Profile Evaluation - Practising Lawyer

Hi!

So I am an Indian male lawyer.

1.By independent practise, I mean that I have my own office and staff; rather than me acting as a solicitor for a law firm.

2.I am 25 years old.

3. The clients include the Union & State Government; certain HNI'S (high net worth individuals) as well as multi million dollar companies.

4. The size of the office is humble, since I was earlier working for a senior counsel and branched out a couple of years ago.

5. I wish to transition towards working across regulatory and public policy verticals of premier consulting firms. The reason is that I get a lot of cross referals from my clients who find advisory from public policy verticals insufficient or ignorant of the law & its dragnet. Over a period of time, I have come to realize of a definitive demand for people who are adept in both strategy and regulations which requires dual qualifications. Also, the work is pretty interesting and hardly the otherwise dull transaction based undertaking.

6. Pursuant to official ranking released by the government, my law school has consistently ranked amongst the Top 10. (It is a National Law University)

7. In the long run, my goal is to open a boutique firm which provides cross sectional services including both, intensive public policy consulting as well as handling of compliance and clinical litigation.
In India, currently law firms handle compliance; consulting firms deal with advisory whilst litigation is dealt with qualified advocates leaving potential clients to run from pillar to post for a lot of things!

8. The reason for choosing an MBA rather than a public policy course is that at most schools the same caters towards the third sector and IGO'S whilst I have a background of professional association with corporations, mostly that is.

I would value your advice towards preparing an application for the Top 5 schools. If you have any recommendations for some specific schools, I remain eager to hear about them!


Thanks

Posted from my mobile device

Hi lawyerprofile,

Thank you for all of this follow-up information. Here are my follow-up thoughts:

PAST EXPERIENCE

Given 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 GOALS

Regarding 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.

SCHOOLS

As 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 CONSIDERATIONS

As 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