Interview season (attack of the footnotes!)

So, I've been burbling about this on Twitter, and I've kind of talked about it here, but fall interviewing season begins next week. This information will be redundant for some of you, but the deal is, each fall, law schools bring^[1] employers on campus to interview second-year students (2Ls). These employers are usually the big firms that pay the big bucks (or semi-big bucks), and if your interview goes well enough, they'll offer you a job for the following summer. If you do well in that job, what traditionally follows is that you get an offer for permanent employment after graduation.^[2] Which means that, in essence, you get a chance at a job based on your performance in your first year of law school, and you may have a post-graduation job lined up before you even start your third year, which I find all kinds of weird.^[3]

Anyhoo, the interview schedules for the first week of interviewing have finally been worked out and we got them this afternoon (even though originally they were going to be done Monday), and I do have some interviews (plus an interview for a fall internship), so that's all kinds of exciting.

The thing is, though, OCI (on-campus interviewing) is a weird and tense thing. First, most students do NOT get jobs through OCI, mostly because a lot of employers just don't hire that way (especially government/non-profits/less-big firms), but partly because firms will interview 8 or 9 people and hire 2. Second, there's a perception that OCI is only for the tippity-top of the class.^[4] Now, I know that I got interviews with places that stated that they "prefer" candidates in the top X% of the class, where X = a number outside of which I fall, although I also have to admit that my rank was pretty close, so I can't say that the perception is wrong.^[5] Add the fact that the jobs acquired through OCI are generally those that pay the most, as well as the fact that you know EXACTLY who your competition is,^[6] and it's kind of anxious and nasty-making. Basically, it's like having the AHA (non-historians, fill in your national academic hiring conference here) move into your school for a bit.

And with all this, I'm not even sure what I want to get out of the process anyway.

See, I don't think that I want to work in a big law firm after graduation. (I know I've said this here before.) Granted, I can't say that for sure, never having worked in one, but it doesn't sound like my kind of thing, partly because of the hours (doesn't that sound lazy??), but mostly because I'm not at all interested in the business-side of running a law firm, nor do I want to have to drum up clients, and I have the sense that these are things that you need to do to make partner. In terms of work-life balance, a small firm might work, although the economic stuff is probably even more important when there aren't very many of you.

That said, though, working at a firm (depending on the firm) could provide GREAT hands-on, practical experience. Even a summer's worth would be useful, let alone a few years. My understanding is also that many government/non-profit employers don't like to hire students straight out of law school because they don't have the time or money to train them for practice, so you need a few years' experience before you can get these positions anyway. So these are good reasons to try out working at a firm.

(Which, of course, I don't even know that I'll be able to do - I just have INTERVIEWS, no one's offered me anything yet!)

And if nothing else, going through the interviews will be good experience.

It's just funny, because I still find myself reacting to these interviews based on my experience with academic interviews. I find myself grateful to have ANY, and pretty ecstatic to have multiples. But I don't know if that's because it's a decent accomplishment in the legal context, or just because it would have been a decent accomplishment at the AHA.

I'm also amused because "fit" still seems to be playing a part here, because the firms that are interviewing me are largely the ONLY firms that interested me much to begin with. I applied to a whole bunch of places (because that is the current advice, IN THIS ECONOMY, blah blah blah), but many just read as Generic Big Firm to me. I tried to find something specific to talk about in each cover letter, but really, the letters were kind of interchangeable because the firms felt interchangeable. But those few that looked distinctive and interesting? Found me interesting too. Which I think is so odd because really, my cover letters weren't all that different from place to place. But I guess what happened is that the kinds of places that would look more interesting to someone like me, look that way because they'd be more interested in people like me to begin with. If that makes any sense.

So anyway. That's my encyclopedic tome on interview season. Now, if you'll pardon me, I'll go obsess for a while over what to wear and what to say...

   

^[1] "Bring" makes it sound, I think, like schools have way more power than they actually do... recently a firm decided to cancel its interviews after scheduling interviews, and the school (Fordham) banned the firm from interviewing on campus for 5 years (or 7. I forget). From what I can tell, people aren't sure whether that actually hurts the firm, or just the students who'd like to interview with it.

^[2] I say "traditionally" because the big law firm model is NOT recession-friendly, and a lot of big firms have ended up deferring their offers to summer hires, i.e., making those who are graduating in 2010 a offer for a job that starts in 2011. That's if a firm makes any offers at all. A lot of firms just aren't hiring anyone for next summer. Fun times.

