What's it like to work in-house at a bank (not compliance)? Forum

[Anonymous User]

The post below made me want to ask, since working in-house at a bank is my easiest exit option (current bank finance mid-level at a V50). I always figured in-house at a bank was a good gig, with higher pay relative to more general corporate exits. I also thought generally difficult upward mobility and generally less complicated legal work (since complicated stuff gets farmed to outside counsel) were universal traits of in-house jobs.

Can anyone shed some more light/give other impressions on what it's like to work in-house at a bank?

ETA: Should clarify, not talking about compliance jobs here.

Just my 2 cents about working in banking (I am not in-house with a banking institution but work with them all the time): seems like very boring work a monkey could do. Unless you’re at the top, the pay also seems pretty meh. And like you said, upward mobility is probably limited, especially since it seems most top positions are filled from the outside—not within. Not sure what your area of expertise is, but if it is not banking/finance I’d wait for something better to come along.

[Anonymous User]

I am also interested, particularly with respect to working on the commercial/commercial transactions side.

[Anonymous User]

Bump -- surely we have some in-house bank people here.

[1styearlateral]

Since it is my post that spurred this separate thread, I will elaborate further and give some additional context into my perception of banking counsel.

On the point about the work being very dull work, there does not seem to be any opportunity to be creative or make creative arguments. You review the term sheet negotiated by the business people and you plug in the business terms into your standard form loan agreement. Cross reference and check defined terms, insert schedules, review due diligence docs (which could be in an amount that rivals discovery in major litigations); rinse, repeat. When a dispute arises, you basically have to read this long, boring contract over again (even if one issue arises that is specifically addressed in one section, you will need to review 50 different sections to fully understand the implications of that one section and to find your answer) and read it in the most strict, conservative light. There’s zero opportunity to come up with creative solutions or interpretations, mostly because doing so would be at your client’s detriment (I am on the other side of this transaction, where banking counsel always make it seem like I’m speaking Mandarin when trying to solve issues that can’t be solved reasonably from a business perspective through a strict reading of the contract).

As far as career advancement, again, I don’t work at a bank but it seems like everyone and their mother starts off as a VP and never makes it beyond that (also, there’s a hundred different specialties in the legal dep’t - commerce, IP, regulatory, litigation, data privacy, real estate, etc.). Maybe some people like working in a large institution, but for me it must be impossible to set yourself apart from the hundreds of other attorneys in your speciality or the thousands in the legal dep’t. If you want to make GC or DGC... the trend is those positions are filled by hand-picking from major firms like Cravath, Gibson, PW, etc.

A few of the upsides are probably stable job security, guaranteed quarterly/yearly bonuses, and reasonable hours (no weekend work and banking holidays off).

[Anonymous User]

I worked in-house at an I-bank. It’s hard to give a good overview since there are any number of different groups within legal, supporting different groups within the bank or dealing with a specific legal field bank-wide, and each group has their own different culture, workflow, etc. Some were pretty chill and everyone was clocked out shortly after 5:00, 5:30 at the latest. Others seemed to be working appreciably longer hours than that, one guy I needed to review something from a different group in legal would always complain about how many things he had on his plate and he couldn’t get back to me in a reasonable timeframe because of his other deals. Definitely not biglaw hours for the most part, though if it’s crunch time to close a deal or respond to a regulator inquiry, it would be expected you’d stay as late as it took to finish your piece. In terms of the interestingness if the work, some groups tended to rely more on outside counsel than others, so it would again depend on the group and how it was run. Mine tended to be a good mix of rote, cookie cutter stuff with interesting new deals/issues thrown in with some frequency.

Advancement is pretty tough since basically everyone came in as a VP (there was one or two AVPs I saw, who came in either straight from law school or without much experience, even a couple years at biglaw was enough to get VP, I think they credit 3 years of law school as experience for those purposes, like getting a bump from analyst to associate for having gone to b-school on the front office side) and there was only one head of each group within legal, so while your boss is still there it’s not like they have any new or higher place to put you. I did see some VPs get a bump to director even if they didn’t get promoted to head of their group, but I also saw some lifers who were VPs seemingly as a terminal title. They did tend to promote group heads from within rather than hire for those, but if you wanted to make GC one day I suspect that’s be more of a “lure a partner from outside counsel” position. Having one boss, instead of working for multiple biglaw partners, is good from the perspective of not having a million different people who all want to be your number one priority, though if you have a bad boss it means you’re pretty stuck, since you can’t go out and find work from someone else.

Working with front office people was interesting, some groups were super nice and easy to work with, some were pretty brutal, tending to view legal as nothing more than a waste of time and an impediment to getting their deals done. You always had to watch out for those and learn how best to deal with them. Banks are also hugely bureaucratic in a way that biglaw isn’t, needing to get different committees and groups to sign-off on things, so learning how to manage the internal flow of a project was a must.

Overall I generally enjoyed working there, especially compared to biglaw. Pay started at around junior biglaw salary, with bonus and employer 401k contribution (I came in after 4 or 5 years of biglaw, for reference).

[Anonymous User]

Stable hours, potential for bonuses and okay pay sounds good to me. Honestly I don’t care if the work is boring. I think all legal work is boring and soul sucking. I’m a midlevel in restructuring and hate every second so a change to that sounds nice.

