How to Apply to Lazard

Key Takeaways

Lazard is one of the last great independent advisory houses, with dual headquarters in New York and Paris, roughly 3,100 employees, and a pure-play focus on Financial Advisory plus a roughly $230 billion Asset Management business.
CEO Peter Orszag took over in October 2023, bringing a public-policy pedigree (ex-OMB and ex-CBO director) and a stated goal of doubling firm revenue by 2030. The 2024 roughly 10 percent headcount reduction was the first visible move of that reset.
Junior hiring is campus-driven and strictly on-cycle. Summer internships are the main door to analyst seats, and offers are extended almost entirely to returning interns.
The technical bar at Superday is at or above bulge-bracket levels, especially for Restructuring and Financial Advisory. Fluency in DCF, LBO, merger models, and capital structure mechanics is non-negotiable.
Cross-border and bilingual backgrounds are materially advantaged. French/English is functionally expected for Paris seats, and German or Italian helps for Frankfurt and Milan.
Analyst total compensation in New York typically runs $200,000 to $280,000 year one to year three (base plus bonus plus signing), associate total compensation runs roughly $400,000 to $500,000, and managing director compensation commonly exceeds $1 million with significant variance tied to origination.
Lazard loses offers most often to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Centerview Partners, Evercore, PJT Partners, and Moelis & Company. Candidates should go in with a clear thesis on why Lazard over those specific alternatives.
The firm's boutique identity is real: small deal teams, direct MD exposure for juniors, and an institutional pride in giving independent advice. This is exhilarating if you want ownership early and punishing if you want the infrastructure of a large bank.
Asset Management is a legitimate career track at Lazard, not a consolation prize. The $230 billion AUM business hires separately from Financial Advisory and promotes its own PMs and analysts.

About Lazard

Lazard (NYSE: LAZ) is one of the oldest and most prestigious independent investment banks in the world, tracing its founding to 1848 when the three Lazard brothers — Alexandre, Lazare, and Simon — opened a dry goods store in New Orleans that quickly pivoted into banking and foreign exchange as their operations expanded to San Francisco during the Gold Rush and then to Paris. For more than 175 years the firm has deliberately cultivated a transatlantic identity, maintaining dual headquarters in New York City (30 Rockefeller Plaza) and Paris (175 Haussmann), with London operating as a de facto third major hub. That geographic DNA is central to how Lazard hires, staffs deals, and promotes: the Paris house is not a satellite office, it is a founding house, and senior bankers are expected to move between cities over a career. The firm operates through two core businesses. Financial Advisory is the flagship — a pure-play advisory franchise that has historically punched far above its weight on cross-border M&A, sovereign advisory, and sovereign and corporate restructuring (Lazard is routinely a top-three restructuring house globally alongside Houlihan Lokey, PJT Partners, and Rothschild). Asset Management runs roughly $230 billion in assets under management across global equities, fixed income, and alternative strategies, and contributes a more stable annuity-like revenue stream that cushions the advisory cycle. The modern corporate form of Lazard was shaped by two transformative events. In 2002 Bruce Wasserstein was recruited to lead the firm and consolidated the historically fragmented houses of Lazard Freres (New York), Lazard Freres (Paris), and Lazard Brothers (London) under a single management structure, breaking the three-house model that had existed for over a century. In 2005 Wasserstein took Lazard public on the NYSE, ending its run as one of the last great private investment banking partnerships and creating the LAZ ticker. In October 2023 Peter Orszag, formerly director of the Congressional Budget Office and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama, succeeded Ken Jacobs as CEO. Orszag joined Lazard in 2016 and ran the Financial Advisory business before stepping up. His arrival coincided with a bruising advisory cycle, and in early 2024 Lazard announced a roughly 10 percent reduction in headcount as part of a broader strategic reset and a public goal of doubling firm revenue by 2030. Candidates applying today are stepping into a firm in the middle of that reset: leaner, more accountable, still proudly boutique, and still one of the few places where a junior banker can work directly on a sovereign restructuring or a marquee cross-border deal in their first two years.

