The Girl's Guide to Law School
Get In, Get Through, Stay You
Are you interviewing for summer associate jobs? If so, I strongly suggest you watch this Bloomberg Law video series. (And I’m not just saying that because I’m in it. Trust me, I’m the low man on the totem pole here — the rest of the guests are seriously impressive BigLaw hiring partners and such.)
All total, they run about half an hour, but I pretty much guarantee you’ll learn something useful!
August is here, which can only mean one thing — the annual craziness of on-campus interviewing is about to begin!
For the uninitiated, OCI is how most law firm summer associate positions are handed out. Students interview en masse before classes start, often in a hotel or set of on-campus conference rooms. In one day, you might do 10 or more screening interviews, with an eye towards getting to the all-important callback stage (which requires another day of interviews, on site in the office you’re interested in).
Every school is different, of course, but — in my experience — OCI was alternately boring, stressful, frantic, and exhausting. Not to say there weren’t some good parts, but the whole experience can be a bit overwhelming!
Therefore, I offer you seven tips for maintaining your sanity during the OCI craziness:
With classes starting soon and interviewing looming for summer associate positions and clerkships, I figured this would be a good time to bring up a sensitive topic: the elevator pitch.
Somehow, law students (and lawyers) have gotten the idea that it’s unseemly to have a straightforward answer to a simple question: What kind of work are you interested in doing?
This attitude is crazy! If you don’t know what you want (or you’re reluctant to discuss it), how can anyone help you? People need to know what you’re looking for, and you need to be prepared to tell them.
While the informational interview is fresh in your mind, take the time to record your impressions.
Include a brief description of:
If the person you spoke with warned you away from their field, or from being a lawyer in general, include the reasons they offered for this opinion.
Your goal with informational interviews should be to try to tease out common themes.
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Before you arrive for your informational interview, it’s useful to think about what knowledge you would like to gain from the experience and come up with a basic list of questions you’d like to ask.
Your goal is to get a good overview of what the person you’re talking with does on a daily basis, and their opinion on the pros and cons of their job.
Typically, you’ll want to ask some of the following:
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Once you’ve identified your target interviewees, it’s time to reach out and ask each of them to meet with you and share their experiences.
Here’s a basic script to follow, for a phone or email request:
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It can be intimidating to think about calling or emailing a complete stranger and asking them to meet with you. Keep in mind, however, that most people love to talk about themselves, and will often be quite flattered that you have an interest in meeting them.
One of the easiest places to start is with people you already know.
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Congratulations, you’ve got an on campus interview! Let’s get you prepared.
Luckily, most summer associate interview questions are softballs, as long as you’re sufficiently prepared. The interviews are short, and the interviewer is tasked primarily with figuring out whether you’re sincerely interested in the firm, and whether you’d be a good fit. Consequently, he’s probably asking everyone the same basic questions, and any detours will arise from interesting elements of your résumé, so you have some control over what will be discussed.
Here’s what you’re likely to be asked in an on campus interview:
When you sit down across from a law firm interviewer, she immediately starts trying to answer two questions:
If you don’t get a “yes” for both of those questions, you’re unlikely to get the job.
Let’s differentiate between a first interview and a callback interview. If you’re at the initial interview stage, your perceived intelligence does matter. However, the screening mechanism here is your grades, not how smart you appear to be in an interview. Once you’ve reached the callback stage, you’ve already passed the “smart” test – otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten a callback. Now your task isn’t to appear smart, it’s to appear personable.
Basically, law firms are looking for someone they’d like to date, but can still take home to Mother. As an interviewee, you want to present yourself as solid and hard-working, easy to get along with, calm under pressure, and slightly, but not overly, interesting.
How do you do this?
