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Let's say you were an M&A associate with a BA, and wanted to transition out of not only big law but practicing law altogether. What jobs would be open to you?

This is an interest of mine

Let's also limit it to jobs your experience makes you more marketable for, not those it's merely not a negative for.

legal software salesman

Depending on rank of firm, consulting? Investment banking?

What kind of consulting? Can you be more specific, and how does M&A translate to investment banking? Thank you, by the way.

- General Corporate In-House.
- M&A Specific In-House (strategic or PE).
- Consulting (MBB or any other Consulting firm that likes lawyers...I have seen lit. folks get this too, so not M&A specific but I would say Corp > Lit).
- Investment Banking (have to be able to do math/modeling, pre-law school experience in IB/Finance helps).

Firm ranking (i.e., do people in these fields know your firm/your group at the firm), law school attended, ug attended and past work all matter as do your hustle (pinging former folks from your firm/law school/ug that are in the industry.

Anonymous User wrote:- General Corporate In-House.
- M&A Specific In-House (strategic or PE).
- Consulting (MBB or any other Consulting firm that likes lawyers...I have seen lit. folks get this too, so not M&A specific but I would say Corp > Lit).
- Investment Banking (have to be able to do math/modeling, pre-law school experience in IB/Finance helps).

Firm ranking (i.e., do people in these fields know your firm/your group at the firm), law school attended, ug attended and past work all matter as do your hustle (pinging former folks from your firm/law school/ug that are in the industry.

I don't think firm ranking matters that much for consulting or I-banking. Undergrad matters though probably, or at least how well you did on standardized tests. They use very different skill sets from law. For MBB, you're going to have to do well on case studies and for i-banking you have to do modeling and having an excel spreadsheeting (this is huge)/finance (and maybe quant) background would be useful.

Risk Management and Risk Consulting are the two best options I can think of. Investment banks are great for the risk management roles and consulting firms like PwC, EY, KPMG, Promontory, Deloitte are great for risk consulting, where lots of lawyers get hired.

People saying investment banking or MBB consulting are right, but I mean, how many lawyers can actually make that type of jump? The two people I know that went into banking were insanely smart, good at math/finance already (graduated during financial crisis so finance ops were non existent at the time and they went to law school instead) and worked at top firms. Even then, who wants to give up big law to work even harder for a little bit more money?

I actually think firm rank isn't important, but having a strong deals practice is very important for breaking into banking. If bankers have heard of your firm and know it is one of the best for M&A activity, then you will get a lot more looks (at least what I've heard from banker friends of mine)