than some banker's bitch. Bankers and lawyers work similar hours (with bankers' being a bit worse up until reaching Vice President) but bankers are paid substantially more.

What's the deal?
I worked in a VC so hopefully I can give you some insight
Lawyers ... In my area... at small 5 people firms make between 250 (new lawyers) to $750 an hour and they also make $1000, or $10,000 a DAY when they have to represent someone in a court. Lawyers make money whether or not they win or lose, do a good job or a shit job they still get paid the same in MOST cases, as they usually demand payment before work is done. Law requires no mathematical skill (a big challenge for well over 99% of the female population-except chinese girls- and maybe 80% of men.)

Lets contrast that to finance. You make $32-$37 an hour to work 80-90 hours a week. You WILL work on new years eve and New Year's day, you will work on boxing day and christmas eve, you won't really have a vacation and statutory holidays are work days and you never make overtime. You will never make $10,000 a day just to represent someone in court. You (the firm) doesn't get paid if there is no deal - unlike lawyers who get paid before they even start work with a retainer. 5 years ago the starting salary here used to be 150k with bonus for ibankers. Well it works out to 32-37 an hour. Unlike law you almost never have down time, when you are not doing nothing, there is always almost more work than time. Now the US ibankers are getting paid way worse per hour, as I heard they are often pulling like 60k-100k WITH BONUS in NYC/manhattan, which is insanely low.

Of those 21% of people good in math, they usually are good in science as well and things like dentistry, doctor, engineer are attractive careers for these people as they often are not as good in writing. Business requires strong writing and strong math skills. A very rare combination. I have friends in med school who have poor writing skills but are great with science and numbers.

Law requires going to an easy undergrad program like gender studies, doing well on the lsat, then getting into a good law school and your pretty much set.

O Yes, and you speak of breaking into Ibanking like its easy, it is not, at not where I am, there was a time 5 years ago when if you went to a school like Queens, Schulich, Ivey and finished with B+ or better you had a decent shot, but not anymore.(I'm speaking from toronto perspective). Also after 3 years 90% of i bankers are jobless, 10% are promoted, 90% not rehired, but almost all find some employment elsewhere. Pretty much you only have 2 ways to become an analyst, get recruited out of school, or know someone. ITE with all the unemployed bankers, you'll have no chance of breaking in without having worked in the bank in a similar role. For example, in the last time I did interviews, we had guys with 15+ years of finance experience as bond traders applying for analyst as 300 got laid off in one day. So if you think you can just pop up and get hired like in the 80s or the 90s, its not like that anymore. In fact, I bet more people get into Yale, then get into legitimate Ibanking this way.

Also if you do not have the courses or the internships, then forget about it. If you don't know how to build a financial model... in fact in VC we joke, that those are the only models that I Bankers get, I digress... then fuhgettaboudit you aren't getting the job. I was lucky enough to have an I banker mentor me who was able to prepare me for the interviews so that I could get a job, but its not realistic to expect that from everyone. In fact even with that I couldn't get into a major I bank, but got hired at a major VC firm only because my mentor pulled strings- thats it, undergrads do not get hired in VCs-, why, because ITE, only people who have family are being hired, ok thats a bit of an exaggeration, but its a very very high percentage. As in we have about 7-8 major banks and all of them have hundreds of ibankers, and they all know someone who wants in, so if you do not know someone, it will be VERY HARD to get in ITE. No joke, I went to interviews, had calls from vice presidents and presidents of I banks telling me we think your great, you have a future in banking but we chose to hire internally, all to find out later the "internal hire" was a teller who was related to someone in the bank, some vp, some associate, someone,

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by shoeshine » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:20 am

Geon wrote:
DaftAndDirect wrote:Serious question.

Why isn't everyone here who is gunning for Big Law trying to break in to finance instead? If you have an arts and letters background, you could get an MSF and jump into an entry gig at 60-70k and work your way into IB after a couple of years.

Also, corporate attorneys at the end of the day are little more than some banker's bitch. Bankers and lawyers work similar hours (with bankers' being a bit worse up until reaching Vice President) but bankers are paid substantially more.

What's the deal?
I worked in a VC so hopefully I can give you some insight
Lawyers ... In my area... at small 5 people firms make between 250 (new lawyers) to $750 an hour and they also make $1000, or $10,000 a DAY when they have to represent someone in a court. Lawyers make money whether or not they win or lose, do a good job or a shit job they still get paid the same in MOST cases, as they usually demand payment before work is done. Law requires no mathematical skill (a big challenge for well over 99% of the female population-except chinese girls- and maybe 80% of men.)

