As a law student considering a career at McKinsey, you may have many questions on your mind. We encourage you to get your most pressing ones answered here and read about other lawyers who have found their way to McKinsey.
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Why do people with law degrees come to McKinsey?
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McKinsey allows you to use your legal training to make an immediate and dramatic impact. Consultants need the very skills that lead to success in law school, including strong leadership and communication skills and the ability to address multiple, conflicting points of view to solve complex problems.
At McKinsey, you also have the opportunity to advance more rapidly than you might in the legal profession. Whereas it can take years for new associates at a law firm to advance to a position of responsibility, new McKinsey consultants frequently find themselves directly advising CEOs and other leaders within months of joining the firm.
McKinsey has a long-standing interest in attracting and retaining lawyers. In fact, Marvin Bower, the father of the modern McKinsey organization, was a lawyer, and he built the firm based on the professional principles he learned from his experience in law. Today, more than 250 consultants at McKinsey have law degrees. They joined the firm at various points in their careers—some immediately after law school and some after practicing law for years.
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Seth, JD, Associate, Stamford
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 "I realized the way I wanted to use my law degree wasn’t to practice; it was to take the thinking skills I learned and apply them in a more creative and entrepreneurial environment. And what I like about McKinsey is that it has the problem-solving focus that law school groomed me for, but it is also really creative and entrepreneurial. Because the work is outside the usual borders of the legal profession, there is a lot more room to play and to have a satisfying intellectual story."
Read Seth's profile |
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Karina, LL.M., Engagement Manager, Rio de Janeiro
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 "I practiced law for two years and then decided that the specific field of law I was practicing was not what I wanted to do. I wasn’t ready to specialize in just one thing. I needed the freedom to experiment because I’m a very curious person by nature. I needed to do something where I would have room for my curiosity and my willingness to explore different things. That's why I joined McKinsey."
Read Karina's profile |
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How can I build the business knowledge I need to be a successful consultant?
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You don’t need a business background to succeed at McKinsey. More than one-third of McKinsey consultants don’t have business degrees, and about half don’t have M.B.A.s. What’s more, lawyers have a proven record of success at the firm. Of the 450 partners without a business background, more than 35 have law degrees.
Our mini-M.B.A. program will help you learn what you need to know about business. In this intensive three-week course, you and about 30 other new consultants will learn core skills in subjects such as microeconomics, accounting, finance, marketing, and business strategy taught by professors from the world's top business schools.
Beyond the formal training programs, you will learn quickly by working with other McKinsey consultants on client engagements. McKinsey has a supportive environment, with both formal and informal mentoring to promote professional and personal development.
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Ben, PhD (law), Associate Principal, New York
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 "I was an associate with only a few months’ tenure at the firm, and I was supposed to lead a session for senior client leaders with a partner. But the partner had to cancel at the last minute, and she asked me to do it. I didn’t have a business degree, and I had been at the firm a short while, yet I was leading these executives through the firm’s thinking. I’ve seen that over and over again at McKinsey."
Read Ben's profile |
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What should I expect from the interview process?
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The interview process generally consists of three rounds, each designed to determine how you would perform on the job at McKinsey. To excel in the interviews, you should be comfortable with numbers, have an exceptional academic background, work well with others, and demonstrate leadership skills.
During the first round in the process, called the Interview Workshop and Initial Assessment, you will take a written problem-solving test and then participate in two business-case breakout sessions. These simulate real consulting problems to give you a taste of what it’s like to work on a client engagement. During the next two rounds of interviews, you’ll be asked to talk about your experiences, both academic and professional; discuss leadership roles you’ve assumed; and work through business cases with your interviewer.
We want to see you at your best, so we encourage you to practice before coming to the interviews. And while the interviews demand a lot of intellectual engagement, we hope you will be yourself and enjoy the day. You’re getting to know us just as we’re getting to know you.
To learn more about our interview process and how to prepare for it, visit the Assessment section of our Web site.
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Claudio, JD, Engagement Manager, New York
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 "The first time I went through the interview process, I didn’t get an offer. But the interviewers were interested, so they volunteered to spend time with me on the phone to help me prepare for the next year. That really struck me, because it highlighted the importance that McKinsey puts on people. And this holds true in my day-to-day job."
Read Claudio's profile |
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What is it like to work at McKinsey?
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You can expect to devote as much time to your work at McKinsey as you would at a law firm, and you’ll find that the investment yields significant rewards.
Your performance will be measured by impact, not billable hours, and you’ll have nearly limitless opportunities to explore areas that interest you, build your network and take on greater responsibility. We encourage consultants to build their expertise and develop new areas of engagement with clients, whether that means specializing in a field or ranging across a wide variety of fields, such as private equity, media, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, investment banking, and asset management. To help you along the way, there are annual one- to two-week off-site training programs in the first few years to help you prepare for new roles and responsibilities as you advance through the firm.
