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thesealocust wrote:Grades/school are much more important.

thesealocust wrote:liberal artists

thesealocust wrote:In my experience, background is in no way a barrier to entry to corporate law. I know piles of liberal artists who have never taken an econ class in their life (and don't plan to start in LS) who got corporate law offers. Grades/school are much more important.

ruski wrote: no CFA in his right mind would go to law school.

well-hello-there wrote:

ruski wrote: no CFA in his right mind would go to law school.

why is that?

well-hello-there wrote:

ruski wrote: no CFA in his right mind would go to law school.

why is that?

Curry wrote:

well-hello-there wrote:

ruski wrote: no CFA in his right mind would go to law school.

why is that?

Because CFA's become partners/principles at big 4 accounting firms.

pokerlaw wrote:

well-hello-there wrote:

ruski wrote: no CFA in his right mind would go to law school.

why is that?

To earn a CFA takes a long time. There are three levels, each require a 6 hours test to pass. To receive the full CFA I believe you need something like 4 years investment/finance related work experience.

It is a big time/career investment to switch to law where you won't need your CFA.

well-hello-there wrote:

Curry wrote:

well-hello-there wrote:

ruski wrote: no CFA in his right mind would go to law school.

why is that?

Because CFA's become partners/principles at big 4 accounting firms.

what's the catch though? The CFA exams are difficult but totally do-able for someone with an analytical mind and an accounting/finance background in undergrad. Is the pay at such Acc. firm jobs drastically greater than corporate big-law pay schedules?

pokerlaw wrote:

well-hello-there wrote:

ruski wrote: no CFA in his right mind would go to law school.

why is that?

To earn a CFA takes a long time. There are three levels, each require a 6 hours test to pass. To receive the full CFA I believe you need something like 4 years investment/finance related work experience.

It is a big time/career investment to switch to law where you won't need your CFA.

Oh I see....the work experience requirement to get the charter....wasn't factoring that in.

Curry wrote:CFA's are in no way easy to get. The market isn't as dead as it was 3 years ago and the income potential is just as great, if not greater, than a biglaw associate. It also opens you up to all sorts of executive positions in big companies where you rake in millions at a time.

Mickey Quicknumbers wrote:

Curry wrote:CFA's are in no way easy to get. The market isn't as dead as it was 3 years ago and the income potential is just as great, if not greater, than a biglaw associate. It also opens you up to all sorts of executive positions in big companies where you rake in millions at a time.

FWIW, if I end up at a job where i'm not working unreasonable hours. I'm still probably going to go back and get a CFA I think after I graduate.

edit: I think you're waaaaaay overestimating the value of a CFA though, bring it back down to earth a bit there.

In fact, most MBAs don't take the CFA and most CFAs don't have MBAs. They're seen, among the MBAs and CFAs I know/went to school with, as substitutes for each other.

2LLLL wrote:
Want instant entertainment? Hang out with finance guys and innocently ask which is better between an MBA and CFA. Then, sit back and watch the fireworks fly.

2LLLL wrote:
A CFA, like an MBA but even moreso I would say, is completely different than a JD in that it is not a pathway into a new field. Rather, the value of a CFA is that it allows you to advance to a higher level position at your current finance/consulting job. That's why I have several friends/acquaintances whose employers pay for their study materials and fees.

JeNeRegretteRien wrote:Let me just say that finance =/= accounting. Different skill sets, different training/credentials, different people, different career track. There's overlap, in the same way strategy and finance overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Having said that:

Roberta Romano (Prof. of Corp Law at YLS and a giant in the field), at least, seems to think enough finance knowledge is necessary that a JD/MBA is valuable and worthwhile for practitioners - especially if it can be done through an integrated 3 year program. Short of an MBA, she argues that a meaningful background in Finance (whether through coursework or professional training) is essential. --LinkRemoved--? ... _id=824050

Her's is obviously not the final word, of course, but a well-informed one.

As for the CFA: a lot of work. if I recall correctly it takes a minimum of two years (exam I, exam II six months later, exam III one year later is, I think, the fastest they allow you to do it), most take more, and according to the CFA institute each exam requires a bare minimum of 250+ hours of concentrated study (and the consensus seems to be that 250 is ridiculously low, even for people who already have a lot of exposure to the material).

Moreover, the CFA is NOT a trivial exam, substantively. The CFA I is ostensibly pretty straight-forward for a person in iBanking/fund management or with graduate quant work (e.g. lots of MBA finance), but II and III (as I understand it) are more quantitatively intensive and hang people up on more exotic subjects (derivatives) than the basic valuation that's the stuff of CFA I (and most of working finance, frankly).

To wit: the pass rate for EACH exam is 35%-45% (approximately like the bar exam). And I think we can stipulate that MOST people who take the exams are immersed in the business. And by definition the people who flunk exam II and exam III were in the minority of candidates able to pass the previous exam(s).

In fact, most MBAs don't take the CFA and most CFAs don't have MBAs. They're seen, among the MBAs and CFAs I know/went to school with, as substitutes for each other. To say nothing of JDs. The only prominent JD I know of that has a CFA, also has an MBA, and manges the distressed debt portfolio at PIMCO. And wrote the text book on distress debt. So it seems like rarefied air.

Almost last but not least, a CFA is not (in my experience) for people on the accountanting career track and not the credential that accountants are expected to have. It's for would-be hedgefund and mutual-fund managers (and a small number of Treasury people, maybe). Partners at accounting firms need CPAs; there may be a few that have CFAs, but I think that's a confused oddity that may be a liability for their career (mixed signals on whether they want to work in Finance or Accounting). The CFA, as the CFA institute puts it, is an "investment credential" for people with "investment management experience" who, not surprisingly, want to become investment managers.

Finally: I don't think a CPA is all that value-add for a CorpLaw person. If you already have one, that's great and I'm sure there will be times when it's helpful. But if you don't have one, it's not worth the effort. 90% of business, and frankly most of finance, has not that much to do with accounting - not at the level of a CPA, anyway. I mean most PE people and senior executives don't know that much about accounting, and a truly tiny number have CPAs. A lot of CFOs don't even have CPAs. Finance is, conventional wisdom holds, super helpful for CorpLaw. Strategy probably is too for CorpLaw partners. But accounting is just a tiny part of a transaction, and not a driver. I mean the deal-valuation drives the price paid, the strategy drives the deal, and if anything the tax drives the structuring.

The time it takes to get a CPA (or a CFA for that matter) would be better spent getting business experience as a management consultant (people who often drive the M&A strategy) or iBanker (the people who actually drive the transaction itself), or frankly getting an MBA. And while those experiences (Bain/McKinsey, Goldman, MBA) are clearly helpful, and probably a competitive advantage, clearly none are absolutely required for a CorpLaw person.

vamedic03 wrote:There's a ton of BS in this thread.

If you want to work for a top corporate practice, you only need 1 thing: great 1L grades.

Look, this blabbing back and forth about CFA and CPA is a waste of time. You don't need any business background to get a position as a corporate SA. You need good law school grades.