Lets contrast that to finance. You make $32-$37 an hour to work 80-90 hours a week. You WILL work on new years eve and New Year's day, you will work on boxing day and christmas eve, you won't really have a vacation and statutory holidays are work days and you never make overtime. You will never make $10,000 a day just to represent someone in court. You (the firm) doesn't get paid if there is no deal - unlike lawyers who get paid before they even start work with a retainer. 5 years ago the starting salary here used to be 150k with bonus for ibankers. Well it works out to 32-37 an hour. Unlike law you almost never have down time, when you are not doing nothing, there is always almost more work than time. Now the US ibankers are getting paid way worse per hour, as I heard they are often pulling like 60k-100k WITH BONUS in NYC/manhattan, which is insanely low.

Of those 21% of people good in math, they usually are good in science as well and things like dentistry, doctor, engineer are attractive careers for these people as they often are not as good in writing. Business requires strong writing and strong math skills. A very rare combination. I have friends in med school who have poor writing skills but are great with science and numbers.

Law requires going to an easy undergrad program like gender studies, doing well on the lsat, then getting into a good law school and your pretty much set.

O Yes, and you speak of breaking into Ibanking like its easy, it is not, at not where I am, there was a time 5 years ago when if you went to a school like Queens, Schulich, Ivey and finished with B+ or better you had a decent shot, but not anymore.(I'm speaking from toronto perspective). Also after 3 years 90% of i bankers are jobless, 10% are promoted, 90% not rehired, but almost all find some employment elsewhere. Pretty much you only have 2 ways to become an analyst, get recruited out of school, or know someone. ITE with all the unemployed bankers, you'll have no chance of breaking in without having worked in the bank in a similar role. For example, in the last time I did interviews, we had guys with 15+ years of finance experience as bond traders applying for analyst as 300 got laid off in one day. So if you think you can just pop up and get hired like in the 80s or the 90s, its not like that anymore. In fact, I bet more people get into Yale, then get into legitimate Ibanking this way.

Also if you do not have the courses or the internships, then forget about it. If you don't know how to build a financial model... in fact in VC we joke, that those are the only models that I Bankers get, I digress... then fuhgettaboudit you aren't getting the job. I was lucky enough to have an I banker mentor me who was able to prepare me for the interviews so that I could get a job, but its not realistic to expect that from everyone. In fact even with that I couldn't get into a major I bank, but got hired at a major VC firm only because my mentor pulled strings- thats it, undergrads do not get hired in VCs-, why, because ITE, only people who have family are being hired, ok thats a bit of an exaggeration, but its a very very high percentage. As in we have about 7-8 major banks and all of them have hundreds of ibankers, and they all know someone who wants in, so if you do not know someone, it will be VERY HARD to get in ITE. No joke, I went to interviews, had calls from vice presidents and presidents of I banks telling me we think your great, you have a future in banking but we chose to hire internally, all to find out later the "internal hire" was a teller who was related to someone in the bank, some vp, some associate, someone,
QFP

WTF?

Women can't do math? Except the Chinese women?

Boxing day?

What country/century are you from?

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Napt » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:38 am

shoeshine wrote:
Geon wrote:
DaftAndDirect wrote:Serious question.

Why isn't everyone here who is gunning for Big Law trying to break in to finance instead? If you have an arts and letters background, you could get an MSF and jump into an entry gig at 60-70k and work your way into IB after a couple of years.

Also, corporate attorneys at the end of the day are little more than some banker's bitch. Bankers and lawyers work similar hours (with bankers' being a bit worse up until reaching Vice President) but bankers are paid substantially more.

What's the deal?
I worked in a VC so hopefully I can give you some insight
Lawyers ... In my area... at small 5 people firms make between 250 (new lawyers) to $750 an hour and they also make $1000, or $10,000 a DAY when they have to represent someone in a court. Lawyers make money whether or not they win or lose, do a good job or a shit job they still get paid the same in MOST cases, as they usually demand payment before work is done. Law requires no mathematical skill (a big challenge for well over 99% of the female population-except chinese girls- and maybe 80% of men.)

Lets contrast that to finance. You make $32-$37 an hour to work 80-90 hours a week. You WILL work on new years eve and New Year's day, you will work on boxing day and christmas eve, you won't really have a vacation and statutory holidays are work days and you never make overtime. You will never make $10,000 a day just to represent someone in court. You (the firm) doesn't get paid if there is no deal - unlike lawyers who get paid before they even start work with a retainer. 5 years ago the starting salary here used to be 150k with bonus for ibankers. Well it works out to 32-37 an hour. Unlike law you almost never have down time, when you are not doing nothing, there is always almost more work than time. Now the US ibankers are getting paid way worse per hour, as I heard they are often pulling like 60k-100k WITH BONUS in NYC/manhattan, which is insanely low.

Of those 21% of people good in math, they usually are good in science as well and things like dentistry, doctor, engineer are attractive careers for these people as they often are not as good in writing. Business requires strong writing and strong math skills. A very rare combination. I have friends in med school who have poor writing skills but are great with science and numbers.

