Left law for a finance compliance position. ASK ME ANYTHING. Forum

[Anonymous User]

Anonymous cause I'm outed to like a quarter of TLS.

Worked at a small-ish firm as a transactional associate for 9 months, randomly found gig with a financial compliance/consulting firm and jumped ship. Higher pay, higher bonuses, more vacation time, less working hours. This is one of those mythical JD-Preferred positions. I'll answer everything as best as I can so shoot.

[wert3813]

Anonymous cause I'm outed to like a quarter of TLS.

Worked at a small-ish firm as a transactional associate for 9 months, randomly found gig with a financial compliance/consulting firm and jumped ship. Higher pay, higher bonuses, more vacation time, less working hours. This is one of those mythical JD-Preferred positions. I'll answer everything as best as I can so shoot.

Higher pay than 160? Did you have a finance background pre law school?

[synergy]

Anonymous cause I'm outed to like a quarter of TLS.

Worked at a small-ish firm as a transactional associate for 9 months, randomly found gig with a financial compliance/consulting firm and jumped ship. Higher pay, higher bonuses, more vacation time, less working hours. This is one of those mythical JD-Preferred positions. I'll answer everything as best as I can so shoot.

I have a few questions, if you don't mind. Any advice for current students who've taken coursework/internships geared towards financial regulations on how to get one of these compliance jobs? Did you just apply on the firm's website or did you get it through networking? Are these jobs pretty much only in New York? Rough ballpark on starting salary?

[nouseforaname123]

Salary? Market? School and Firm range? I know you said it was a smallish firm.

[dudley12]

can you be a bit more specific on what you mean by finance compliance. had you done a fair amount of corporate secretary / SEC stuff at your first firm?

[FSK]

How can I do this?

[baal hadad]

Are you in Texas?

[Helioze]

...

[sparty99]

what are some firms in this arena?

[Anonymous User]

Anonymous cause I'm outed to like a quarter of TLS.

Worked at a small-ish firm as a transactional associate for 9 months, randomly found gig with a financial compliance/consulting firm and jumped ship. Higher pay, higher bonuses, more vacation time, less working hours. This is one of those mythical JD-Preferred positions. I'll answer everything as best as I can so shoot.

Higher pay than 160? Did you have a finance background pre law school?

No, but I worked at a small-ish firm for 70K and got a bump to 80K for this position. The average bonus at my old firm was around 5-7K. The average bonus at the compliance firm is 20K. Its also in a fairly low COL area where a nice 2 bedroom apartment goes for around $1100.

As far as finance, I did not have any financial background per se. I have never taken classes or anything, but I have invested personally for quite a few years and thus at least knew some lingo when it comes to the industry. My first day was pretty awful though as I literally had no clue what was happening at all and people ere throwing acronyms around as I desperately tried to google them while also taking notes about projects.

I have a few questions, if you don't mind. Any advice for current students who've taken coursework/internships geared towards financial regulations on how to get one of these compliance jobs? Did you just apply on the firm's website or did you get it through networking? Are these jobs pretty much only in New York? Rough ballpark on starting salary?

I'll try to answer all of these at once. I got the job in sort of a weird way. The compliance firm was a client of the law firm I worked for. I worked on a few projects for them and they liked my work so they asked my firm if they could have me work "in house" for a couple of weeks on a big time project they were doing. After the two weeks they made me an offer and asked if I would be willing to leave the firm. As far as location, I don't want to get too specific, but I'm in a city/town of about 120K in the Northeast close NY/Philly/NJ. Starting salary for me is 80K as an entry level with basically 0 experience. The interesting thing about this firm is it had analysts from all different backgrounds, from econ to accounting to JD to MBA, etc.

Salary? Market? School and Firm range? I know you said it was a smallish firm.

Like I said, 80K, which is more than the 70K I made at my small firm and its in a pretty low COL market (see above for vague location). School was T2, top 20%. Firm was a 25 attorney firm I worked at for about 9 months.

can you be a bit more specific on what you mean by finance compliance. had you done a fair amount of corporate secretary / SEC stuff at your first firm?

We work with banks. Banks hire us to make sure that all those Dodd Frank, OCC, etc guidelines are being followed. After the 2008 collapse there are new regulations and updates coming out almost monthly and these standards are usually ~1200 pages long. We run through all of the banks systems and loan files to make sure the banks are doing everything properly when it comes to the feds, the borrowers, the mortgage insurers, etc.

Are you in Texas?

Nope.

[dudley12]

thanks for the responses