^[3]Although, really, not too much weirder than the drawn-out hiring process for academic jobs, I guess.

^[4]I think this varies somewhat by school. If you go to a tippity-top-ranked school, probably everyone in your class who wants an OCI job can get one; the word is that everyone at Harvard could walk out of school into a Big Law job if they want. The lower-ranked your school, the higher-ranked you have to be in your class to get the attention of a big firm through OCI. And region also plays a role; if you're at a regional school (i.e. anything not ranked in the top-14, or maybe top-20), regional firms will look lower down the class ranking than big national firms will. If I were trying to get a job at Wachtell out of my school - well, it wouldn't happen! But the only way I'd have a shot would probably be to be ranked number one in my class.

^[5] I was going to say, this is where having a life/career before law school probably helped me - but then, that previous career may have hurt me with the employers who didn't choose me for an interview (she's old! she's weird!), so who knows?

^[6]Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration; there's another law school in town whose students are also competing for these jobs, plus, doubtless, plenty of people who did go to top-14/top-20 schools but want to practice here and so apply for summer positions here. I don't know who they are, but I DO know all the people who go to school with me. Joy.

Comments

[MaryEliz]

HUGE congratulations on the multiple interviews -- and the fall internship interview, too! I'm so, so pleased for you, and hope that things work out exactly as would be best for you.

My brother is a lawyer, and one theory that he has shared with me is that some lawyers that he has worked with have a complex about not having Ph.D.s... which is to say that they either consider their training and subsequent work to be the equivalent of a Ph.D. and may seek to demonstrate as much OR they may act aggressively toward someone whom they know had a Ph.D. before they went to law school. Anyway, obviously, this is just one person's perspective, but I share it because a) it sounds auspicious that the firms you liked also liked you; and b) my brother's recommendation for dealing with the insecure types who might be worried about your prior degree is to tactfully reassure them that they're smart (because no doubt they are) while continuing to deal with them pleasantly and confidently.

Thanks for talking about this very interesting process. Can't wait to hear how things turn out! And maybe I'm romanticizing, but it seems likely that you'll be a smash hit in the interviews... especially since you've already survived a similar (and dare I say scarier?) process at the AHA!

[Another Damned Medievalist]

Cool! And a friend who teaches at Grad U law school (she was at Grad U for her undergrad) went to Big Name Law School, then did some circuit court clerking, which got her into the most prestigious firm in Grad U city. Why did she work there? Because she saw giving 5-7 years to clerking and working as the fastest way to get experience AND pay off the student loans -- which she did in that time. And we're talking about approx $100k!

[What Now?]

Congrats on and best of luck in the interviews, NK, and I'm so enjoying hearing about your law school experiences.

[Anastasia]

congrats on your interviews. I'm really enjoying hearing your experiences, too. Your first paragraph is exactly how my husband got his first engineering job out of undergrad--school brought/invited firms to campus, he interviewed and got work for the following summer, which turned into a permanent placement after he graduated. And then ten years before he decided to hang it up and become a philosopher.

anyway, it does seem kind of weird, but also nice to be able to line something up, figure out whether it's work you'd want to do long term, that sort of thing.

[brian]

I am not sure how relevant my experience is, but I worked as a law student at a big firm and I thought the experience was far less interesting or meaningful in learning on how to be a lawyer than working at legal services agencies, where I have worked for over 15 years.

It does make a difference that I worked at legal services agencies that do class action litigation and other impact work and I think some public interest agencies do shoddy work. Yet my time at a big firm I found not only mind bogglingly dull but also found the work rather easy and routine.

However, I made remarkable amount of money in one summer, so congratulations on the interviews.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Hi Brian - thanks for the comment! When I talk about firm work, I should note that I'm kind of talking out my ass because I haven't done any, and am also partly parroting the lines I've learned to give in answer to interview questions (I'm dying to work at your firm because it will be such. valuable. experience/training/omg ponies yay!). So I'll be interested to see how it goes (if I end up at a firm) and will keep your comment in mind. I suspect that yes, legal services work really would get you hands-on, thrown-in-the-deep end kinds of experience that you won't get at a big firm, where you're way too inexperienced to be let loose on anything interesting when the firm has to justify their prices to the client.

(I am mostly interviewing with weeny firms where summer associates basically do what everyone else does, so again, we'll see.)

But your comment is good for keeping me honest and not getting too caught up in the firm hype (hard to avoid during OCI, especially because, yeah, they're nice sums of money on the table).

[New Kid on the Hallway]

(and thanks for the congratulations, all!)