BreezyCo. Insights: The JD/MBA Guidebook – 4 Things MBAs Could Learn From Law Students (& Vice Versa)

Balancing law and business often means balancing two very distinct ways of thinking and working. Most days, my biggest challenge is remembering which version of myself belongs where.

My first interactions during MBA1 reminded me of the first time I ordered a chicken cutlet wedge outside New York. I discovered that the same sandwich can be a sub, a hoagie, a hero, or a wedge depending on who you ask. Law and business work the same way. The content doesn’t change much, but the expectations, norms, and even vocabulary regularly do.

Once I made that connection, navigating the two programs became much easier. Both environments emphasize leadership, networking, and collaboration through teamwork and negotiations. But they develop those core competencies in completely different ways.

After three years in law school and a year-and-a-half at Ross, I’ve learned how much the setting itself shapes the style of thinking you’re expected to use. That shift leads to a change in both what you’re learning and how you’re learning it. I’ve seen how each building teaches you to operate in its own rhythm, and how moving between them means adjusting your approach every time you cross the threshold.

And that is where this guidebook comes into play…

Breezy’s JD/MBA Guidebook: A Survival Manual for the Academic Multiverse

1) COLLABORATION – “Shared Brain” vs “Parallel Processing”

Law Students: “If we’re on the same team, we’re learning the same thing.” 

Law school collaboration is truly collective. It’s less about dividing up plays and more about every team member learning the whole game plan. Whether you’re co-writing a paper or acting as student-attorney partners in the Michigan Innocence Clinic, the expectation is the same: We learn together. We work together. We finish together.

Even if tasks are divided, the learning isn’t.

Law Anecdote: During my time in the Innocence Clinic, my partner and I were effectively tethered together (in the best way). We studied case histories, joined every client call, and went to visit clients in prison together. And even when tasks didn’t lend themselves to true co-working – like drafting motions or leading interviews – neither of us ever said, “That’s your part.” If our names were on it, we both needed to understand it. It was often time-consuming and intense, but it made us better advocates.

MBAs: “You do your part, I’ll do mine.”

Ross teamwork runs like a professional project team where everyone shows up with built-in functional roles. This may include the numbers person, the strategy person, the marketing person, and the one former consultant who can create a clean deck in a half-second from anywhere (including a middle seat on a red-eye from DTW to Dublin).

And most notably for myself, the workstreams operate in parallel. Person A tackles Section 1, Persons B-E tackle their assigned sections, and we combine everything at the end.

The upside? Things move fast. The downside? You sometimes end up with five beautifully (and quickly) completed sections that have never met each other, and the lack of coherency shows it.

MBA Anecdote: During MAP, our team of six very smart, very experienced people produced a less-than-perfect final deliverable because we never aligned on leadership roles, defined task ownership, or set communication norms early. Without someone stepping in as project manager / mediator / editor / therapist, we had to scramble at the eleventh hour to stitch the pieces together. It was a clash of expectations around what collaboration means.

Survival Tip:

From Law Students to MBAs: Shared understanding up front prevents chaos down the line. (Because five beautifully-written sections still need to sound like one cohesive story.)

From MBAs to Law Students: Strategic delegation strengthens outcomes. (Because not every task needs all-hands-on-deck.)

What I Learned: Law school prepares you to understand every piece of a matter deeply. Business school prepares you to lead teams of specialists. Navigating both has made me more intentional about setting communication norms and more flexible about collaboration styles. I’ve also become more confident in my ability to adapt to the needs of different teams.

2) LEADERSHIP & EVENTS – “Try a New Way” vs “Follow the Playbook”

Law Students: “Let’s build something that fits this year’s community.” 

Law school leadership feels like creative stewardship. Yes, there are templates and archives, but events are rarely copy-and-paste. They’re interactive and shaped by the current community. Even more, they are flexible by design to encourage consistent brainstorming and more room to experiment.

