Why Big Law and Wall Street Aren't So Different

What an Investment Banker Taught Me About Big Law

As someone who is not only incredibly indecisive but has also spent the last four years of her early adulthood researching various careers and completing internships specifically in the realms of consulting and high finance, I have learned one thing: Investment Banking and Finance aren’t really that different.

Look, before the ‘career-pretige-police’ come for me, I would just like to say that I know Investment Banking and Big Law are theoretically distinct careers.

For example, one career spends its day creating financial models, building PowerPoint pitch decks, valuing companies, and frequently networking with corporate executives.

While the other spends its day focusing on legal regulations, risk management, reading contracts, summarizing documents, and ensuring mergers and acquisitions comply with the law.

Yes, both careers involve entirely different tasks. But at its core, they are more alike than most people would like to admit.

Both industries require brutal, unpredictable schedules reaching 70-90-hour workweeks. They also both work on the same major corporate events, such as billion-dollar mergers, acquisitions, and public offerings. Both also advise the exact same Fortune 500 companies, private equity firms, and massive hedge funds. Both operate in high stakes environment. And both recruit exclusively from top-tier business and law schools.

Ultimately, they both function as two halves of the same coin. While bankers structure the financial math of the deal. Lawyers draft binding legal contracts to ensure they are effectively executed.

A few years ago, during my sophomore year of college, I became very fascinated with the world of Investment Banking. I think much of this had to do with the fact that I had been invited to quite a few high-finance/IB networking events in the D.C. metro area that fall.

I am going to be honest, the first time I walked through the door of Investment Banking, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had no idea what M&A was. I had no idea how insanely competitive recruiting was for this industry was. I had no idea that my chances of getting into a prestigious firm were low, given that I was coming from a non-target school.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Fast forward a few months, and I decided, despite my chances, I wanted to try and go for it. I interviewed at a few banks. Passed the first two rounds of HireVue screenings. Passed the third round of behavioral interview with a junior banker.

I made it to superday interviews for only one ‘upper-middle-market-firm.’ I remember I studied for that technical interview like my life depended on it. As a humanities major at the time, the jargon was quite distinct, but I tried my best.

I remember being so nervous before Superday. But in a way, I was prepared for anything that would come my way.

Until I came across my first interviewer, who for lack of words at the time intimated the actual sh*t out of me. He grilled me as I had never been grilled before. The funny part was that it wasn’t even about anything technical.

So you don’t have a good GPA, why? You don’t go to a target school, you could never get into finance? Do you have any relevant experience? I see you have interned at a non-profit, but nothing impressive. But the question that struck me the most out of all of them was this: Why not just go into Big Law? Why would you want to go into finance?

After the interview, I felt so incredibly overwhelmed that I didn’t know what to do but cry. I thought to myself, maybe I am not that smart. Maybe I don’t have what it takes for finance? Maybe this is a dream that is too ambitious for me.

While it’s safe to say that, as I have matured, I have realized that the experience was incredibly valuable for my personal growth. It helped me to effectively assess my career trajectory.

But at the time, I didn’t see it like that.

For months afterward, I felt so discouraged. I viewed that personal interview as a failure. I replayed every question in my head, over and over again. I drove myself crazy thinking I should have prepared more, networked harder, chosen a better degree, or gone to a more prestigious undergraduate institution.

But as time passed, I started to realize something a bit more interesting.

The interviewer had accidentally given me a gift, and I don’t think he realized. Because hidden with all those difficult questions was one genuinely deserved answer.

Why finance?

The more I thought about it, what attracted me to investment banking wasn’t the gruesome hours, the spreadsheets, the evaluation models, or merger transactions.

It was the prestige. The exclusivity. The competitiveness.

For me, it was all about proving something to myself. And that same realization has led me to a bigger observation. The same thing could be said about Big Law.

When people discuss careers in Investment Banking and law, they often focus on the differences between the professions. Yet very few people talk about the similarities between the individuals who pursue them.

Yes, for both, the educational training is uniquely divergent. One requires an individual to hold a Juris Doctorate degree, and the other often requires completing just four years of undergraduate studies at a target school.

But back to similarities, because behaviorally, there are many.

Both attract ambitious young people, who have spent a good chunk of their lives chasing educational and professional achievement.

The students who plan every semester. Those who are obsessed with getting internships. The students who are looking toward the next milestone before they even celebrate the one they just reached.

In many was IB and big law recruit from the exact same personality pool.

The only difference is that somewhere along the line, one person discovered they preferred corporate finance while another discovered they preferred legal reasoning.

Beyond that, the lifestyles are remarkably similar.

Both industries are notorious for demanding extraordinary sacrifices from their junior employees.

Late nights become normal. Weekends become optional. Vacations become interruptions rather than opportunities to rest. The expectation is simple: the client comes first.

What fascinates me most, however, is that despite all of this, neither industry struggles to attract talent.

Every year, thousands of highly educated young people willingly compete for jobs known for demanding hours, stressful environments, and high burnout rates.

Why?

They are selling a symbol. A symbol of intelligence. A symbol of achievement. A symbol of having made it.

And perhaps that is why the interviewer asked me that question all those years ago.

“Why not just go into Big Law?”

At the time, I interpreted it as criticism.

Today, I think it was something else entirely.

I think he was trying to determine whether I was attracted to finance itself or to the prestige it carries.

And truthfully, I suspect many young professionals entering both Big Law and investment banking are still trying to answer that very same question.