sakky

The answer is both, but mostly the former. IB's will hire graduates from the top law schools immediately upon graduation. Note, it has to be a top law school - those IB's are basically hiring you for the name of your law school and for the raw talent/work-ethic you are supposed to have by coming from a top law school.

Practicing lawyers can and do also get into IB, particularly if they have been working in the financial-services industry. This, however, tends to be significantly harder. There's really only one truly effective way to break into IB - and that's to get recruited upon graduation, either from undergrad or grad-school (usually from an MBA program, but sometimes from another grad-program like law school). It is significantly more difficult to get into IB from another job. It can be done, but the odds do not favor you.

Dunkaroo

here take this scenario. The partners in Mr. Rosenberg, Katz and whoever each make $2.5 million per year. Meanwhile at an I-bank the director's make roughly in that range. Move that to managing director. Up the scale to Executive Vice president then move to CFO and finally Chairman of the Board/CEO and you have mega salaries.

Greybeard

Dunkaroo,

What could you possibly want to buy that you couldn't afford on a salary of $2.5 million a year?

I know that's not private jet money, but hey - when you die, they don't add up how much money you acquired along the way.

Infinite_Truth

^ I'd buy Canada....and then mabye South Africa too!

But as a serious suggestion, if you ever wanted to found a university, mega bucks ARE needed. Why were so many prestigious universities founded by robber barons who simply used money for toiler paper? Rockefeller founded UChicago, Vanderbilt founded Vanderbilt University, Andrew Carnegie founded Carnegie Mellon, etc. At least back in the 1800s, rich people loved to found new private universities that owned.