Law Anecdote: When I served as Student Senate Events Co-Chair for Law Prom, we inherited a robust Google Drive from the previous year. It provided a helpful blueprint. Even so, we redesigned most of the event around what the current year’s class wanted (a new theme, more decorations, more food, and more bartenders).

The role gave us real decision-making power, allowing us to see all the moving pieces at once and make choices that aligned across budget, logistics, and vision. From there, we delegated the smaller or community-facing responsibilities to the rest of the Senate. The result? We offered more while spending less than the previous year.

And then, life intervened. An unexpected obligation pulled me out of Michigan the day before the event. Yet stepping away barely created a ripple, because we had built a clear, cohesive planning system. The event ran smoothly, the team delivered effortlessly, and the night was a huge success. Objectively, it was the best law prom in the last five years. Ask around!

MBAs: “Here’s the toolkit. Keep the engine running.”

Ross orgs run like mini-consulting firms with established systems, detailed transition docs, and a Slack ecosystem so extensive it deserves its own org chart. The job prioritizes operating and optimizing what already works over reimagining a new process for the sake of change.

MBA Anecdote: The Michigan Ross Bus tailgate tradition has been running for more than 20 years. It is well-funded and well-attended. There’s something admirable about that level of institutional memory. Events run like clockwork and there’s less existential debate during the planning process because the system works.

Survival Tip:

From Law Students to MBAs: Creativity keeps culture alive. Even efficient systems need personality.

From MBAs to Law Students: Consistency is kindness. Not everything should be born from chaos.

What I Learned: Law school taught me how to build something meaningful from the ground up. Business school is teaching me how to scale what already works. My leadership voice lives in that sweet spot of innovation within structure.

3) NETWORKING – “Come As You Are” vs “Come With a Plan”

Law Students: “Community first, everything else later.”

Law school networking is intentionally informal.

• Chili’s Club (an org whose sole purpose is upholding monthly Chili’s pilgrimages tradition)
• Board Game Club (where Catan destroys friendships)
• Public Benefits Advocacy Project (a student org that helps community members apply for and maintain public benefits)

You bond over bottomless chips, Mario Kart losses, and shared trauma trying to master the rules for Hearsay. No one trades business cards or LinkedIn QR codes. Sometimes, there’s even a moratorium on mentioning recruiting and exams. You just go to exist as a person around other people needing a break from the formalities and structure of being a professional school student. And ironically, because they start with genuine rapport, those casual, personality-driven connections often turn into the strongest professional ones.

Law Anecdote: Some of the strongest relationships were formed during the nights when we baked cookies together during the holiday season and played a surprisingly revealing game of Assassins (guided by a Sociology PhD game master who knew exactly how to test the group’s dynamics).

MBAs: “Networking is a leadership skill. You need to practice it.”

Ross networking is much more structured and intentional. Students prep each other for interviews, guide first-years through recruiting pipelines , and hold employer coffee chats – sometimes long before classes start. Conversations about industries or recruiting strategies happen so frequently they deserve their own elective.

MBA Anecdote: One of the most memorable Coffee Series chats I attended featured a Ross alum who founded a fitness company and recently published her autobiography. At the end, she handed out copies of her book and offered quick one-on-one conversations at a makeshift signing table. In that 30-second exchange, I brought up my own writing. She later connected me with her editor who offered to help me navigate the publishing process. Ross networking is intentional by design, and experiences like mine make it clear why it works.

Survival Tip:

From Law Students to MBAs: Authenticity builds trust faster than polished talking points.

From MBAs to Law Students: Intentional networking creates opportunities personality alone can’t.

What I Learned: Both approaches matter. The strongest relationships are rooted in authenticity and purpose.

4) LEARNING AND IDENTITY – “Deep Dive” vs “Fast Dive”

Law Students: “Mastery builds capability.”

Law school assumes every assignment should make you holistically better because all students are building the same core legal toolkit. From case briefs and cold calls to first year oral arguments and even Bluebook basics, each task is designed to strengthen skills every future lawyer – or even JD-advantage professional – is expected to have.