Application Process

1
Apply through Lazard's official careers portal at lazard
Apply through Lazard's official careers portal at lazard.com/careers. Lazard uses Workday as its applicant tracking system, so your resume should be submitted as a clean PDF with text selectable (no images, no columns that break parsing, no headers embedded as graphics). The portal asks for legal work authorization and for each office you would consider — New York, Paris, London, Frankfurt, Milan, Singapore, and others. List every location you would genuinely accept; Lazard staffs regionally and a flexible geographic preference meaningfully helps at resume screen.
2
Junior hiring (Analyst for Financial Advisory, Analyst for Asset Management) run
Junior hiring (Analyst for Financial Advisory, Analyst for Asset Management) runs on a strict campus calendar. In the US, summer internship applications typically open in the spring roughly 18 months before the internship starts, and full-time analyst offers are extended almost entirely to returning interns. If you are a sophomore or junior, treat the summer internship as the real front door; lateral full-time entry at the analyst level is rare.
3
Associate-level hiring splits into two lanes
Associate-level hiring splits into two lanes. MBA associates are recruited on-cycle from a defined set of target programs (Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, Booth, Stanford, Kellogg, INSEAD, HEC Paris, LBS) via on-campus presentations, coffee chats, and formal interview rounds. Lateral associates from other banks are hired opportunistically through headhunters — expect a first screen with a recruiter like DSP, Glocap, or Oxbridge rather than a direct application.
4
Expect an online assessment after resume screen for most junior roles
Expect an online assessment after resume screen for most junior roles. This is typically a timed numerical, logical, and situational judgement battery delivered through a third-party vendor. It is a screening gate, not a differentiator — prepare with a few practice sets, do not obsess.
5
First-round interviews are usually one to two 30-minute conversations with assoc
First-round interviews are usually one to two 30-minute conversations with associates or VPs, conducted via video or at a recruiting event. Expect the full banking menu: walk me through your resume, why Lazard specifically (not just why investment banking), a technical block on valuation and accounting, and at least one behavioral story about a time you owned a hard piece of analysis.
6
Superday is the final round and almost always held in person at 30 Rock in New Y
Superday is the final round and almost always held in person at 30 Rock in New York or Haussmann in Paris. Five to seven back-to-back 30-minute interviews with a mix of VPs, directors, and managing directors across different industry and geographic groups. The technical bar rises sharply — expect detailed DCF mechanics, LBO intuition, accretion/dilution, and for restructuring candidates a working grasp of the waterfall, fulcrum security concept, and 363 sales. Fit is weighted heavily; multiple MDs need to affirmatively want you on their deals.
7
Offers are typically extended within one to two weeks of Superday
Offers are typically extended within one to two weeks of Superday. Exploding timelines are short (often two weeks or less for on-cycle recruiting) and Lazard expects candidates to commit decisively. If you are weighing Lazard against another elite boutique or a bulge bracket, ask the recruiter for a conversation with a current analyst in the group you would join — this is customary and the firm will accommodate it.

Resume Tips for Lazard

recommended

Lead the first line of every banking or finance bullet with a concrete deliverab

Lead the first line of every banking or finance bullet with a concrete deliverable and a number: the three-statement model you built, the transaction size you supported, the comp set you refreshed, the pitchbook page you owned. Lazard reviewers skim for craft evidence, not adjectives.

recommended

If you have any restructuring, distressed, special situations, bankruptcy litiga

If you have any restructuring, distressed, special situations, bankruptcy litigation support, or turnaround experience, move it to the top of your experience section and name the chapter, the debtor, or the situation where you can. Lazard's restructuring franchise is globally elite and candidates with genuine distressed reps are triaged into that pipeline immediately.

recommended

For any role based in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, or Madrid, state your working lan

