Pros
The best reasons to work for Cornerstone Research are: the office culture, the varied casework, and the salary and benefits.
The office culture, while it varies somewhat across the six offices, is supportive, fun, and largely free of analyst backstabbing and rivalry. Management either organizes or sponsors various in-office and community events spear-headed by the analysts themselves. This can include anything from cookie contests and chili-cookoffs, to breast cancer awareness walks and working at soup kitchens. The culture also supports advanced learning: Cornerstone Research will largely defray the cost of taking relevant coursework (for examples, applied microeconomics, statistics, finance, accounting, etc.) at nearby universities.
The varied casework is also a plus. Cornerstone Research derives much of its revenue from securities litigation, and within in each office, this type of casework will be the largest fraction of the overall cases being worked on. But, there are opportunities for work in many fields and industries, from energy to antitrust, to banking and pharmaceuticals. The work itself is a mixed bag. Often, the most difficult part of the work is performing the work correctly, as opposed to conceiving the work itself. You will have the opportunity to grow extremely proficient at Excel and various statistical packages, such as SAS and Stata. Finally, there is value in working with professors from top business schools and economics graduate programs. Even though your interaction with them will be limited, exposure to their thought processes and insights can be great learning opportunities.
Finally, Cornerstone Research is very generous with salary and benefits. It is hard to speak ill of a job that pays nearly $70,000 coming right out of college. The salary raises and bonus almost always are in the double digits, year after year. You will live well working at Cornerstone Research. And if you get to participate, the retreat to Palm Springs, CA, every four years can be a giant 3-day bender at the company's expense. Moreover, Cornerstone Research helps with graduate school admissions, as it pays for the first few sessions with a professional admissions consultancy. Of course, these benefits are no fixed, and may fluctuate given the state of the economy.
Cons
The downsides of working at Cornerstone Research are dealing with the tedious aspects of the legal industry and the mixed bag of management.
Because economic consulting is tied so closely to the legal profession, many of its less desirable aspects spill over into our industry. Most of the time, these aspects involve large boxes of paper documents. It would be much better if the documents could be sent over electronically so that they could be archived more cleanly and searched more easily. Other tedious aspects of the legal industry include compiling backup binders (in PDF form) of all the documents that support every footnote in the expert report that is produced. It has to be done, but is a tremendous pain.
Cornerstone Research's management is a mixed bag. Some attribute this to the fact that most management hires are PhDs who have spent much of their adult lives in the classroom. But, I have had managers with MBAs, who ostensibly have studied the mechanics of management, who were no better. Cornerstone Research may want to invest more in managerial training. That said, there are fantastic managers at Cornerstone Research. Namely, these excellent managers balance the need to get work done with the desire to develop their analysts professional skills.