Business school also treats assignments as skill builders, but the skills matter differently depending on whether you’re headed into consulting, marketing, finance, operations, or tech.

Law Anecdote: After taking a seminar connecting literature to legal reasoning, I worked with the same professor on independent research about regulatory responses to technological change. That work eventually turned into a speculative fiction novel exploring future AI sentience and the regulatory (and ethical) challenges it might raise. If nothing else, law school has taught me how to think deeply — sometimes too deeply — about everything.

MBAs: “Learn enough to lead effectively.” 

Business school, by contract, is built around specialization. Students are preparing for a wide range of industries and functions, so not every course or assignment carries the same weight for everyone. You don’t need to master every discipline to be effective. You just need enough understanding to delegate and collaborate, and to see how each function contributes to the bigger picture. The emphasis is on agility and judgment.

MBA Anecdote: When the time came for choosing electives after core, classmates headed for finance loaded up on modeling classes while future marketers focused on consumer analytics. I realized I didn’t need deep technical mastery for the field I’m entering. So, I chose courses that supported my development as both a future lawyer and storyteller. Having the freedom to take complete control of my learning goals and shape the rest of my program around them reshaped how I consider my own professional identity.

Survival Tip:

From Law Students to MBAs: Depth creates clarity. A strong foundation in core concepts strengthens your decision-making, even when the subject matter gets complicated.

From MBAs to Law Students: Agility matters. You don’t need mastery to contribute meaningfully, only clarity about what matters most.

What I Learned: Law school taught me to understand every piece of a problem before acting. Business school taught me that sometimes the smartest move is choosing which pieces matter most. The work of becoming an effective professional, whether that be a lawyer, leader, or storyteller, has been learning how to blend those instincts.

***

And taken together, these four lessons helped me understand what it really means to live in two academic worlds at once.

THE TWO WORLDS PROBLEM SOLVED 

After a year-and-a-half of moving between these two worlds, I’ve stopped trying to decide which version is better or correct. Law and business draw on overlapping skills, but the cadence and expectations vary widely, just as familiar things take on different names from region-to-region. The content may be similar, but the experience isn’t.

Law school taught me how to build understanding through shared effort, thinking carefully before acting and approaching complex problems with depth and thoroughness. Business school is teaching me how to adapt quickly, lead across different working styles, communicate expectations early, and keep momentum even when everyone brings different motivations and backgrounds.

Somewhere between monthly Chili’s Club pilgrimages and twice-weekly recruiting mixers, MAP decks and Innocence Clinic motions, or deep dives and fast dives, I’ve identified the kind of teammate and future lawyer I want to be. Someone adaptable enough to lead across specialties and steady enough to dive into complexity when it matters.

Maybe that’s the real value of navigating these two academic universes. When you’ve learned to operate in both, you start noticing the nuances that others miss and you learn how to pull the best from each world.

Bio: Born and raised in the city that never sleeps, Breezy has always straddled two worlds. Law and business on one side, storytelling on the other. She earned her B.A. and Master’s in Journalism from the University of North Texas before heading to Michigan for her JD/MBA. At the Law School, she served on the boards of the Student Senate, Black Law Students Association, Mock Trial, and the Organization for Public Interest Students. At Ross, she’s on the board of Business Leaders for Diverse Abilities and takes part in Ross Leaders Academy and Zell Lurie Institute programming. Outside the classroom, Breezy is pursuing an independent study on the modern publishing industry while finishing her first novel, a story that asks what happens when AI collides with the legal world. Wondering how a JD/MBA balances casebooks and networking with world-building? She’ll be sharing the twists, turns, and behind-the-scenes of her creative process this year at substack.com/breezeedoesit.

DON’T MISS: BREEZYCO. INSIGHTS: MAKING THE BRAVE CHOICE TO ENTER BUSINESS SCHOOL

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