[Anonymous User]

I'll add to the i-bank synopsis upthread that there is likely some self-selection bias in terms of hiring out for GC at companies. If you're a "lifer" at a company and enjoy your healthy salary, good benefits, and work-life balance, it seems unlikely that you would even want GC. You'd be adding stress, work pressure and heightened performance metrics while making your job security arguably less stable.

As someone working in-house at a large financial institution (not a bank), that has been my experience. Lots of people came into these in-house roles so that they could have a better work-life balance. Kind of like the poster above, they don't care about doing extremely varied work because "work" is just something that a) they do for about 40 hours a week, and b) pays them very well to support their families and lifestyle.

Lastly, at my "not a bank" financial institution, there is lots of room for creative lawyering through new and unique problems in my practice group. That said, I also work in a practice group where we RARELY use outside counsel, and so the bulk of even our most complicated work is performed in house. It just depends. Regardless though, no, you're not likely to have the same level of complexity and novelty that you would get staying in biglaw. Trade-offs.

[Anonymous User]

Stable hours, potential for bonuses and okay pay sounds good to me. Honestly I don’t care if the work is boring. I think all legal work is boring and soul sucking. I’m a midlevel in restructuring and hate every second so a change to that sounds nice.

Why do you hate restructuring, and can you share which firm you're at? It's a practice area I'm considering.

[Anonymous User]

Work at an Ibank. Would say the hours are definitely better than biglaw (plus no billable hour requirement), but it's certainly not a 9-5 walk in the park. Bankers for the most part are working crazy hours and they still want you to review documents timely so they can keep the deal moving. I work about 50-55 hours a week, but rarely more than 1-2 hours on the weekends. Also, I can actually make plans on week nights after 7 or 8 if i wanted to, and if something urgent came up, it could either be handled first thing next morning or just done later at night. Also, though I'm relatively busy, I do have some lulls sometimes so I can take a breather during the day.

As far as work, this varies quite a bit and depends on if you're at a bulge bracket or a boutique IB or on the buy-side at a fund or private equity. If you're at a BB with bigger in-house departments, you're likely in a product group. So for example if you're in lev fin, you're looking at commitment papers, credit agreements, HY bond offerings, etc. If you're in restructuring, you're looking at the relevant docs (chapter 11 plans, pre-petition plans, dip agreements, retention applications)...while utilizing external counsel to raise any issues that need your attention and generally handle the transaction. At a smaller legal dept. you may even outsource the transaction docs completely and be more involved in things the bank wants to handle itself (NDAS, engagement letters, amendments). In the latter, your role would be more in setting up the deal and helping it go to committee with the bankers and being the point person for 'overview' in helping escalate and/or address issues. Not sure how it differs on the PE side except I negotiate with their in-house counsel on the same types of the aforementioned docs somethings.

ETA: Compensation wise am between a 2nd and 4th year big law associate all-in. Way better benefits (401k match, backdoor, HSA, lower health insurance premiums). Agree not much upward mobility though at my bank a lot of people go from VP to director or MD (but they have like 7-10 years of legal experience). Deputy GCs and GC are like the top dogs who would've been law firm partners if they hadn't already been managing in-house operations in the finance industry like 20+ years already.

[Anonymous User]

I currently work at a top Restructuring Law Firm in NYC. I am a 4th year associate, and I am very interested in possibly making the jump to banking. My concerns are:

1) Is there a steep learning curve?
2) Is there a significant pay cut?
3) Is there limited upward mobility? How does the mobility compare to a law firm? For instance, if I jump to Goldman Sachs, is it harder to rise in the ranks than staying at Kirkland?
4) Would I start as a VP?
5) Does anyone on here regret making the jump?

I know some threads touch on this, but I wanted to consolidate my concerns and ask the entire forum. I'm really interested in this, so if anyone has info I'd truly appreciate it.

[Anonymous User]

I currently work at a top Restructuring Law Firm in NYC. I am a 4th year associate, and I am very interested in possibly making the jump to banking. My concerns are:

1) Is there a steep learning curve?
2) Is there a significant pay cut?
3) Is there limited upward mobility? How does the mobility compare to a law firm? For instance, if I jump to Goldman Sachs, is it harder to rise in the ranks than staying at Kirkland?
4) Would I start as a VP?
5) Does anyone on here regret making the jump?

I know some threads touch on this, but I wanted to consolidate my concerns and ask the entire forum. I'm really interested in this, so if anyone has info I'd truly appreciate it.

1. There would be a steep learning curve. Banking and law are completely different. Your knowledge of restructuring concepts and deal experience would be somewhat useful, but the day-to-day is totally different. Bankers spend all day modeling in Excel and making presentations in PowerPoint, not writing up documents in Word or doing legal research, etc. So yeah, it's totally different and there would be a steep learning curve. But people have made the jump before.

2. Whether you'd take a pay cut would depend a lot on which bank you went to and which level you started at. Your base salary is likely to be lower, but bankers make large bonuses so their all-in comp. is typically higher, and in some cases is significantly higher. Given the current market environment, this is probably a good time to make the jump if you can.

3. I don't believe that there's less mobility in banking than in law. Moreover, if you aren't promoted, banking typically has better exit options.

4. Not sure where you would start but VP seems unlikely unless the bank is going to give you a lot of credit for your legal experience. There's nothing wrong with starting as an associate though, and it's possible you could begin as a de facto second or third year associate (i.e., eligible for promotion to VP sooner).

5. Can't speak to that.

[Dallas316]

What is the most "boring" paper-pushing are of law for banks? I am burned out and that sounds nice.