re: Making big money in finance?

My $0.02.

IB is best suited for people to do at a young age or immediately after MBA as a launching pad into private equity. That may get eye rolls, but every single person I know who came from IB now works in PE (that said, I happen to deal with PE a lot, so this could be somewhat self-fulfilling from my perspective).

Remember, at the end of the day, the run of the mill finance and financial modeling becomes a commodity as you progress higher within high finance. Those able to differentiate themselves at higher levels tend to do so on the basis of relationships, salesmanship, structuring expertise and/or origination potential (i.e. rainmaking).

With the JD and MBA, I’d be looking to do something transactional with a large corporate firm (In-House Counsel, Corporate Development, Business Development, Risk/Analytics).

Even with the law degree and MBA, an IB isn’t going to be able to justify starting you any higher than Associate level unless your law background is highly transactional in nature. If you go to NYC or London, your peers will be a bunch of international academic outperformers trying to out-Excel each other with questionable actual business/operational understanding.

I’d skip IB at this point and either go the Corporate route (pay will be lower, but stress will be lower, security will be higher, time for side hustles will be higher), or try to get into PE even at an Associate level and use your past experience to differentiate yourself amongst younger peers. As mentioned, though, PE is not an easy field to get into.