Law requires going to an easy undergrad program like gender studies, doing well on the lsat, then getting into a good law school and your pretty much set.

O Yes, and you speak of breaking into Ibanking like its easy, it is not, at not where I am, there was a time 5 years ago when if you went to a school like Queens, Schulich, Ivey and finished with B+ or better you had a decent shot, but not anymore.(I'm speaking from toronto perspective). Also after 3 years 90% of i bankers are jobless, 10% are promoted, 90% not rehired, but almost all find some employment elsewhere. Pretty much you only have 2 ways to become an analyst, get recruited out of school, or know someone. ITE with all the unemployed bankers, you'll have no chance of breaking in without having worked in the bank in a similar role. For example, in the last time I did interviews, we had guys with 15+ years of finance experience as bond traders applying for analyst as 300 got laid off in one day. So if you think you can just pop up and get hired like in the 80s or the 90s, its not like that anymore. In fact, I bet more people get into Yale, then get into legitimate Ibanking this way.

Also if you do not have the courses or the internships, then forget about it. If you don't know how to build a financial model... in fact in VC we joke, that those are the only models that I Bankers get, I digress... then fuhgettaboudit you aren't getting the job. I was lucky enough to have an I banker mentor me who was able to prepare me for the interviews so that I could get a job, but its not realistic to expect that from everyone. In fact even with that I couldn't get into a major I bank, but got hired at a major VC firm only because my mentor pulled strings- thats it, undergrads do not get hired in VCs-, why, because ITE, only people who have family are being hired, ok thats a bit of an exaggeration, but its a very very high percentage. As in we have about 7-8 major banks and all of them have hundreds of ibankers, and they all know someone who wants in, so if you do not know someone, it will be VERY HARD to get in ITE. No joke, I went to interviews, had calls from vice presidents and presidents of I banks telling me we think your great, you have a future in banking but we chose to hire internally, all to find out later the "internal hire" was a teller who was related to someone in the bank, some vp, some associate, someone,
QFP

WTF?

Women can't do math? Except the Chinese women?

Boxing day?

What country/century are you from?
Actually pretty credited if you look at any standardized test, e.g. ACT, SAT, PISA, etc. Though I would say East Asians rather than Chinese.

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shoeshine

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by shoeshine » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:40 am

Napt wrote:
shoeshine wrote: QFP

WTF?

Women can't do math? Except the Chinese women?

Boxing day?

What country/century are you from?
Actually pretty credited if you look at any standardized test, e.g. ACT, SAT, PISA, etc. Though I would say East Asians rather than Chinese.
Not true at all. That is a gender and racial stereotype. Give me hard data that backs up any of your assumptions.

Napt

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by Napt » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:53 am

shoeshine wrote:
Napt wrote:
shoeshine wrote: QFP

WTF?

Women can't do math? Except the Chinese women?

Boxing day?

What country/century are you from?
Actually pretty credited if you look at any standardized test, e.g. ACT, SAT, PISA, etc. Though I would say East Asians rather than Chinese.
Not true at all. That is a gender and racial stereotype. Give me hard data that backs up any of your assumptions.
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/p ... report.pdf
Asian Female Mean Mathematics Score -- 583
White Female Mean Mathematics Score -- 520

http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2011/p ... al2011.pdf
Asians do better than Whites in math and males do better than females in math.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdf
East Asian countries dominate in math.

shoeshine

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by shoeshine » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:58 am

Napt wrote:
shoeshine wrote:
Napt wrote:
shoeshine wrote: QFP

WTF?

Women can't do math? Except the Chinese women?

Boxing day?

What country/century are you from?
Actually pretty credited if you look at any standardized test, e.g. ACT, SAT, PISA, etc. Though I would say East Asians rather than Chinese.
Not true at all. That is a gender and racial stereotype. Give me hard data that backs up any of your assumptions.
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/p ... report.pdf
Asian Female Mean Mathematics Score -- 583
White Female Mean Mathematics Score -- 520

http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2011/p ... al2011.pdf
Asians do better than Whites in math and males do better than females in math.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdf
East Asian countries dominate in math.

If the quote was "Women do slightly worse on standardized math tests than men" you would be totally right.

However saying women can't do math unless they are Asian is completely incorrect.

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dingbat

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Re: 0Ls gunning for Big Law, why not finance?

Post by dingbat » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:59 am

Women can't do math? Except the Chinese women?
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/p ... report.pdf
Asian Female Mean Mathematics Score -- 583
White Female Mean Mathematics Score -- 520

http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2011/p ... al2011.pdf
Asians do better than Whites in math and males do better than females in math.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdf
East Asian countries dominate in math.
There's a big difference between being a little less good and not being able to do something.
I'm open to arguments that the Male/Female difference is biological, but I think the Asian/Caucasian variance has more to do with culture than genetics

edit: scooped

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