You will be shaping solutions for our clients’ toughest problems as soon as you start. And working as a member of a team, you will have abundant opportunities to learn from your colleagues and develop a network of trusted advisers and friends. Because the way we work together is not hierarchical, discussions in the team room are open, lively, and interesting - and move us closer to reaching the best possible solutions for clients.
In short, at McKinsey, you never stop growing, and you will never be bored.
And because we want our consultants to have the flexibility to do their best work, teams shape their work style around their preferences. Each consultant finds his or her own work/life balance.
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Jon, JD, Partner, Washington, D.C.
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 "McKinsey is a values-based firm. In practical terms, this means that as long as we perform well and serve our clients well, we can do whatever we want when it comes to work/life balance. Everyone has their own trade-offs to make. I spend a lot of time with my kids in the evenings based on how I have chosen to prioritize what I do."
Read Jon's profile |
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What will my career path be like at McKinsey?
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McKinsey typically hires law degree holders as generalist consultants in an associate role, the same role as their colleagues with M.B.A.s. You will progress as quickly as you are able; we promote based on merit, not time spent at the firm. And you will have the opportunity to work in a wide variety of industries.
For instance, you might help a venture capital firm develop a growth strategy, establish a private-label brand for a pharmaceutical company, or advise one of the world’s largest cell phone companies on product development. With any engagement, your ability to persuade and communicate and to structure and solve problems logically—the skills you developed in law school—will help your team solve clients’ most pressing problems.
Read more about our roles and career paths.
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Claudio, J.D., Associate, New York
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"I quickly discovered that McKinsey would give me as much responsibility as I could take at any point. I wasn’t restricted to a specific task. I can take leadership responsibilities just by speaking up and making my voice heard. McKinsey cares about my development not only as a consultant but as a person."
Read Claudio's profile |
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If I decide not to stay at McKinsey, what next?
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Joining McKinsey will open doors for you, both within the firm and beyond. Some consultants with law degrees choose to advance through the organization and become partners, pursuing their interests in areas they are passionate about. Others use McKinsey as a stepping-stone to a career beyond the firm. Some return to the law, but most enter other fields or industries they find interesting.
About 900 McKinsey alumni have law degrees, and you will have access to this network as you chart your career. On average, they stayed at McKinsey for just under four years before going on to positions in fields including law, private equity, asset management, media, government, and nonprofit management. Half of them rose to engagement manager, associate principal, or partner before leaving McKinsey.
McKinsey alumni with law degrees currently serve in positions such as these:
- Chairman, Swiss Re America
- President and CEO, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Inc.
- SVP General Counsel and Secretary, Oracle
- COO, Human Rights Watch
- Group President, Liz Claiborne Inc.
- President and CEO, TechnoServe
- Professor, Harvard Law School
- Founder and CEO, Geni, Inc., and Yammer; and cofounder and former COO, PayPal
Read about our alumni.
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Seth, JD, Associate, Stamford
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"I feel like this is a place that wants people to do great work, and they’re open to a million different reasons that people may have for being here and for what they want to get out of the experience. I felt empowered by that value set. I felt as though McKinsey would give me the development I needed to get to my next chapter."
Read Seth's profile |
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How will my work make a difference?
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At McKinsey, we serve the world’s leading institutions at the highest levels to solve their most important problems. You will work side by side with your clients, from corporate executives to government officials, to develop solutions that can be implemented and will have real impact.
Our clients include:
- Nineteen of the top 20 private equity firms in North America
- Eight of the ten largest global software companies
- Nineteen of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies
- Sixteen of the top 20 commercial banks in the United States
- Twenty-one stock exchanges
- Six central banks/finance ministries
We also serve clients in the public sector, and we created the cross-functional, cross-industry Climate Change Special Initiative to help advise leading institutions on the impact of climate change. In addition, we are proud of the nonprofit work we do with the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, United Way, and the World Wildlife Fund.
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Laura, JD, Engagement Manager, Chicago
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 "I am working on a study for a large school district, and we are helping them with a performance transformation that will put the district in the vanguard of education systems in the United States—and in the world. It’s something nobody has gotten quite right yet, so it’s really exciting to be involved with this."
Read Laura's profile |
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Ben, PhD (law), Associate Principal, New York
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"I enjoyed working on the problems my legal clients had, but what interested me most was the business dimension of those problems. What I liked about McKinsey was that I was moving closer to where the action was, where the interesting problems were top of mind."
Read Ben's profile |
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