Investment banker vs corporate lawyer

[Anonymous]

DC is considering these career paths, and ROI. Currently a sophomore at a great undergraduate business program, but thinking long term post graduation and graduate degree strategies. Thoughts.

[Anonymous]

🙄

[Anonymous]

My thoughts are that I feel sorry for your kid.

[Anonymous]

Probably won’t be successful at either if mommy needs to come to mommy board seeing advice for her child who is a man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is considering these career paths, and ROI. Currently a sophomore at a great undergraduate business program, but thinking long term post graduation and graduate degree strategies. Thoughts.

Need to secure an IB internship ASAP.

Take the LSAT in a year or two to see if law school is a reasonable option.

[Anonymous]

Recommend doing investment banking job first. Law Schools value some work experience and this path allows DC to gain experience that will be beneficial. If he likes investment banking - stick with it. If he/she is unsure take job savings and take time off to study for LSAT, because that and grades will determine ROI as top law schools have a clearer path to top law firms (top salaries). Good luck. As previous comments suggest - both jobs are a complete grind - so DC needs to be ok with sacrificing for the pay.

[Anonymous]

Neither is likely to happen for your kid.

[Anonymous]

I'm a lawyer. My uncle is an investment banker.

Investment banker is the much better job and there is, generally, a whole lot more money. But you know you don't just become an investment banker, right? It's not like "Oh, I want to go into investment banking" and then you follow that career path. It's not that simple or that easy, lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Neither is likely to happen for your kid.

+1

[Anonymous]

Both sound utterly soul-sucking.

[Anonymous]

Don’t go into law for any reason other than being really interested in law

[Anonymous]

I thought this was a movie title, like “Godzilla vs. King Kong”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My thoughts are that I feel sorry for your kid.

Yeah.

They are different careers.

Basing your decisions solely on ROI is misguided.

Kid should reflect on his values, and how he will leave the world a bit better for having been here.

[Anonymous]

Ignore the useless comments. If your kid is actually in a good undergraduate business school, these are real options.

The question is, what’s his interest? Is it just the money? There are other jobs with much better per hour comp. Does he think working on M&A deals or helping companies raise capital is interesting? That leans towards banking but you can do it from both sides. Or does he just have a sense that these are more generalist roles that usually allow people to gradually find a niche as they go? This isn’t wrong but would he lean towards wanting to exit into PE or something on the buy side (favors banking) versus moving into management at a bank (either) versus practicing a different type of law (lawyer)?

There’s overlap to these roles, including a lot of lawyers who end up taking a large role in deals, but they aren’t the exact same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is considering these career paths, and ROI. Currently a sophomore at a great undergraduate business program, but thinking long term post graduation and graduate degree strategies. Thoughts.

So he’s considering IB…. At this point internships for This summer were filled Last Year. So he’s not doing a finance internship going into Junior year. If he really wants to pursue it, he will need to start applying asap for the internships that will be posted for Summer 2027. And if he doesn’t land that—— it’ll be a long tough road to break into the industry at all once he graduates. Which is to say, this may not even become a choice on his part but rather a factor of his late decision-ing and the constraints of time.