Vault’s Verdict

While Cornerstone Research occupies a particular niche in the consulting field, insiders love the intellectually demanding nature of its work. They say that contributing to some of the most important economics cases that pass through the legal system is a reward unto itself. At the same time, the firm makes the work even more enticing with great compensation and a transparent promotion path that makes it straightforward for high performers to advance in the organization.

The firm’s culture is highly collegial, academic, and inclusive. Insiders say that leaders often take time to mentor new staff to help them adapt to their roles and build critical skills. They also love how, as a woman-founded firm, the company has stuck to its roots and continued to prioritize DEI across its operations, with a specific emphasis on making employees feel like they belong.

There’s no shying away from the fact that the hours can be intense at times—it is consulting, after all—but most Cornerstone Research employees agree that the firm makes a concerted effort to provide a good work-life balance, even in a deadline-driven environment. Employees enjoy generous vacation time, and work-related travel tends to be limited.

Employee Reviews

Firm Culture

• “Cornerstone Research offers continuous on-the-job mentoring at all levels. The people above you want you to succeed and often proactively loop you in to opportunities that align with your interests to help you develop the skills you need to advance to the next level.”
• “Institutionally, the firm benefits from the initial founders’ decision to structure compensation around an incentive to reinvest in the firm. This makes for a firm where everyone from the top down is motivated to invest in the success of future generations.”
• “The firm is demanding in terms of hours worked and intensity of work, but the compensation is commensurate with that expectation.”
• “We have a collegial culture with smart, kind, hardworking, and reliable colleagues. We do everything in teams and our work product is better as a result.”

Quality of Life

• “The firm does its best to manage work-life balance within the limits imposed by the nature of our work, which is litigation driven and can come in bursts.”
• “Travel is fairly limited, which is a plus, especially post-COVID. The firm’s hybrid work policy is also helpful and effective.”
• “It is easy to take time off, if you give adequate notice, and the benefits we get are fantastic, including a wellness stipend. The culture is lovely, and the analysts form a tight-knit group and host social events all the time.”
• “The firm has developed and continues to refine a viable part-time strategy that helps many people at various stages of their career development take time to readjust their personal work-life balance.”

Career Development

• “The promotion schedule is very transparent with barely any office politics, but fast-tracking is rare because of the schedule’s transparency.”
• “Cornerstone Research has a great mentoring culture for junior analysts. People really go out of their way to help you adjust to the role.”
• “From when I started as a summer analyst, I’ve kept getting more responsibility and more opportunity for leadership until now, when I look around and I’m managing a team of six analysts.”
• “The firm’s formal trainings can be helpful, but they are often not at a useful time, not easy to find after the fact, and people are not sufficiently encouraged to attend.”

Compensation

• “The benefits in general are very nice, but the salary progression is overwhelmingly nice.”
• “Everyone makes the same base salary at the same level of seniority, but bonuses can differentiate your pay.”
• “The firm offers an overtime bonus to compensate analysts with particularly heavy workloads in a quarter. This is a large benefit and makes extra hours much more palatable. We also have good pay equality across levels and offices in the US.”
• “The firm subsidizes gym memberships, provides access to mental health services, and subsidizes back-up daycare and concierge services.”

Community Engagement

• “In the last 10 years, the firm has done a great job of finding excellent talent from lots of underrepresented minority backgrounds, including individuals with disabilities. Cornerstone Research was cofounded by two women, and gender diversity has been part of the firm since the beginning.”
• “Cornerstone’s commitment to diversity and inclusion has increased over my years at the firm. We continue to have strong representation of women in leadership positions and have increased the diversity of our hiring pipelines over time.”
• “The firm has always been more advanced than its peers in terms of welcoming diversity at all levels. That culture persists today with a leadership that is particularly diverse in terms of gender, plus other dimensions such as ethnicity and LGBTQ+ individuals.”
• “The firm provides equal access to opportunity for all its consultants. However, it is a difficult recruiting market for diversity given that economics and finance PhDs are a pretty un-diverse set.”

Business Outlook

• “Leadership is constantly looking ahead and willing to make investments that will pay off in the intermediate- to long-term.”
• “The firm seems to be in a strong position and has been gaining share in the market for several years. It continues to increase its number of staff and win important business. Senior leadership has been in place for a while and seems stable.”
• “The firm has established itself as particularly good at developing the next generation of talent. In a market where rainmakers are largely aging out of competitor firms and leaving a vacuum, Cornerstone Research is thriving and expanding into adjacent areas.”
• “Since we work in litigation, I don't see the company having a bleak outlook anytime soon. There are always going to be disputes and legal issues that will require consulting.”

Hiring Process

• “The firm does two first-round interviews for 30 minutes each. Then, there’s a half day of four final-round interviews. Our ideal candidate has programming skills, an interest in economics and finance, enjoys complicated analysis, and can handle occasional periods of intense work.”
• “Our junior track recruits highly promising undergrads, mostly from top 30 programs. Our senior track predominantly recruits economics and finance PhD candidates, and we look for potential future business acumen as well as technical skills.”
• “Cornerstone Research wants to hire individuals who have taken the hardest courses available to them in economics, math, and statistics; pursued research projects; and had some level of prior work or research experience.”
• “The firm is looking for team players who have strong academic and quantitative credentials, as well as creative and critical thinking skills.”

Interview Questions

• “Our interviews consist of a mix of a mock case interview, plus behavioral questions.”
• “Case questions reflect an issue that arose in actual casework and walk a candidate through the collaborative process a case team would use to organize an analysis relevant to that issue. The process is a two-way street where candidates see the kind of problem-solving that makes our work interesting and interviewers see how a candidate applies their training and interacts well with others.”
• “Analyze the competitive effects of a merger between two companies.”
• “How would you build a credit default swap trading exchange from scratch?”