Hi
lawyerprofile,
Thank you for all of this follow-up information. Here are my follow-up thoughts:
PAST EXPERIENCEGiven what you've described, I would encourage you to highlight what it's been like to build your own office, practice, and staff (in multiple cities it seems), presumably manage the operation, strategize and oversee its growth, develop new business and client relationships, and serve those clients. In short, while the fact that you are a high-performing lawyer can and should come across in your applications, you do not want to "bury" the admissions committee in legalese and legal work. Viewed through a business lens, you are also an entrepreneur, a team and business builder, a people manager, and someone who has deep experience sourcing, understanding, and working with clients. Unpack those experiences. Discuss numbers, growth, revenue, impact, etc. Discuss how you've grown, advanced, failed, learned, etc. along the way. (Certainly bend your resume and interview responses in the aforementioned directions, but also consider which essays lend themselves to certain of these focus areas as well. Where exactly that manifests will vary from school to school depending on their essay questions.)
CAREER GOALSRegarding your goals, I would point back to what I noted in my previous response. What you've shared in your follow-up message is helpful to know. Just make sure that the "why MBA" and business relevant pieces are properly articulated. This might include strategy, learning how to transform your existing (and highly relevant) client skills from the legal universe to the consulting universe, and so forth. You will need to go even deeper than that in order to convince the admissions committee that your goals are sufficiently business oriented. Based on the follow-up information that you shared, I believe this can be accomplished. You just have to resist the temptation of tipping too deep into policy and legal waters. That can be your area of focus or expertise, but unpack the business and leadership-related knowledge, skills, and experience that you need. Down the road, I like that you've identified a business opportunity in the marketplace. Unpack that, too. How will an MBA and everything that comes along with it help you to build that business in the future. In what ways will you marry up this unique combination of (a) what you've done to this point, (b) the MBA, and (c) your experience in consulting post-MBA. Again, I would be happy to discuss these topics further.
SCHOOLSAs for schools, I believe you would be justified in including some T5 schools in your application strategy. At the same time, you should be sure to study up on the admissions landscape. The Indian male applicant pool is the most crowded and competitive demographic from which to apply, and
according to one GMAT Club study, Indian applicants with a 760 GMAT still have only a 16% acceptance rate across
the entirety of the U.S. T20. That acceptance rate figure is naturally going to be much, much lower at T5 schools. Against that backdrop, a T5 only strategy is super aggressive for almost anyone. Every applicant has their own threshold in the rankings -- above which they would feel justified in investing time and money into a full-time MBA, and below which they would not. (And sometimes other thresholds that might be scholarship-dependent.) If your goal is top-tier consulting, then there are still schools that run into the T15/16 that can place you at certain top-tier or almost top-tier consulting firms. (Not as well as the T5 or M7, of course, and not always every top firm recruiting heavily at every school, but enough to justify diversifying your strategy beyond exclusively the T5.)
ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONSAs previously addressed topics suggest, you are going to have "more to prove" and "more convincing to do" than someone with first-tier business experience -- in part because of the transition that "law to MBA" naturally entails, in part because you've largely worked at your own firm (which can be interesting from an entrepreneurial and learning/growth perspective but lacks the built-in credibility that high performance at a blue-chip firm would), and in part because you are going to need to think critically about who to get recommendations from (and then imbue upon them how thoughtful and specific a modern-day MBA recommendation needs to be -- and what kind of stuff they should highlight in it -- when they are presumably going to come from the legal world). I would be happy to further the conversation, discuss schools more specifically, and elaborate on how I would approach the topics above via a Free Consultation. Please feel free to sign up for a call at your convenience:
https://www.avantiprep.com/free-consultation.html. (You can include the link to this post in the signup form so that I know it's you.)
Best Regards,
Greg
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29 Jul 2019, 00:11
