Top Law Schools

McKinsey seems to hire quite a few alternative degree-holders.

T6 law school, top 20%, journal executive, and published comment. Great relationship with/rec from a legendary Corporate Law teacher. 2L Biglaw SA position.

LSAT 170. SAT 800 M/710 R/ 790 W.

Any shot?

Sure, they will let you participate in their first round interview but interviewing for a consulting position is very different then biglaw. Getting hired is all about how well you do on the interview.

You're sure to get some interviews with that SAT score

You apply at the beginning of your 3L year, for after grad employment. Start practicing the case interviews. See poets and quants. Find alums from your school to network with & make sure your resume gets noticed. Very achievable gaol for you.

I think your school + your standardized test scores will get you in the door. Your performance during the interviews will determine whether you get hired. McKinsey doesn't care much about grades (like most business employers). Why'd you go to law school if you prefer to go to into consulting rather than practicing? An M7 MBA would open a lot more doors with respect to consulting firms (as well as other business related options).

Doesn't M also look extensively at work experience? Could be wrong

MBB is the top tier of big strategy consulting, so deciding BigFlaw isn't for you and turning there isn't the worst.

They give interviews based on scores, and then hire based on case performance. W/e isn't necessary for the APD hiring program.

They do some experienced hiring, but thats not the case here.

Source: I've read all the TLS topics on JD MBB recruiting.

Anonymous User wrote:McKinsey seems to hire quite a few alternative degree-holders.

T6 law school, top 20%, journal executive, and published comment. Great relationship with/rec from a legendary Corporate Law teacher. 2L Biglaw SA position.

LSAT 170. SAT 800 M/710 R/ 790 W.

Any shot?

Definitely a shot.

What I want to know is, if you cross over to consulting, is there ever any going back to law? Or does it pretty much slam the door on your law career?

XxSpyKEx wrote:I think your school + your standardized test scores will get you in the door. Your performance during the interviews will determine whether you get hired. McKinsey doesn't care much about grades (like most business employers). Why'd you go to law school if you prefer to go to into consulting rather than practicing? An M7 MBA would open a lot more doors with respect to consulting firms (as well as other business related options).

Dead wrong that McK doesn't care about grades. I have a top shelf MBA and while my school didn't have letter grades, they cared a ton.

McKinsey hires about 1 out of every 100 applicants, so they probably have room to care about everything.

With that said, there's no profession that's as grade-obsessed as the legal one, so it wouldn't surprise me if they cared significantly less than say Biglaw.

RedGiant wrote:

XxSpyKEx wrote:I think your school + your standardized test scores will get you in the door. Your performance during the interviews will determine whether you get hired. McKinsey doesn't care much about grades (like most business employers). Why'd you go to law school if you prefer to go to into consulting rather than practicing? An M7 MBA would open a lot more doors with respect to consulting firms (as well as other business related options).

Dead wrong that McK doesn't care about grades. I have a top shelf MBA and while my school didn't have letter grades, they cared a ton.

What specifically makes you think that they care about grades (e.g. did the interviewer ask you a lot of questions about your grades)? I've heard the exact opposite of your statement from McKinsey hires. Generally businesses care a lot less about grades (and more about things like experience) when hiring from B-Schools. The only exception would be if you have absolutely terrible grades (e.g. below a 3.0 average) in which case it'll stick out.

flawschoolkid wrote:MBB is the top tier of big strategy consulting, so deciding BigFlaw isn't for you and turning there isn't the worst.

They give interviews based on scores, and then hire based on case performance. W/e isn't necessary for the APD hiring program.

They do some experienced hiring, but thats not the case here.

Source: I've read all the TLS topics on JD MBB recruiting.

This is incorrect. McK does 50% case interview, 50% experience interview. McK literally calls it the "experience interview". I can't really go into more detail about scoring, but I can say that the scoring of things even at the screening stage takes into account how substantial your experience was.

