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Being “On” at On-Campus Interviews

This post was co-written by Rachel Gurvich and Sean Marotta. 

As the summer draws to a close, we’re approaching the season of the On-Campus Interview (OCI). Let’s describe the set-up. Typically, on-campus interviews happen after an initial, usually competitive, screening. Students “bid” on a number of firms, and on the basis of their written applications—typically consisting of a cover letter, resume, and transcript, though sometimes also a writing sample and list of references—each firm selects a set number of students to meet with face-to-face.

Now, the mechanics: a law firm sends an interviewer to campus (or, for some schools, a hotel near campus) for a day, where she does a series of twenty-minute interviews that could last a morning, an afternoon, or even all day. Sometimes the firm is interviewing so many people at a single law school that it sends more than one attorney to do separate interview tracks. And sometimes the firms send multiple interviewers who will all be in the room with a single applicant at once. Either way, each candidate gets only twenty minutes to make an impression—and those twenty minutes may come in the middle of a great many other interviews.

Here are ten tips to keep in mind when preparing for and participating in on-campus interviews.  Continue reading “Being “On” at On-Campus Interviews”

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Say “yes” to the firm: making an informed decision

Even though classes haven’t started yet, at this very moment, 2Ls across the country are making decisions about where they will spend next summer. * This decision, which many 2Ls already feel unqualified to make, can be even scarier because of the peculiar way that the legal job market is set up: after just one year of law school, students are faced with what rightly feels like a high-stakes decision about where to start their legal careers. If this sounds familiar, rest assured that it’s not just you; this feeling is real and valid.

Before I share my tips for how to navigate this situation, here are two preliminary thoughts. First, if you have the luxury of deciding between multiple offers, you’re already in a good place. Many students—for a variety of reasons—aren’t looking at that kind of a choice. It’s a good problem to have. Second, while this decision is important, if you spend next summer at a firm and determine it’s not a good fit, you will have learned something important about what you should look for the next time you’re on the market. Nor is a bad 2L summer the end of the road; although it’s a tougher path, many 3Ls find jobs at firms where they haven’t worked before. A clerkship can be a particularly good opportunity for a “re-set.” And even if you spend just a year or two as a young associate at a firm you don’t love, you can still use that time to position yourself well to make a move.

With all of that said, here are my tips for minimizing the chances of accepting a summer associate position at a firm that isn’t right for you. Continue reading “Say “yes” to the firm: making an informed decision”

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Callbacks, continued

It’s OCI season, which means that it is—or soon will be—the time of year when many law firms subject many law students to that time-honored endurance test: the callback interview. Typically, this experience consists of 4-6 consecutive one-on-one interviews, each with an attorney of varying seniority, sometimes followed by lunch or coffee with even more attorneys. Needless to say, it’s often an overwhelming and exhausting experience, particularly when students run the gauntlet of multiple callbacks in a compressed time frame. 

Callback strategies were one of our #PracticeTuesday topics last week, and as part of that conversation, I started this thread:

Following up on that thread, I thought I’d use this post both to provide some context for my tweets and also to elaborate a bit on what I said. Continue reading “Callbacks, continued”