Academic

Or maybe a corp fin class.  Anyway, if you haven't seen it, it's law students asking questions to a finance wit, well worth putting up on the website, or perhaps even including on the syllabus.  TED is impressed with the technical proficiency of M&A lawyers; I wonder what form that technial proficiency takes.  Anyway, here's a taste of the interview, the whole thing is worth a look:

Q: Of the investment bankers you've worked with who are also attorneys, how do they add typically add value, if any, by virtue of having a legal education?

A: First of all, you can't bank and practice law at the same time. Regulators tend to frown on such things. However, bankers who have legal training and who have practiced law before can be quite effective in certain capacities. A trained mergers and acquisitions lawyer tends to be more technically proficient at M&A, and a trained securities lawyer can be more effective in arcane areas like structured finance than your average non-lawyer banker. But technical proficiency alone is not enough. Among other things, you need to be a good salesman. In my experience not all lawyers have that personality or skill. Those who do, and who can make the transition to a business predicated on eating what you kill, rather than slaving away at a sinecure, tend to do very well.....

Q: Since you are apparently dissatisfied with the efficiency of your chosen line of work, what suggestions would you have for improving the efficiency?
? and ?
Q: Would you say this seemingly inefficient client relationship model is where most of the ?fat? is in investment banks, or some other traditional way of doing business?

A: I am not sure I agree with your premise that a client service business can be "efficient." There is a lot of sucking up and relationship building to do with my clients, in addition to actual deals, and sucking up in my experience is relatively time-inelastic. There is much wasted time, and many false starts, but those come with the territory of any business predicated on large, intermittent transactions. Like the Army, investment bankers do a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.

Unlike the Army and many other businesses, however, there usually isn't an enormous amount of bureaucratic fat or organizational sclerosis in an investment bank. We tend to recreate and retool ourselves too often in pursuit of the almighty buck to let much moss grow. When it does, however, it tends to happen at the biggest universal banks. Citigroup is perhaps the poster child for what happens when bureaucracy and inertia are allowed to take over an investment bank. It isn't pretty.