For any role based in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, or Madrid, state your working language ability explicitly with a CEFR level or equivalent (for example, 'French: C1, professional working proficiency'). Bilingual French/English is a material advantage for any Paris-based seat, and Lazard will ask about it unprompted during interviews.

recommended

Keep the resume to one page for analyst and associate applications

Keep the resume to one page for analyst and associate applications. Lazard's senior bankers read hundreds of these during recruiting cycles and a two-page resume from a 22-year-old reads as a lack of editorial judgement.

recommended

Name your modeling software and your depth

Name your modeling software and your depth. 'Built a three-statement operating model with integrated debt schedule and LBO returns analysis in Excel' lands; 'proficient in Excel' does not. If you have Capital IQ, FactSet, Bloomberg, Pitchbook, or CreditRisk Monitor experience, list the platforms by name.

recommended

Include cross-border, regulatory, or international policy experience prominently

Include cross-border, regulatory, or international policy experience prominently. Lazard's pitch to clients is disproportionately built on cross-border advisory and sovereign work, and candidates with time at the IMF, World Bank, Treasury, a central bank, or a cross-border law firm stand out relative to generic banking backgrounds.

recommended

Avoid buzzword stacking

Avoid buzzword stacking. 'Results-oriented team player passionate about finance' is an instant downgrade. Replace adjectives with specific artifacts: deals, models, memos, presentations, decisions you supported.

recommended

List the CFA level you have passed (not just 'CFA candidate'), any Series 79/63/

List the CFA level you have passed (not just 'CFA candidate'), any Series 79/63/SIE registrations, and any open-source financial modeling or public writing on markets. Lazard has historically responded well to candidates who show intellectual ownership of a subject area outside the classroom.

Interview Culture

Lazard interviews feel different from bulge-bracket interviews, and understanding why matters for how you prepare.

The firm is roughly 3,100 employees globally — about a tenth the size of a Goldman Sachs or a Morgan Stanley — and senior bankers interview junior candidates personally because those candidates will staff directly on their deals within weeks. The tone is more conversational than scripted, but the technical bar is not lower; if anything it is higher in restructuring and sovereign advisory, because deal teams are small and a weak junior is immediately visible. Expect MDs to probe how you actually think, not just whether you memorized the accretion/dilution formula. Two structural features shape the culture you are being assessed against. The first is the NYC-Paris dual headquarters tradition. Unlike most US banks where international offices are branch operations, Paris is a founding house with its own client roster, its own promotion committee, and its own institutional memory running back to the 19th century. Candidates who have lived or worked in both the US and continental Europe, who can switch between English and French in a meeting, and who understand that a Milan MD and a New York MD may staff the same cross-border deal are read as native to the firm. The second is the Orszag-era strategic reset. Since October 2023, under a new CEO who came from the public policy world rather than a traditional banker track, Lazard has pushed harder on performance management, client accountability, and revenue growth. The 2024 roughly 10 percent headcount reduction was framed internally as part of that reset. Interviewers will not ask you directly about the layoffs, but they will assess whether you have the intensity and ownership mindset the post-reset firm is recruiting for. Generic answers about 'loving the culture' read as naive; specific answers about wanting to do cross-border M&A under a particular MD, or wanting to build restructuring reps in a franchise that has advised on Argentine and Greek sovereign debt, read as informed. The broader cultural frame is boutique prestige. Lazard does not compete with JPMorgan on balance sheet or product breadth; it competes on senior-banker attention per client, on independent advice free of conflicts (no underwriting, no principal investing on its own balance sheet at scale), and on multi-generational client relationships. Junior bankers at Lazard get staffed into rooms with MDs earlier than at most bulge brackets, which is exhilarating and unforgiving in roughly equal measure. Interviewers are testing for the temperament to operate in small teams on high-stakes deals, not the temperament to navigate a large organization. Show up with specific deal curiosity, specific sector interest, working knowledge of a recent Lazard-advised transaction, and evidence that you can own work end-to-end rather than execute from a template.

