| Topic Name: |
From Lawyer to Consultant |
| Message Name: |
Thanks "anon" for su |
| Date Posted: |
10/12/1999 |
| In Reply To: |
I'm the guy who posted the request for reading material on a separate thread, and I recently made the switch from law to management consulting. Unlike you, I wasn't a deal lawyer, so my experience may be slightly different, but I nevertheless suspect that we'd be viewed as closely comparable candidates.
I obviously can't speak at this time about what consultancies look for, since I haven't started work and have never been on the other side of the interviewing table, but I have my suspicions. Recognize that my impressions are pretty speculative, so don't take them as gospel.
Consultancies seem principally concerned with law school grades. My performance was very good: top-1% at a top-10 school, with all of the requisite honors along the way. Without very strong academics, I'm not sure the door to management consulting is even open to lawyers. I suspect that an exceptional undergrad (e.g., summa Yale) + reasonable law school performance (top-25% H/Y/S) might suffice, but in my opinion, consultancies principally want to see stellar academics.
Unfortunately, I don't think your work experience will carry much weight with the strategy firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc. Specialist hires are frequently MDs or PhDs, though even there, McKinsey hires gobs of them as generalists. During my interviews, I universally found the consultants were uninterested in the work I did as a lawyer. The closest their interest came was in trying to assess my motivations for leaving law, e.g., why now?, why consulting? etc. Investment banks, VCs, equity management firms, etc. may be more interested in your substantive skill set.
Although I had very strong academics, I think what sealed the interviews for me were: (1) good performance on the case questions; and (2) a good fit with the interviewers. My friends generally consider me to be fairly mature, professional, and articulate, and those qualities definitely helped my "executive presence" at the interview. I reckon I came across as pretty confident, even though inside I was nervous as hell.
If I had to make some recommendations to lawyers interested in getting into management consulting, these would probably be the big ones:
1. Realize early that very few consultancies actively recruit JDs. In fact, as far as I can tell, McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Monitor, and Marakon were the only ones amenable to hiring non-MBA/PhDs. Even the latter two were fairly neutral. ACSS seems to hire exclusively MBAs or near-equivalent (e.g., industrial engineers). Accordingly, the universe of potential employers is a helluva lot smaller than you probably initially anticipate.
2. With that negative point out front, I'd also encourage you to think broadly in terms of consultancies you'd look at. Many consultancies simply weren't on my radar screen because they were so small I had never heard of them; however, I have a good friend from Kellogg's MBA program who is presently consulting in the Boston area, and he seems to be quite interesting work. I'm not sure what his employer's hiring practices are, but it's worth at least thinking outside the box.
3. Get a headhunter. Although my hire by McKinsey wasn't through a headhunter, I picked up a number of extremely valuable leads by working with a headhunter. Where might you find such contacts, you ask? The two headhunters I found just sort of dropped into my lap; they called about legal jobs, I said "no thanks but", and they hooked me up. Ask the legal recruiters about non-legal placement. On a specific note, I wouldn't bother with the "Glocap Law" virtual placement service, which seems to be making the law firm associate e-mail forwarding circles these days; I registered with Glocap, checked a bunch of jobs I was interested in, and never heard back from them. Headhunting is about personal relationships, and I got the sense (for whatever reason) that Glocap worked much more off of volume referrals than quality contact management |
| Message: |
Thanks "anon" for such a detailed explanation. It's funny how you say that so few consulting firms recruit JDs because, at least in their websites, they claim that they welcome candidates with legal experience/JD. My question to you is at what level did you get hired? I'm afraid that I would have to start from the very bottom if I make the switch (which also would be reflected in my compensation, of course)when, at a law firm, I am considered as a "mid-level" associate.
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