Wednesday, February 08, 2006

new rule!

Remember when you were a kid and you could just make up rules? Usually these rules were kind of absurd. You’d be out playing with your friends and you would just say something like “Ok, new rule: last one to the whatever gets rocks thrown at them,” or “Ok, new rule: if a blue car drives down the street, I get to hit you in the arm, but if it’s a green car, you get to punch me in the leg.” (Ok, so maybe my childhood wasn’t like yours, but I wasn’t a violent kid. Really.)

Well, sometimes I wish I could still make up rules. Here’s one: If you have a job for the summer, especially a plum summer associate position, you’re not allowed to ask anyone else if they have a job. But if you don’t have a job and you want to ask someone if they have one, you can. I know this creates a few problems – namely, how can you know if someone has a job when you’re not allowed to ask them? I don’t have an answer, but if we were kids we wouldn’t really think through all the steps involved in the rule, so let’s just leave it at that…

**
Know what's depressing? When you get excited about someone returning your call and explaining, in detail, why they won't be hiring you, but more importantly, why they won't be hiring any 2Ls for the summer even though they usually do. That happened twice yesterday and I appreciated that a busy lawyer actually took the time to call me and explain that, in one case at least, they are only hiring 1Ls because last year's 2L summer associates were given offers but are doing clerkships so might join the firm in a year and blah blah blah...like I said, I really did appreciate that the guy took the time to explain this to me and it was almost like he was defending himself and his firm, but the bottom line is that this doesn't help me at all, other than to know that it's one fewer firm that might some day call me out of the blue to hire me...

8 Comments:

At 11:12 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Although I know you are not quite the social butter-fly-guy, do you have a sense of how well Miami students are doing in general?

Are top 10% in for sure? Top 20%? Where does it dip downwards? Is it a bad market? What do you attribute your trouble to? Grades? Looks? Connections?

 
At 1:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are you applying to firms outside of Miami? That's always going to be a challenge. It might be worthwhile to clerk for a judge during the summer. If a firm goes before judge X a hundred times a year, they'd probably want to hire somebody who knows how he thinks ... plus maybe it demonstrates good writing skills. Really I don't know. This is all from a guy with no connections and no summer job yet. Don't feel too bad - over 1/3 of the class doesn't have a job by graduation day!

 
At 2:51 PM, Blogger some guy said...

I am applying only in this area. I don't know what my trouble is. I wish I knew. My grades are above average but I'm not in the top 10 percent. I'm on Law Review (I wrote on). I am doing a lot of networking but I'm not very good at it.

I don't know if it's harder because I don't have my mind set on only one kind of law.

 
At 6:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

to the first comment -

everyone i know at UM who graded onto law review (top 7%) and who participated in OCI got a job through OCI.

 
At 6:54 PM, Blogger King of the Cats said...

In your case, LR can be your trump card but use it wisely.

To be blunt, in the minds of those who graded on, writing on is considered the same as having gotten a job only because of affirmative action. They'll never say it to your face, but they think of you as the token. Don't ask how I know this, I just do. It sucks but that's life.

If your interviewer wasn't on law review, they'll be impressed that you did write on and it could be a clincher.

But that aside, what kinds of jobs are you going after? While the blog doesn't make the man, you don't strike me as the BigLaw 2600 hours/year, kiss the partner's ass and offer to wax his porsche type (like most of the drones on LR). Maybe that's what's coming across to them, i.e. you're not ocd/type A enough for their liking.

I think that superbee guy/gal/trans or whatever it is was in a similar boat, maybe you should take it to lunch.

 
At 6:56 PM, Blogger some guy said...

Anon 6:34 p.m., that's not true at all. I know of at least two people fitting that description who still don't have jobs. I assume we are talking about people who are currently 2Ls.

 
At 10:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

SG - there is no untruth in my statement:

"everyone i know at UM who graded onto law review (top 7%) and who participated in OCI got a job through OCI."

maybe i don't know every single top 7% person who did OCI, but i know most of them, and all of the folks in that subset have jobs lined up for the summer. (shrug)

 
At 10:21 AM, Blogger some guy said...

Ok, well then you're not incorrect in your statement. I don't know who you know because I don't know who you are. My point is that there are people who graded on who did OCI who did not get jobs through OCI.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home