What Lazard Looks For

Technical craft on financial statements, DCF, LBO, and merger modeling that stands up to being probed by a managing director, not just a first-round associate. At a small boutique, weak technicals are immediately obvious on live deals, so interviewers screen hard for real fluency.
Evidence of intellectual ownership of a subject area — a sector thesis, a restructuring case study, a cross-border regulatory topic, a macro view with numbers behind it. Lazard wants juniors who will become trusted pair-of-hands for MDs, not just template executors.
Bilingual or trilingual capability, especially French/English for Paris-tracked seats and German or Italian for the continental European offices. The firm genuinely runs day-to-day business in multiple languages across regions, so language on a resume gets tested.
Temperament for small-team, high-intensity work. Lazard deal teams are often two to four people including the MD. There is nowhere to hide on a bad day, and interviewers are reading whether you will own outcomes under pressure without needing to be managed.
Independent advice mindset. Lazard's institutional identity rests on being conflict-free — no underwriting, no large balance sheet products competing with client advice. Candidates who can articulate why independent advisory matters to clients, rather than parroting that it does, score well.
Cross-border orientation. Roughly half of Lazard's meaningful M&A work touches two or more jurisdictions. Candidates with a study abroad year, an internship on another continent, a second citizenship, or experience navigating multi-jurisdictional regulation are read as a natural fit.
Restructuring and special situations aptitude for candidates interested in that group. This is not a lateral move inside the firm — Restructuring is staffed by people who wanted to do it from day one. Interviewers will probe how you think about the capital structure waterfall, fulcrum securities, and distressed valuation.
Judgement about when not to pitch. Several MDs will tell you in interviews some version of the phrase 'we do not pitch everything.' Lazard's senior bankers take pride in advising against a deal when the client should not do it, and candidates who show that editorial instinct — on their own analysis, on a case study, on a recent transaction — are differentiated.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a Lazard analyst make in New York?

All-in analyst compensation in New York Financial Advisory typically runs $200,000 to $280,000 per year across years one to three, with a base salary in the $110,000 to $125,000 range and a performance bonus that scales with firm and group results. Signing bonuses for returning interns are commonly $10,000 to $15,000. Pay is broadly in line with elite boutique peers (Evercore, PJT, Centerview) and at or slightly above bulge-bracket all-in for top-bucket analysts in strong advisory years.

What do Lazard associates and managing directors earn?

Associate total compensation in New York typically lands between $400,000 and $500,000, with bases commonly $175,000 to $225,000 and bonuses highly dependent on deal flow in the group. Vice Presidents and Directors range roughly $600,000 to $1,200,000. Managing Director compensation commonly exceeds $1 million all-in, but the distribution is wide: senior MDs with strong origination books can earn several million dollars in a good year, while MDs in quieter groups earn meaningfully less. At Lazard, more than at a bulge bracket, senior pay tracks what you personally bring in.

Why do candidates turn down Lazard for Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Evercore, Centerview, or Moelis?

Common reasons: Goldman and Morgan Stanley offer broader product exposure (underwriting, trading adjacencies, principal investing) and larger alumni networks for exits into private equity or hedge funds. Centerview and Evercore often pay higher all-in at the analyst level in top buckets and are perceived as having a more defined elite-boutique brand in US M&A specifically. Moelis is viewed as more entrepreneurial and faster-promotion. PJT has a dominant restructuring reputation that can edge out Lazard for candidates who want pure distressed work. Lazard wins candidates on cross-border prestige, on the Paris-NYC transatlantic identity, on sovereign advisory work no other firm does at its scale, and on independence.

Is it harder to get hired at Lazard after the 2024 layoffs?

The 2024 roughly 10 percent headcount reduction was concentrated in senior and mid-level bankers in specific groups and geographies; campus hiring was reduced but not gutted. Junior recruiting remains competitive in the normal banking sense rather than unusually so. If anything, the internal pressure to justify every seat has made the firm more selective on fit and ownership mindset at the margin. Expect tougher Superdays and less willingness to extend borderline offers than in the 2021-2022 cycle.