XxSpyKEx wrote:What specifically makes you think that they care about grades (e.g. did the interviewer ask you a lot of questions about your grades)? I've heard the exact opposite of your statement from McKinsey hires. Generally businesses care a lot less about grades (and more about things like experience) when hiring from B-Schools. The only exception would be if you have absolutely terrible grades (e.g. below a 3.0 average) in which case it'll stick out.

I'm not whomever you were responding to.

I'm unfamiliar with MBA recruiting, but for JDs, Of course McK cares about grades. If there wasn't a good reason for getting you past the screen, you might be shut out by grades. I assume that a 3.0 is bottom 5-10%? While the application is holistic, higher GPAs would need to be significantly mitigated by other aspects of the application. Does it matter that the applicant is specifically top 20%? Maybe not. A mediocre case interview cannot be saved by the highest scores. The key takeaway though is that yes, definitively yes, McK cares about grades.

Anonymous User wrote:

XxSpyKEx wrote:What specifically makes you think that they care about grades (e.g. did the interviewer ask you a lot of questions about your grades)? I've heard the exact opposite of your statement from McKinsey hires. Generally businesses care a lot less about grades (and more about things like experience) when hiring from B-Schools. The only exception would be if you have absolutely terrible grades (e.g. below a 3.0 average) in which case it'll stick out.

I'm not whomever you were responding to.

I'm unfamiliar with MBA recruiting, but for JDs, Of course McK cares about grades. If there wasn't a good reason for getting you past the screen, you might be shut out by grades. I assume that a 3.0 is bottom 5-10%? While the application is holistic, higher GPAs would need to be significantly mitigated by other aspects of the application. Does it matter that the applicant is specifically top 20%? Maybe not. A mediocre case interview cannot be saved by the highest scores. The key takeaway though is that yes, definitively yes, McK cares about grades.

What % of the total applicant score would GPA be worth. Would McK hire top 20% over someone who was top 50% but did significantly better on the interviews and had better experience than the top 20% person? What about someone who was in top 60% (assuming the same re: work experience and interviewing)? I think a prestigious big law firm would take the person who was in the top 20% (but interviewed more poorly, but not terribly) than the top 60% person, even if the person who was in the top 50 or 60% had better experience than the person who was in the top 20%. It's not so clear to me that McK would do the same (i.e. based on actually having an MBA,* I feel like McK would hire someone with a 3.1 in an MBA program over someone with a 3.8 in that same MBA program if the person with a 3.1 had better experience and interviewed better). Also, the 3.0 number in my previous post was intended for B-School applicants (although, a 3.0 in B-School is probably bottom of the class as well).

*Frankly, it seemed like grades didn't matter very much with respect to job prospects as long as they weren't terrible (e.g. below a 3.0). Obviously, McK could be an exception to that.

The business world is just a lot more pragmatic about hiring, and the fact is that GPA in almost all fields has a poor correlation with future work performance. That's not to say it's negligible in all cases. It's just that standardized tests that measure IQ, analytic ability, and specific skills related to the daily work at the job are worth far more. And past experience and all the workplace knowledge and skills that are developed with it is of course worth more as well.

Nevertheless, when you can be as picky as McK and you're already choosing between dozens of people who are already 95th percentile or above in these areas, and GPA is the only tie-breaker you have, I'm sure it factors in.

I don't know if McK has a specific algorithm that weights each factor a certain amount and ends up giving you a final index score, but that wouldn't surprise me. They might just use an index based upon the predictive weight of each factor, and then decide to interview the top X number of people on that index to see who comes off as professional and client-focused.

Do you start at the bottom of the ladder as an Analyst if you join a mgmt consulting firm from grad school? Because spending three years in law school only to become a junior analyst at McKinsey sounds god awful. I have a number of friends who went to MBB out of undergrad and they couldn't wait to get the hell out of there.

Swimp wrote:Do you start at the bottom of the ladder as an Analyst if you join a mgmt consulting firm from grad school? Because spending three years in law school only to become a junior analyst at McKinsey sounds god awful. I have a number of friends who went to MBB out of undergrad and they couldn't wait to get the hell out of there.

Nope. MBA level.