Lipper earned his B.A. at Columbia, his J.D. at Harvard Law School, his LL.M. at NYU and doing postgraduate work in law and economics at the University of Paris.

Thereafter he was an associate with a Wall Street law firm for a year before serving as director of industry policy for the Office of Foreign Direct Investment in Washington, D.C.. He has been associate and partner of Lehman Brothers (1969-75) and managing director and partner at Salomon Brothers (1976-82) before being recruited by Mayor Ed Koch for his position as deputy mayor. In the late 1980s, Lipper founded the investment firm Lipper & Company.

He has taught at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs for many years and serves on the school's advisory board. His proposals for investing in America's cities by developing and supporting the entrepreneurial class have gained wide public attention.

Lipper triumphed in the publishing world with the success of his novel Wall Street, adapted from Oliver Stone's award-winning film of the same name, in which Lipper himself served as technical advisor and had a brief cameo. His experience in government was the inspiration for another film, 1996's City Hall, starring Al Pacino, for which he served as producer and wrote the screenplay. Lipper was also producer of The Winter Guest and the Academy Award-winning Holocaust documentary The Last Days, and provided assistance for Pieces of April.