Do I need to speak French to work at Lazard in Paris?

Yes, in practice. Paris is a founding house, not a satellite — client meetings, pitches, internal staffing discussions, and informal culture happen in French. Lazard will occasionally hire a non-francophone into Paris for a specific specialty (a senior sector banker from London, for example), but for junior and mid-level roles based in Paris, working French at a C1 level or better is effectively required. For the New York office, French is a plus for cross-border staffing but not a requirement.

How is Restructuring different from Financial Advisory at Lazard?

Restructuring is a distinct group within Financial Advisory. It advises debtors, creditors, and sovereigns on distressed situations: in-court bankruptcies, out-of-court workouts, liability management exercises, and sovereign debt restructurings. Deal teams are smaller and the work is more document- and legal-intensive. Juniors who want Restructuring should flag it in every interaction with recruiters and interviewers — internal lateral moves into Restructuring from M&A happen but are not the norm. Analyst exits from Restructuring skew heavily toward distressed credit hedge funds and special situations private credit, rather than traditional private equity.

What is the work-life reality for a first-year analyst?

Typical weeks run 70 to 90 hours, with spikes to 100-plus around live deal execution. Weekends are not protected. Lazard formally adopted a Saturday-off policy for juniors several years ago, in line with industry trends, but enforcement depends on the group and the deal stage. Compared to bulge brackets, the hours are broadly similar but the staffing is leaner, so individual accountability is higher — there is nowhere to hide on a four-person deal team. Candidates optimizing for lifestyle should not choose Lazard; candidates optimizing for deal exposure should.

Does Lazard recruit from non-target schools?

Yes, but sparingly and almost always through relationships rather than applications. The formal target list for US undergraduate hiring is narrow (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Georgetown, NYU Stern, Michigan Ross, UVA McIntire, and a short tail of others). Non-target candidates who break in almost always do so through cold outreach to analysts or VPs who can refer them into the process, often combined with a prior internship at another bank or a serious finance club background. For MBA recruiting, the target list broadens to the top 10 US and top 5 European programs.

How does Asset Management hiring differ from Financial Advisory?

Lazard Asset Management is a separate business with its own recruiting pipeline, its own compensation bands, and a different cultural rhythm. Junior analyst roles sit inside investment teams (global equities, emerging markets, fixed income) and require an investment thesis mindset rather than a deal-execution one. Interviews weight stock pitches, macro views, and valuation judgement over transaction mechanics. Compensation at the junior level is lower than Financial Advisory all-in but narrows meaningfully at the portfolio manager level, where successful PMs can earn compensation comparable to senior advisory MDs.

Where do Lazard analysts go after the two-year program?

Exits cluster into three buckets. Private equity (middle-market and large-cap funds that hire on-cycle 12 to 18 months into the program) takes the largest share, with Lazard analysts competing well for buyside seats given the cross-border deal exposure. Hedge funds (especially distressed credit and event-driven funds) take a meaningful share of Restructuring alumni. A smaller group stays at Lazard through promotion to associate, typically those who have strong relationships with a specific MD who wants them to continue. Policy, development finance, and strategy roles at portfolio companies account for a long tail.

Open Positions

Lazard currently has 7 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 7 open positions at Lazard

Related Resources

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Sources

Lazard Corporate History — Lazard Ltd
Lazard Careers Portal — Lazard Ltd
Peter Orszag appointed CEO of Lazard, effective October 2023 — Lazard Ltd Press Release
Lazard Announces Strategic Plan and Headcount Reduction — Lazard Ltd Investor Relations
Lazard 2023 Annual Report (Form 10-K) — Lazard Ltd SEC Filings
Lazard IPO (May 2005) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Lazard Asset Management Overview — Lazard Asset Management LLC
Investment Banking Compensation Survey — Wall Street Oasis