I don’t think there’s one particular view toward those with MBAs, but if you have no prior banking experience you might find a bit of resentment from those who have been doing it for a few years (obviously depends greatly on group/firm).

London hours are a bit better than those on Wall Street but it’s still not close to a 9-5 job by any means.

I have a background in consulting and start-ups but want to shift gears and go into finance. I am starting business school in fall and am doing research on possible careers I should look into. Naturally, banking came up.

Life as an analyst definitely has its drawbacks, most notably the hours. How would the life of a first-year associate out of a top-10 business school with no prior banking experience differ from the life of an analyst? What do analysts and associates alike think of associates and others with MBAs in general? And based on your experience, are the hours more back-breaking on Wall Street compared to say, London?

Thanks in advance.

I’m working on a couple other “Breaking In” articles but they take quite a long time to write since I have to do so much research, so haven’t been able to finish them yet.

I’ve been trying to continue this series for accounting people, consultants and others for quite some time, but unfortunately I know significantly more about lawyers and engineers getting into banking so I have focused on those for now.

I do hope to finish up this series or at least add one more this month, no guarantees though.

As far as tax vs. audit, I don’t know that there’s a preference per se… if I were getting into accounting and wanted to do i-banking, I would try to get into transaction services or anything relating to deals as soon as possible. That’s probably the most relevant division of accounting firms for getting into banking.

While the 7 years of tax experience won’t necessarily help you, your M&A and leveraged finance experience most certainly will (if I’m interpreting that correctly).

It’s definitely possible to get into banking with your background, but with the current market environment and everything I would recommend focusing on smaller firms.

Also with your background I would really focus on your “story” - why are you switching from tax lawyer to investment banker, and why did you not do corporate law originally? They may grill you on why you chose tax rather than corporate law if you were really interested in finance so I would focus on how you’re going to answer that one.

In some ways, someone like you almost has a better chance at PE firms and other types of finance vs. banks but it will likely be much harder to get into those in generally so I’d stay focused on banks.

The Vault has a list of the most prestigious law firms here: http://www.vault.com/nr/lawrankings.jsp?law2007=2&ch_id=242&top100=1

It is very US-focused but I imagine most of them have international branches as well.