Is being a banker really better?
The front page of the FT last week (5/6/06) noted that law firms’ profits were soaring due to a boom in M&A work but that the top firms were struggling to hold on to unsatisfied associates (and Moretolaw was mentioned – hurrah!). This led on to another piece featuring an associate general counsel at Bank of America, Sajid Hussein, previously of A&O, pictured over the headline ‘Worries over long hours led to career change’. The main message of the piece was that ‘the banks are actually nicer places to work generally’.
This is quite a statement. If banks will pay you more and work you less than big City law firms, everyone should be making the move. If these huge, US-led bastions of capitalism and the hardcore work ethic are really better places to work than magic circle law firms (once cosy, collegiate places where much golf was played and time was spent discussing the niceties of complicated points of law in the gentleman’s club), something has gone seriously wrong.
Mr Hussein is not alone in his view. At a seminar at recruitment consultants Badenoch & Clarke last week on long-term career options in banking and finance, two speakers from the legal side of the banking industry (Jake Scrivens from Barclays Capital and Susan Revell from Morgan Stanley) took to the floor with two speakers from the banking side of private practice (Patrick Clancy from Shearman & Sterling and Dan Hamilton from White & Case). The purpose of the seminar was to discuss legal career options in banking and finance and the general the view of the delegates was that not only was the lifestyle at banks better, the skills picked up at banks were often more transferable because in private practice many lawyers “specialise too early”. Lawyers were being encouraged to move into banks earlier in their careers than ever before.
We want to get to the bottom of all this. Are the career options and the lifestyle and the money really better at banks? We want to hear your views and we want to feature on the site both lawyers who have moved into banks as in-house lawyers, and those who have gone on to become full-on bankers.
Get in touch if you would like to be featured.