<p>I wish there was a sticky or subforum for this topic.</p>
<p>I am very interested in the possibilities this dual program would offer for future careers. I'd like to get into M&A and eventually general council. I am trying to find out the general consensus from those who have done it if it is worth it? or if it is the best route?</p>
<p>You need to speak to JD people. The Law field is complex. The theory is that the MBA will improve your chances in getting into a firm that specializes in corporate finance. This day in age firms have been seriously downsizing. To get into an M&A firm you will need to come from a T10 or be in the top 5% of your class. That is as an attorney.</p>
<p>From the corporate finance side you enter through I-Banking or PE which requires serious networking. It is possible to enter through a company that is growing through mergers but that requires some serious timing and probably a bit of soothsayer. It is near impossible if you only have a JD. You would need an undergrad finance background.</p>
<p>Small and midsized law firms draw from local law schools. So do the courts if you are looking to be a clerk. They draw from the bottom 90%. Supreme courts and the Supreme Court draw from the top. Again competition is higher due to the economy.</p>
<p>You want to give serious thought about studying the law. Only do it if you want to be a lawyer. You may never get to M&A but you will always be a lawyer and it will take decades to pay off you law school tab.</p>
<p>general counsel != corporate finance. general counsel is a pure legal leadership position within the corporation at the level of CFO, COO, etc. the GC will usually have a staff of “in-house counsel”. </p>
<p>the traditional path is big-firm m&a work, then after 3-4 years use client network to find an in-house position. once you are in-house, you can work your way up to become a GC. </p>
<p>the MBA won’t help you get into a top firm from a lower school, and in fact could hurt you. the reality is that for large firms, it is top schools or bust. you want to go to as high a ranked school as possible, but I would say you can only reasonably count on doing corporate transactional work from the top ten law schools. </p>
<p>what the JD/MBA can do is facilitate a transition to a real business role (as opposed to in-house legal work), but as Tort mentioned you will need to do some networking. The MBA would hopefully provide an alumni network that could be tapped in addition to meeting with the clients of your law firm. </p>
<p>again, all of this depends on your ability to get into a top law school, so you can go on to practice M&A work at a large firm. this career path is very unlikely for someone going to a lower-ranked law school.</p>
<p>Thank you for your insight i appreciate it</p>
<p>The other people’s advice are good answers.</p>
<p>Btw, do you go to UVU by any chance? (noticed the orem, ut)</p>
<p>Yes i do the “ultra prestigious” utah valley university</p>
<p>Universities become prestigious after their alumni do great things. That’s one of the reasons why they put so much money into career counseling. They continue to offer services to alumni decades after they left. They want alumni to be successful so they can donate $$$ (The other reason), and so they help build the University’s reputation for quality product.</p>
<p>The point - Their level of prestige is up to you. I also hear that only you can stop forest fires. :)</p>
<p>as i plan to take over the corporate world, everyone will want to learn my mad skills from UVU thus making it the new Harvard/Stanford/Oxford/MIT/All the “former” top tier schools</p>
<p>just you wait and see…</p>
<p>Nice.</p>
<p>You’re Hired!</p>
<p>if only it were that easy…</p>
<p>I hope my experience might be helpful to you. I earned an MBA/JD almost 25 years ago because I knew I wanted to practice corporate law and thought the extra degree would be helpful. I felt that law firms did not give much credit for my MBA, perhaps because MBA degrees weren’t common then and few if any lawyers had an MBA among the 100 or so in each of the two firms in which I practiced. Certainly no law firm at the time paid any more for having an extra degree. I felt that my interviews resulted from my having gone to a top 10 law school and having made a few good grades rather than from having earned an extra degree. In your position, I would try to find out whether earning an MBA would help you get an interview or a job, or increase your pay once employed. If not, would adding an extra year of school be worth it to you based on the additional knowledge you would gain?</p>
<p>Despite these considerations, I was glad I earned a joint degree. The additional knowledge was valuable to me (although I also studied various subjects that I never saw again, such as statistics). I had skipped a year of school, so I graduated with the joint degree at the same time others with my birth date would have graduated from law school. Also, the extra cost for another year was not prohibitive for me—it was certainly nowhere near what it is now.</p>
<p>If you decide you definitely wish to pursue an MBA/JD, here are some considerations. Will the business school to which you apply require you to work at least two years before being admitted? Does the business school offer a generalist approach, or do its students specialize in one area from the beginning? At the three schools I researched, MBA/JD students took all their classes in the business school the first year, in the law school the next (or vice versa), and then in both schools for the third and fourth years; if this is the case, how close in proximity and willing to work together on scheduling are the law and business schools you’re considering? Also, law and graduate business students often finance part of their education through summer positions that firms use as recruiting tools (and for which the summer employees are paid far more than they are worth). It is very difficult to find such positions after the first year of graduate school, when the student has three school years until graduation. I wasn’t willing to lie about my graduation date, so I ended up in a summer job earning about a third of what I otherwise would have (and for which I was grateful). If this would be your situation, could you still afford the next year of school?</p>
<p>I can’t answer these questions myself as I haven’t practiced law for years, but I hope I’ve raised some questions that will be helpful to you in making your decisions.</p>
<p>shok,</p>
<p>Thank you for your insight, it helps to have some advice from a professional that has experience directly related to the question. as i do more and more research im finding that a business undergrad and law school is just as capable as jd/mba and therefore not worth it when im more focused on the business opportunities. instead of spreading myself across broad subjects knowing a little about a lot i have come to the conclusion for me and where i want to end up it is better to know alot about a little. </p>
<p>thank you again</p>